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Supporters of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Economy (CORE) Act are asking President Joe Biden to take executive action to protect thousands of acres of federal land in Colorado after watching the bill stall in the U.S. Senate.
The CORE Act supporters appear to have a strong ally in their corner: U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Speaking Tuesday to a group gathered for a roundtable near Camp Hale, the former military base near Leadville, Colorado where 10th Mountain Division soldiers trained before heading to battle in World War II, Secretary Vilsack said he would encourage Biden to help get further protections for the area. “Frankly,” Vilsack said, “I don’t want to disappoint.”
The decision to seek executive action from President Biden on portions of the CORE Act is tacit acknowledgement that the legislation doesn’t currently have a path forward in the bitterly divided Senate. U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, a sponsor of the CORE Act, said, “I think our preference, obviously, is to pass the CORE Act,” but also conceded that national monument designations and mineral withdrawals enacted through executive authority should be part of the discussion.
The CORE Act, in addition to protecting the land around Camp Hale by designating it the nation’s first National Historic Landscape, calls for creating roughly 100,000 acres of wilderness, recreation, and conservation areas in the White River National Forest, and wilderness designations for roughly 60,000 acres of land in the San Juan Mountains in Southwest Colorado. It would also formally establish the boundary for the Curecanti National Recreation Area near the Blue Mesa Reservoir in Gunnison and prevent mineral development on about 6,500 acres outside of Norwood at Naturita Canyon.
Court clears path for Biden's leasing pause
Federal judges struck down a court order that had barred the Biden administration from pausing new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the order requiring the Interior Department to resume lease sales "lacked specificity." At issue is President Biden's Executive Order 14008, which he issued at the start of his term to address the harms of climate change that required Interior to put new lease sales on hold as the department reviewed the environmental impact of its leasing program. A coalition of 12 Republican-led states mounted a legal challenge against the pause, and in June 2021 a Trump-appointed judge issued an injunction requiring lease sales to restart.
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Anyone who claims that we need to be able to mine for uranium near the Grand Canyon in order to be independent of Russia is at best exaggerating the uranium potential of this region and possibly only seizing on a geopolitical crisis to benefit their own bottom line.”
