Wilderness Workshop, an environmental advocacy nonprofit based in Carbondale, Colorado, is using its newest report to draw attention to ten landscapes in Western Colorado that it says are threatened by federal policies, but should have permanent protections.
The report is called “Wild for Good,” and includes public lands as far north as the area around Dinosaur National Monument, south to the Dolores River canyon country, watersheds like the Crystal River and Homestake Valley, and centers for ag like the Thompson Divide and North Fork Valley.
Michael Gorman, Wilderness Workshop’s campaign director, worked on the report. He said these landscapes were chosen not just for their beauty, but qualities like wildlife habitat, water sources, and climate mitigation.
“They really are essential to our way of life here in Colorado, and our wellbeing and our economy and our culture,” he said. “They supply water to our farms and our towns, and they provide habitat for elk and deer and all sorts of wildlife. And then, obviously, they support this big recreation economy here in the state that is important to all of us, and a big part of our identity as Coloradans. So we chose them for those values.”
Increased oil and gas drilling poses threats to areas like the Roan Plateau, Greater Dinosaur, the North Fork, and the Thompson Divide while mining and off-road recreation threaten the Dolores River.
Meanwhile, the Crystal River and the Homestake Valley have seen pressures for water diversion over the past decades, and increased recreation poses pressures on most of these landscapes.
Gorman said that despite these challenges, grassroots support in each of the communities near to these areas makes the goal of securing protections more attainable.
“These are winnable fights,” he said. “They have the values, and then they have community support behind them to secure permanent protections.”
Durable protections for these lands are usually congressionally approved: Congress can designate a wilderness area or a special management area, or they can designate a river as “Wild and Scenic” for example. Gorman said they’ve already started engaging elected officials on both sides of the aisle in Colorado's congressional delegation.
Will Roush, Wilderness Workshop’s executive director, said they acknowledge that the fight to protect public lands is an uphill battle, especially as federal public lands face more threats than ever. But, he said, it’s a fight worth having.
“We saw such a massive uprising of support for public lands and opposition to the recent effort to sell public lands, and that came from across the political spectrum, right?” he said. “We saw people from all walks of life, all over the country, speaking up and being loud about why public lands are important to them and why we, as a country, value our public lands.”
“That really just reiterated that public lands really can be a nonpartisan issue. It can be a unifying issue. We all love our public lands and they really are a part of Colorado and our pride as Coloradans: that we have these special places and that here in Colorado, we have a history of working together to protect these places.”
The report also acknowledges the impact of human-caused climate change on public lands, and the ways that public lands can increase both human and wildlife resilience to the impacts of a changing climate.
“A lot of the lands identified in this report are lower-elevation lands, which we know are, you know, really critical for climate adaptation for important wildlife habitat and migration corridors for allowing, you know, wildlife populations to move… to some of those existing higher, protected lands,” said Roush.
“It's not just an environmental issue or scenery or recreation, it's about safeguarding our water supplies and strengthening our climate resilience and really ensuring a future where Colorado communities can thrive and still have places like this,” Gorman said.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
