A proposed new round of oil and gas leasing on the Roan Plateau is renewing debate over energy development, wildlife habitat, and public lands. Conservation groups are urging federal officials to protect one of the Western Slope's most ecologically significant landscapes.
by Elizabeth Stewart-Severy, Aspen Journalism
Colorado’s Roan Plateau, a favorite backcountry zone for hunters, anglers and hikers because of its high-quality wildlife habitat, is once being proposed for oil and gas development. The Bureau of Land Management, in accordance with direction from the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to hold lease sales in Colorado every quarter, has listed four leases on top of the plateau in its proposed December sale, with two additional leases nearby.
The wildlands of the Roan Plateau and animals that rely on them draw hikers, hunters and anglers to the area. The potential for oil and natural gas below the surface draws attention from industry, too, and sets the stage for a confrontation over how to fulfill the multiple-use mandate that governs federal lands.
Hunters, anglers and conservationists are also raising the alarm that implementation of federal law and proposed changes to BLM rules are stripping the public of its voice in public lands management.
The BLM has identified 114 parcels across Colorado available for oil and gas leasing in its December sale. Four of those parcels, totaling 4,645 acres, are on top of the Roan Plateau near Rifle, on the site of two undeveloped leases that were not canceled as part of a 2014 settlement between leaseholders and 10 conservation, trade and wildlife organizations.
In that settlement, the BLM canceled 17 of 19 leases that had been issued in 2008 on top of the Roan Plateau and refunded leaseholders; the agency updated its resource management plan, which guides land use, and closed about 34,000 acres, roughly 54 square miles, to future leasing.
But two leases, whose holders did not agree to cancellation as part of the settlement, remained open for future development, although the leaseholders were meant to contribute to a conservation fund that would be used for restoration and conservation efforts. Although the fund was established, no money was invested. The leases changed hands and were eventually relinquished, but their existence during the land-use planning process meant that that area remained available for future development, and conservation groups have foreseen this moment.
“We had unleased, unprotected land on top of the plateau, and that was very concerning to us,” said Juli Slivka, senior director of policy and programs at Carbondale-based nonprofit Wilderness Workshop, which was one of 10 plaintiffs in the lawsuit that lead to the 2014 settlement. “We immediately began urging BLM Colorado to close that area to new leasing.”
Slivka and other conservationists have argued that the BLM could have removed the potential for new leases because Colorado Parks and Wildlife has found that the area is home to high-priority habitat for a range of species, including an endemic species of Colorado cutthroat trout, elk, deer and greater sage grouse.
Brittany Parker grew up in Rifle, hiking and camping on the plateau. As an adult, she hunts there nearly every year, she said. Parker works for the trade group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers — which advocates for protections for the Roan — as the field operations coordinator for seven states, including Colorado. She said she’s passionate about protecting the Roan Plateau after watching it “change drastically” under development pressures in her lifetime.
The area has seen significant oil and gas development on private lands atop the plateau.
“It’s already pretty developed with oil and gas, so to imagine even more up in that region, it just seems like there would be nothing left,” Parker said. “It would so significantly fragment the habitat that the sense of refuge would be seriously diminished for our wildlife.”
A recent flight over the Roan Plateau by Aspen-based conservation organization EcoFlight showed the extent of the development from above; there’s a sharp contrast between the development below the top of the plateau and on private lands compared with the untouched public lands. The flight path followed Parachute Creek, to the west of which is highly developed private land.
“You forget how heavily drilled it is up there. It’s just nonstop, roads and wellpads” on the private lands, said Jane Pargiter, executive director of EcoFlight, who has been working to protect the Roan since 2008. (Pargiter is an Aspen Journalism board member.)
The view changes quickly to the east side of the creek.
“It instantly transitions into this pristine landscape, which is where they have proposed these lease parcels for the December lease sale,” Pargiter said. “It’s just beautiful, pristine, and it’s green still.”
Parker and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers are quick to point out that they are not against energy development on public lands but are, rather, focused on ensuring that leasing happens in appropriate places.
“We’re advocating for protections on specific landscapes that have exceptional habitat and watershed values that are worth protecting,” Parker said.
