Interior Secretary Deb Haaland wraps up on outdoor recreation

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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland wraps up on outdoor recreation

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Colorado Politics:
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Bennet and Hickenlooper joined Haaland in a Saturday visit to Top of the Pines, west of Ridgway, for a conversation about the Bennet-Neguse Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act, which has already passed the House three times but awaits action from the U.S. Senate.

The bill, a consolidation of four previous measures, would add 73,000 new acres to public lands in Colorado and establish the first-of-its-kind National Historic Landscape at Camp Hale in Eagle County. It also would prohibit new oil and gas development in areas important to ranchers and sportsmen. Bennet has been working on the CORE Act for more than a decade, but it never got support from Hickenlooper's predecessor, Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo. Hickenlooper, however, is in full support, as is the Biden administration and Haaland.

In a mountain meadow at Top of the Pines, a 175-acre Ouray County-owned campground that sits in the shadows of Mount Sneffels, Bennet, Hickenlooper and Haaland were joined by commissioners from Summit, San Miguel, Ouray and Gunnison counties. Those four counties, and three others (Eagle, Garfield and San Juan), would be affected by the CORE Act.

This was a bill, written not in Washington, D.C., but at trailheads and mountain streams, Bennet said. "It's critical to our mission at Interior that everyone have access to the outdoors," Haaland said. With the CORE Act, there will be more opportunity for more people to enjoy the outdoors, and outdoor recreation provides good paying jobs as well as preserving lands and water. Efforts are best when locally led and designed, she added.

The CORE Act could help with the explosion of visitors to Colorado's public lands, up more than 200% in some counties in the past year, and nowhere else is the need greater than in Summit County. Commissioner Elisabeth Lawrence told Haaland the White River National Forest is the most visited one in the nation, and in the past five years has faced major overcrowding. One provision of the CORE Act would create three new wilderness areas in Eagle and Summit counties, adding 21,895 acres.

Other commissioners, however, noted they have all seen major growth in visitors, and pointed to the need for education, since some are not being good stewards of the public lands they visit.



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