Sponsors (4)
The bill prioritizes conservation, recreation, tribal rights, and targeted pollution-reduction efforts in Colorado—delivering broad environmental and community benefits—while imposing notable limits on extractive uses, access and certain local economic activities and requiring federal spending to implement and manage the new protections.
Residents, visitors, and nearby communities in Colorado gain thousands of acres of permanently protected lands (wilderness, Special Management Areas, Thompson Divide withdrawals, and a new ~50,300-acre National Recreation Area) that preserve recreation, scenic values, and wildlife habitat.
Indigenous and tribal communities retain and have clarified protection for treaty rights, cultural uses, ceremonial access, and traditional plant gathering across designated areas.
Local residents and communities gain improved public-land management tools and legal clarity — including clearer maps/descriptions, authority to acquire inholdings/willing-seller purchases, funding mechanisms, and explicit protection of water and reclamation authorities — which should improve long-term land stewardship and reduce boundary uncertainty.
Owners, leaseholders, and extractive-industry workers in affected areas lose access to mineral, oil, gas, geothermal, and other development opportunities because large tracts are withdrawn or restricted, potentially reducing local jobs, royalties, and property values.
Taxpayers and federal budgets may incur new costs for land acquisition, management, required studies, pilot programs, and administrative work to implement protections, which could increase federal spending or require appropriations.
Recreational motorized users, some residents, and service providers face tighter limits on motorized access and road construction in many designated areas, reducing certain recreational uses, increasing travel times, and complicating access for some communities and emergency/working uses.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Adds multiple wilderness and special management areas in Colorado, withdraws Thompson Divide lands from new mineral disposal, creates a fugitive coal-mine methane pilot, and establishes Curecanti National Recreation Area.
Introduced February 27, 2025 by Joseph Neguse · Last progress February 27, 2025
Designates multiple new wilderness areas, wilderness additions, and special management areas across several national forests in Colorado; creates a pilot program to capture fugitive methane from coal-mine sources in the Thompson Divide area and withdraws specified federal lands from new mineral and surface disposal; and establishes the Curecanti National Recreation Area as a unit of the National Park System. The bill defines terms and maps for each designation, preserves valid existing rights (including some grazing and water project authorities), directs federal agencies on management roles and cooperative agreements, and sets implementation triggers and timing for certain actions.