GORP Act Introduced into Congress by Sen. Michael Bennet
The Gunnison Outdoor Recreation Protection (GORP) Act is the largest public lands bill since the early 1900s, and when enacted will protect over 730,000 acres of public lands in Western Colorado.
The GORP Act is the protection this community desires for our adjacent public lands in Gunnison County. In the process of drafting this legislation, two million acres of public lands have been analyzed and dissected for over a decade for factors like wildlife habitat, recreation, roads, trails, and grazing to create management areas and a map that everyone — from ranchers to snowmobilers to mountain bikers to conservationists — has agreed to. The GORP Act is how public lands protections should be created – the details were hashed out by local public lands users and passed up to Senator Bennet to draft into Federal legislation for the Federal public lands adjacent to our community.
The GORP Act looks at the big picture to address critical wildlife areas that don’t currently have long-term protections in place; the Act designates Recreation Management Areas where large amounts of public use take place; the Act creates boundaries that allow land managers to do fuel mitigation work while protecting some of our best stands of forest; and the Act will cover the nooks and crannies of our public lands that might not have been considered in the past, yet are still in pristine condition and worthy of protection. The GORP Act does all this without changing what we are currently allowed to do on our adjacent public lands. The GORP Act will be the protections this community needs moving forward to safeguard our public lands from threats now and into the future.
- Jon Hare, HCCA Advocacy Director
For more information contact Jon Hare, HCCA Advocacy Director: jon@hccacb.org, 970.349.7104 x1
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