Most of us count ourselves lucky to live in Colorado, whether we’re natives or transplants, due to the spectacular natural amenities. We’re understandably protective of those landscapes as a result. But honest disagreements arise when new environmental “protections” are proposed that aren’t well-timed, don’t seem justified, and carry a high risk of unintended consequences.

Controversy is even more likely if the those “protections” are the product of corner-cutting or irregular and undemocratic means. Consider the tactics Colorado’s U.S. senators are using to jam through dubious new public lands restrictions before midterm elections change the political landscape.

A bill called the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Economy Act, or Core Act, has been banging around Congress for years without passage. It’s a patched-together Frankenstein, combining elements of four other bills that also floundered. Its marquee provisions create more wilderness areas and designate Camp Hale, of 10th Mountain Division fame, and its surroundings as the nation’s first “National Historic Landscape.”

In an evenly split U.S. Senate, where it would seem to have a good chance of passing, the Core Act nevertheless hasn’t been able to get over the finish line. So now, in a bizarre move apparently triggered by election year political pressures, CORE Act backers have all but abandoned the legislative process and are lobbying President Biden to do their jobs for them by imposing the bill’s key provisions through executive action. Not only does this sudden course change raise questions about the skills (or lack thereof) of the people we send to Congress. It also encourages Biden to do things though executive action that he may lack the power and constitutional prerogatives to do, undermining the system of checks and balances these lawmakers are sworn to uphold.

End run

A letter sent to Biden last week from U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, and Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, asks the president to invoke the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate some 400,000 acres, including Camp Hale, as the “Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument.” The authors also urge Biden to unilaterally ban new oil and gas leasing, as well as mining, on 200,000 acres on the Thompson Divide. They also request “wilderness designation, mineral withdrawal and special management areas on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests.”

Drilling bans? Are those pushing these proposals aware that the country has been facing gas price shock and an energy crisis? A mining ban? Experts predict that a mining boom will be required to supply the materials needed to launch the “new energy economy” progressives keep touting.

And from where does Biden get these God-like powers? The pushers of this plan, though they swore an oath to defend the Constitution, can’t be bothered quibbling over such trifles. They just want to get their way before an anticipated power shift in Washington makes passing the CORE Act even more challenging. Because they’re too impatient, ineffectual or inept to do the job legislatively, they want Biden to do their jobs for them, even if it means end-running the legislative bodies they were elected to.

Whether the bill’s key provisions have merit is open to honest debate — I think they’re flawed, for reasons I’ll explain. But our representatives to Congress clearly are poorly suited for the job, and guilty of abdicating their responsibility as legislators, if they throw up their hands in failure when facing adversity and encourage end-runs around the process.

Democrats talk a good game about the need to practice and protect “democracy.” But they turn oddly dictatorial when democracy doesn’t work for them — in this case urging the president to use (and arguably misuse) his executive power to end-run the legislative branch.

Biden, like Bennet, is desperate for ways to pad his resume. It won’t be surprising if he leaps at the chance to bolster Bennet’s reelection bid and win more accolades from the green lobby, despite the legal blowback such actions might bring.

Creating new national monuments on a whim has become the lazy president’s way to pander to special interests and create an instant “legacy” with a mere swipe of a pen. Progressives aren’t nagged by the constitutional questions raised thereby. They’ve been on a century-long mission to toss the faded old parchment into the dustbin. But such questions can’t be ignored by those in Colorado who still take founding precepts seriously — and expect our Congress people to do so as well.

The trouble with CORE

What’s not to like about the CORE Act itself? Plenty. It’s a poorly justified and poorly timed case of overkill — a “solution” in search of a problem. There’s no threat to Camp Hale that justifies national monument status. The Act unwisely restricts access to public lands that are desperately in need of better management, which will require more access, not less. And it locks away natural resources that America desperately needs.

Is Colorado in dire need of more “wilderness” areas? Let me answer that this way. Colorado currently has more than 3.7 million acres set aside as congressionally designated wilderness, in 44 separate parcels. Another 54 parcels, totaling 458,000 acres, are managed as “wilderness study areas,” meaning they’re treated as “wilderness” despite no formal designation by Congress. Colorado also has 4.2 million acres of designated “roadless areas,” which also could be counted as de facto wilderness since roadlessness is one of the defining characteristics of wilderness. The “roadless” push was a dishonest way to create wilderness without using the word, which might have alerted Congress that its prerogatives were being ignored and subverted through executive action.

