A wild horse roundup is scheduled for early September northeast of Grand Junction. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees wild horses in the American West, says 202 mustangs roam the 36,000-acre Little Book Cliffs Range (LBC), based on a census earlier this year, and the range can’t handle that many.But advocates, lawmakers and […]
Bureau of Land Management
Posted inLocal Government
DC lobbyist update, new county staff, protecting fish and more
Short meeting this week for the Garfield County Commissioners (BOCC). Robert Weidner, lobbyist on behalf of the Rural Public Lands County Council, was up first. He said the county should have received a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) of just under $4 million last week and that the Secure Rural Schools program, whose authorization […]
Posted inLocal Government
GarCo Report: Condos? In an airplane hangar?
Garfield County Commissioners (BOCC) Monday spent a little over an hour in the morning and maybe a half-hour in the afternoon approving, denying and continuing various items. No one from the public had anything to say about issues not on the agenda. An update from Rural Public Lands County Council lobbyist Robert Weidner from Washington, […]
Posted inNews
Western Slope shows support for conservation in BLM plan
In August of this year, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) to be appended to both the Colorado River Valley and Grand Junction resource management plans, affecting usage policy for approximately 2 million acres of land for the next two decades. After a two-month period of public […]
Posted inNews, Uncategorized
Re-United for Thompson Divide
Despite the efforts of Colorado Senators Michael Bennett and John Hickenlooper and Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse (D-CO-2), the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Economy (CORE) Act, which would have protected the Thompson Divide from new natural gas leasing in perpetuity as well as Camp Hale and other landscapes in Colorado, has not made it out of the […]
Posted inNews, Uncategorized
Thompson Divide meeting welcomes public
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service (FS) have scheduled a public meeting for Wednesday, Dec. 14, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Carbondale Firehouse (300 Meadowood Drive). The purpose of the meeting is to provide information and hear public feedback on the proposed federal administrative withdrawal of oil and gas […]
Posted inNews, Uncategorized
BLM headquarters’ Colorado sojourn: Short and maybe not so sweet
In July 2019, then-U.S. Senator Cory Gardner announced that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) — a component of the Department of the Interior (DOI) — was relocating its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Grand Junction. The Republican had been among those championing the move for years, arguing that since almost all of the nearly […]
Posted inNews, Uncategorized
Colorado Wild Public Lands watchdogs land swaps
Colorado Wild Public Lands (COWPL), based in Basalt, originated in 2014 in direct response to a controversial land swap known as the Sutey Ranch Land Exchange. Now complete, the deal saw the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) trade 1,369 acres south of Carbondale and 201 acres southwest of Eagle to Two Shoes Ranch, owned by […]
Posted inNews, Uncategorized
Vacuum cleaners for the land
Country Road 112 may have seen its most heavily-trafficked day yet. However, the traffic did not come from cars, but from goats. On a recent dewey fall morning, Lani Malmberg and her son, Donny Benz, co-owners of Goat Green LLC, ran 800 goats down the road to load them into trailers that were too big […]