The public lands on Garfield County’s Roan Plateau remain in limbo. Multiple advocacy campaigns by coalitions of area sportsmen, conservationists and nonprofits have worked to conserve the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) acreage on the plateau from oil and gas development. The most recent victory, in the mid 2010s, has held for over a decade. Now, the area is the subject of another federal push for fossil fuel energy development. Local and regional groups have come together to engage Western Slope communities to counter the proposed oil and gas leasing.
Early in the summer, BLM officials opened a 30-day comment period for a proposal to auction 125,744 acres of public and private land across Colorado to oil and gas drilling. That comment period was extended to 60 days in July. The scheduled December 2026 oil and gas lease sale includes almost 5,000 acres on the Roan Plateau spread across several parcels.
On Aug. 12, the federal agency released a draft environmental assessment and opened an additional 30-day comment period set to close on Sept. 11. International conservation organizations like The Wilderness Society and Earthjustice are working with Conservation Colorado and Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop to raise public awareness and push for public comments before the input window closes.
The Roan Plateau sits in north-central Garfield County, and can be seen from Interstate 70 where the geologic feature called the Book Cliffs looms over the highway and the Colorado River. The plateau encompasses diverse ecosystems and climate zones including aspen groves, dense conifer forest, open sagebrush chaparral and canyons large and small. The plateau is over 3,000 feet higher than the river basin communities to its south.
The environmental groups working to ensure the area’s continued conservation cite the Roan Plateau as a remaining intact landscape in Colorado. The BLM acreage on the plateau, which currently remains undeveloped by oil or gas lease use, hosts rare endemic plants and healthy ecosystems abundant with elk, deer, fowl, fish, bears and more.
Wilderness Workshop noted in a press release that while there have been over 20,000 oil and gas wells drilled in Garfield and Mesa counties as of August 2026, the development has occurred almost exclusively on private lands or on public lands below the plateau itself. Eighteen years ago, when the Bush administration leased the majority of the Roan Plateau BLM land for oil and gas development, diverse Western Slope interest groups came together to oppose that use and instead conserve the land for recreation and for wilderness consideration.
“By moving forward with these leases, the Trump administration is showing blatant disregard for West Slope communities, businesses, hunters, anglers and conservationists, who have urged the BLM to keep the Roan Plateau off the auction block,” said Juli Slivka, senior director of policy and programs at Wilderness Workshop.
Slivka said the organization hopes BLM will “instead prioritize this truly unique Colorado landscape for wildlife habitat, pristine streams and backcountry recreation.”
“With this comment opportunity, BLM has another chance to listen to the public and make a decision to defer these contentious leases and keep drill rigs out of the important habitats and watersheds on the public lands on top of the plateau,” Slivka said.
Brien Webster, the senior public lands campaign manager for Conservation Colorado, accused the federal agency of ignoring the will of the people. “BLM is ignoring what Coloradans have been telling them for decades, don’t drill the Roan Plateau,” Webster said. “Colorado has spent decades working to conserve this landscape, and this sale threatens to undermine those longstanding efforts. Moving forward with these leases directly threatens one of the region’s most spectacular landscapes, including the recently designated Outstanding Waters on the Plateau.”
Webster said that oil and gas interests already have around half a million acres of inactive oil and gas development leases across Colorado. Removing the Roan Plateau parcels would reduce the 2026 lease nominations by only 1% and continue preservation of those acres. “Ultimately,” Webster said, “the industry’s interest in this land pales in comparison to the interests of local communities, sportsmen and wildlife. The Roan Plateau’s true value lies in its ability to enrich our region through conservation and recreation, far outweighing the need for unnecessary industrial development.”
The BLM press release stated that it will use input from the public to complete its review of each Colorado land parcel nominated for the proposed December sale. Wilderness Workshop includes the Roan Plateau among its titled Wild for Good landscapes; the conservation nonprofit has a dedicated webpage and report on the plateau’s public lands and ecosystems.
Comments can be submitted to BLM until Sept. 11.