Colorado’s western frontier is the latest ground zero in the nation’s unending standoff over public lands. And as is often the case, a bid to “protect” the lands in contention could do more harm than good. The Gazette reported this week that a group with the backing of the national environmental movement is pushing for nearly 400,000 acres of public land spanning Mesa and Montrose counties to be Colorado’s next national monument.
Many of the people who live in the region, and who try to make a living there, are pushing back. The proposed Dolores Canyons National Monument would mean new restrictions on the land’s use, particularly on mining. The remote area lies in Colorado’s uranium belt.
With uranium imports from Russia banned by the Biden administration — and our country, meanwhile, moving from fossil fuels — critics of a national monument designation believe once-booming uranium mining in the proposed national monument is poised to take off again. The uranium is needed to serve national defense as well as to fuel a predicted resurgence of nuclear power as the U.S.
economy adopts renewable energy sources. Vanadium, another mineral mined in the area, also serves strategic U.S.
interests for its use in hardening steel. Mining, of course, serves the local economy, as well. It creates relatively high-paying jobs in a sparsely populated part of Colorado where good jobs are hard to come by.
A national monument could stymie all that. “The national monument desi.