Let’s zoom out a bit to put the question in a broader context. More than 36 percent of Colorado’s total land mass — more than 24 million acres — is already managed (and presumably protected) as federal land. We rank ninth among states in terms of how much acreage is under federal control. Colorado has 13 national parks, six national monuments, 13 national forests, two national recreation areas, two national historic sites, four national historic trails and three national conservation areas. All that’s missing is a partridge in a federal pear tree.

Never enough

Progressive never-enoughers always want more, of course. But when is enough enough? What’s reasonable? What’s manageable for federal agencies that often can’t handle even the most basic missions and tasks? Does adding even more acreage, units and complexity to our crazy-quilt federal domain help or hinder our ability to responsibly manage these spaces?

The entire American West would be a national park if rabid preservationists had their way. Our “lands of many uses” would become lands of very few uses. “Multiple-use management” would become a thing of the past. Many of the working landscapes that sustain a diverse and vibrant Western economy would be off-limits to miners, ranchers, loggers, drillers, etc.

Creating new wilderness areas and national monuments is irrational and self-defeating when we’re facing a wildfire threat and forest health crisis of biblical proportions. Therefore, the timing of these proposals couldn’t be worse. New roadless zones and access restrictions will only make it harder to confront the crisis, putting more land, properties and lives needlessly at risk.

Wilderness areas are kept as hands-off as possible. Conditions are primitive. There’s an absence of roads. Motorized and mechanized uses are strictly limited or prohibited. The tendency, historically, has been to let wildfires that originate on wilderness burn themselves out, in a bid to mimic natural cycles as closely as possible. But that creates a major problem given the tinderbox conditions found on most federal forests. Fires that start in wilderness have a nasty habit of burning beyond those artificial boundaries, often after gaining a good head of steam. The same applies to beetle blight and disease outbreaks. What happens in wilderness doesn’t stay in wilderness, unlike Las Vegas.

CORE Act backers insist that all these potential problems have been anticipated and resolved, thanks to a rigorous stakeholder process. They say that the new and expanded wilderness areas won’t be subject to the restrictions that normally apply. Existing roads and access ways will be maintained. Coloradans currently grazing on impacted areas won’t be tossed off their allotments. For every objection or worry they have a soothing answer.

To which I say, “best laid plans of mice and men.”

Bad faith

Savvy Westerners have been burned too many times to take such promises at face value. They understand that assurances offered at the outset rarely hold up over time. That’s not just because policies can change dramatically from administration to administration; it’s because public lands policy today isn’t made by the policy makers. Lawsuits and judicial rulings (often from activist judges) primarily shape and steer the process, not legislative or executive action. Policies can turn on a dime as the result of one well-aimed lawsuit heard by one green-leaning judge.

Sens. Bennet and Hickenlooper can tell you that their new wilderness areas won’t hamper wildfire fighting or forest restoration. They’ll say grazing rights will be protected. But all that can change with one lawsuit, congressional intent be damned. CORE Act designations strengthen the hands of organized extremists who game the legal system to veto policies they dislike, and to exert their will over how these lands will be managed. That’s the reality and wild card CORE Act backers don’t talk about.

It’s old fashioned, I suppose, to point out that the ends don’t justify these means. But there are also practical reasons to refrain from these desperate and dubious measures. If CORE Act provisions aren’t controversial with Coloradans now, they certainly will be if they’re imposed by executive edict for obviously partisan reasons. Legal challenges from injured or angry stakeholders will tie up these matters for years, leaving these “protections” languishing in purgatory. And what good would that do Colorado? The sense of urgency is manufactured; there’s no pressing need for these changes. Better to do nothing than the wrong thing.

Corner-cutting has a nasty habit of coming back to haunt you. Democracy can be slow, messy, frustrating and sometimes even fruitless. You don’t always get exactly what you want out of it, and sometimes you come up empty. My recommendation to Hickenlooper and Bennet is that they keep slogging forward and redouble their efforts to win the bill bipartisan support. Removing the poison provisions aimed at mining and drilling might help. Coloradans didn’t make them legislators so they could cut corners, play cagey games, or surrender their power and prerogatives to the president. Doing this the right way offers the best assurance that these lawmakers, in their haste to get something dramatic done before the midterms, don’t create more problems than they cure.