On Wednesday, May 28, Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper stood alongside state congressman John Neguse near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. The two lawmakers spoke about the ongoing fight to protect public lands and the federal agencies that oversee them.
Neguse, 41, recently introduced two bills—called Protect Our Parks and Save Our Forests respectively—that would reinstate the thousands of employees of the National Forest Service and National Park Service who were fired by the Trump Administration earlier this year. Hickenlooper, 73, also introduced legislation this spring that would block the White House from selling public lands to decrease the national deficit.
Hickenlooper plans to speak at the in Denver, Colorado later on May 30. We recently caught up with him to discuss the current fight to protect public lands.
OUTSIDE: The American public has been told that protecting federal lands is preventing our country from achieving energy independence, blocking lucrative extraction industries, and preventing the creation of high-paying jobs for Americans.
Hickenlooper: There’s this notion that we need more real estate to drill on, and that our extraction industries are landlocked. They say there is an energy emergency. But if you look over the past six years—and if you remove coal energy—we’ve produced more energy than any other country on the planet, and I’m not talking about per-capita, I’m talking total. We’re certainly not in an energy emergency. I have a fierce sense of urgency around climate change, but I also know that in some areas we do need more mines. I believe in protecting the public’s right to see what, exactly, is going to happen to a piece of land that’s going to be mined. Is there a mineral there that is going to help us create electric vehicles or build the electrical grid in a way that is going to address climate change? Well, maybe we do have to find a way to mine on that land? But with all that said, there are many lands—and I include our National Parks here—that, no matter how valuable that real estate could be for a mine, the scenic beauty and historic value to the American people is just too great for it to be dug up. I have a hard time seeing any place where public land should be treated as an asset to be bought and sold at the whims of the White House. It just doesn’t make sense.
Americans have been told that public land agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Forest Service are overstaffed, bloated, and inefficient.
I really do believe that there are places in the federal government that are fat and inefficient, and when I ran for the mayor of Denver, that was my campaign message. I thought that nobody ever took the time to make a city function as efficiently as a small business. I wanted Denver to use less water, share our water rights and tax base with the suburban communities, and people said I’d never get elected by sharing the wealth of the voters in Denver. That was my whole pitch, and I won, I got two-thirds of the vote. We didn’t lay anybody off, though we did have a hiring freeze for a few years. But we used technology to compensate for fewer people, and I think you can argue that we provided more services for our citizens. That’s what DOGE should have done. But the notion that you’re going to cut 3,000 people from the Forest Service and thousands more from the Park Service and BLM, and somehow the country is going to be better off is just lunacy. The argument that you’ll lay everybody off at first and then look for what is broken and try to fix that is not the way government should work. For so many people who work for these agencies, this is ruining their lives. I’ve talked to government employees who were laid off, some have been rehired, they have little kids and had just moved to Colorado to work in the Forest Service. They’re asking me, “What are we going to do?” Why put people through that?
Recently, the bipartisan Public Lands Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives succeeded in removing a plan to sell 500,000 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah from the 2025 Reconciliation spending bill. What can those who believe in protecting public lands learn from this?
Public feedback matters, and in this case it led to a widespread adoption of action. People who care about public lands used social media in a way they hadn’t done before. It wasn’t just the nonprofits and advocacy groups, it was grassroots dialogue that generated new points of view and new points of contention on the plan to sell off land. I read one online post that, and I’m paraphrasing, said “Where do we draw the line? If we start selling public lands and allow that constitutional violation to occur, then what’s next?” I’ve now heard Republicans and Democrats talking about that point. We need to count on the grassroots commentary to generate those points and that language that people are going to repeat.
What political strategies will work in the fight to preserve public lands?
This is an all out war. I’m not someone who sits back and says, “Well, let’s see what they do next.” They’re doing it. It’s happening. So the most important thing we can do is let people know what is happening to public lands. Americans by and large support public lands. said that 75 percent of all Americans in the Mountain West region think that the government should not sell public lands to pay down the deficit. Yes, there are some places in mountain towns where small amounts of BLM land exist, and it could allow towns to build affordable housing for Park Service employees or firefighters or municipal employees. Those exceptions can go through the correct process. But the notion that we’re going to sell 500,000 acres of public land should make every person who loves public lands shudder. People who feel that way should get out there and show up at every town hall meeting, every public roundtable, and make yourself heard. We’re going to fight, we may be beaten, but we will rise and fight again. We’re going to lose a bunch of battles on this thing, but I think that if we rise and fight again, we are going to win.
This interview was edited for space and clarity.