While some conservation leaders were celebrating, turns out quite a few others were wondering why Colorado got so severely short-changed in the wilderness-protection arena with the passage this week of the Natural Resources Management Act. Seriously, states like neighboring Utah, which lost the Outdoor Retailer Show to Colorado after its elected officials led the charge to downsize Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, wound up with a lot more wilderness acres from the bill than Colorado, which has been working on and getting stakeholder buy-in for various wilderness proposals for years. There seems to be a difference of opinion on just how hard Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner worked to get any of the various wilderness proposals into the larger bill, but even his critics agree he deserves credit for pushing so hard to get the lapsed Land and Water Conservation Fund reauthorized. Now they want him to work just as hard to fully fund that critical program. To view the full article visit Real Vail.
