Keep Public Lands in Public Hands

PROTECT OUR TRAILS!
CALL TO ACTION

COPMOBA and our community of volunteers have worked tirelessly for over 35 years to support, build and maintain sustainable singletrack trails in Western Colorado. The vast majority of those trails are on federal public land. We have great partners in the BLM, US Forest Service, as well as State and Local Government. We have all worked together to steward our public lands, offering recreational opportunities and improving local economies, making these lands essential to our communities.

COPMOBA believes public lands should remain public as they are important resources and provide distinction to our local communities as well as the United States. We fundamentally oppose the sale of public lands beyond existing processes.

We are concerned that our decades-long work will be in jeopardy. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led by Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, has proposed the sale of 3 million acres of public land across the West from a pool of more than 250 million acres. Lands that could be sold include all of the Lunch Loop trail system as well as parts of North Fruita Desert, Palisade Rim, Palisade Plunge, Grand Mesa and Uncompahgre Trails, Electric Hills and Spring Creek trails in Montrose and RAT Trails in Ridgway. There are virtually no safeguards on what land can be sold or for what purpose. The proposal goes well beyond those trail systems in scope and will likely be voted on before a July 4th deadline.

Similar language was proposed in the House Bill in May but was removed after former Secretary of the Interior, Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Montana, appropriately stated, “Once the land is sold, we will never get it back… Public access, sportsmanship, grazing, tourism… our entire Montanan way of life is connected to our public lands… There is a process to making sure that our lands are being used for the best benefit of the people.”

Yet, here we are again, less than a month later with a proposal 6-times as large.

Mountain biking and outdoor recreation in Western Colorado are significant economic drivers. From tourism to local business to outdoor retailers to mountain bikers to off-road enthusiasts to outdoorsmen to conservationists, the public lands benefit and touch us all. The Senate proposal threatens user groups as well as our local economies as a whole. According to a study by Colorado Mesa University, mountain biking provided more than $14.6M per year in 2018 to the Mesa County economy and is certainly responsible for almost double that today. A different study from CMU demonstrated that in 2019 the GDP impact of outdoor recreation was ~$484M per year or 7.2% of total GDP in Mesa County and 9,897 jobs or 11% of total jobs.

In addition to these economics, because Western Colorado has a large proportion of federal lands, we receive Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) from the federal government for land that does not generate local tax. The State of Colorado received ~$48M in 2024, of which ~$4.4M went to Mesa County and another $3.2M to Montrose County, by far the two largest amounts in the state (also $0.9M to Delta County and $0.5M to Ouray County). It would take many, many years to make up that lost income to these communities through the sale of land and local taxes, again damaging our local economies.

If you feel as strongly about your protecting and preserving public lands as we do, we recommend you take action now and reach out to your local elected officials. We created a contact list below. We recommend contacting, Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Colorado District 3, and Senators John Hickenlooper, D-Colorado, and Michael Bennett, D-Colorado.. There is also a contact form from Outdoor Alliance for Action.

We appreciate the support of your public lands.

COPMOBA BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Adam Kinsey, President

Dean Bressler

Don Potter

Mel Stockwell, Vice President

Rebecca Cleveland

Tyler Smith

Katie Catanzarite, Secretary

Michael Faithe

Michelle Urlacher

Nick Jacobson, Treasurer

Jonah Howe