The state wildlife agency, conservation groups and recreationalists have argued for nearly two decades that the Roan Plateau is not the right place for oil and gas development, which has been shown to lead to declines in wildlife populations. The Roan has prime habitat for elk calving, which is a particularly sensitive time, and is a migration corridor for elk and mule deer. It also provides habitat and breeding grounds, known as lek sites, for the greater sage grouse, which are particularly sensitive to industrial disturbance.
Dean Riggs retired in 2020 as the deputy regional manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and spent years working with the BLM and leaseholders to avoid, minimize and mitigate impacts to wildlife when there is industrial development, including on the Roan Plateau. He says he has hunted, including elk and grouse on the Roan Plateau, since he was big enough to pick up a rifle.
In his time at CPW, Riggs advocated for science-based, species-specific protections, which in some cases means avoiding development in certain areas altogether, such as breeding sites for grouse.
“If a company wants to pluck a five-acre site right down on top of a lek, you’re going to lose the lek,” Riggs said. “With that being a really sensitive species, every lek counts. Every lek keeps us from the endangered species list.”
Elk and deer are far from the endangered species list, but recent work by CPW points to early signs of population decline. CPW’s most recent herd management plan for the Yellow Creek elk herd, which encompasses an area in northwest Colorado north of Interstate 70 from Glenwood Springs to the Utah border, says that “distributional changes, decreasing calf-cow ratios, and the degraded habitat in [the northwest region] are likely associated with the development of energy extraction infrastructure.”
But amid the development on private lands, the top of the Roan Plateau that consists of public lands has remained mostly wild.
“The Roan has always been a bit of a refugia or an incredible, intact landscape in the sea of development, and we know migrating animals are incredibly sensitive to development pressures,” said Brien Webster, senior public lands campaign manager at Conservation Colorado.
“There’s some really really cool and diverse country up there that provides all sorts of different, unique habitat types, and then you have the cutthroat trout that you can only catch there, anywhere in the world,” Webster said. “I mean it’s pretty cool, and it is deserving of protection. It is one of those places on our public lands where it really makes sense for us to put that place aside.”
The BLM, too, noted the outstanding habitat values in an environmental review for the Roan Plateau resource management plan that followed the 2014 settlement. “The Roan Plateau is considered one of Colorado’s most ecologically diverse landscapes,” the BLM wrote. “The area is a popular destination for hunting, fishing, and backcountry recreation. The dramatic topography of the plateau hosts an array of game and sensitive species. The landscape is known for its spectacular cliffs, waterfalls, and box canyons.”
The Trump administration’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act is driving renewed activity in offering oil and gas leases on federal lands after a lull of several years. The act requires that Colorado and eight other Western states each offer lease sales four times a year.
“It means our people are incredibly busy because there’s a ton of work that goes into ensuring that all of these parcels clear these thresholds and these hurdles to ensure that they are appropriate for leasing,” said BLM spokesperson Levi Spellman.
Webster noted that more parcels, totaling more acres, on federal lands have been nominated for leasing in Colorado in 2026 alone than in the seven previous years combined. At the same time, the number of federal land managers has declined precipitously. An analysis of federal job losses in 2025 showed that Colorado’s BLM office lost 36% of its staff last year.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also expedites the leasing process; there is now a requirement that parcels that have been nominated be made available for a lease sale within 18 months.
“When you are forced to work at a furious pace and without adequate capacity, you make mistakes,” Webster wrote in an email to Aspen Journalism.
Webster suggested that the offering of oil and gas leases in places such as the Roan Plateau creates divisions and conflict, even when local communities mostly agree on how to best manage public lands.
Nonetheless, the BLM maintains that if land open for leasing based on the resource management plan is nominated for oil and gas leasing, it must be considered.
“Even if the BLM felt it was an inappropriate use, it wouldn’t have a choice because it’s legally open for leasing,” Spellman said. “The only thing we can do is follow procedure.”
Mike Freeman, who represented the plaintiffs in the Roan lawsuit for nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice, said that’s an extreme interpretation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“We think that’s wrong as a position of law and that BLM does still have discretion to lease it,” Freeman said.
Amid the compressed timeline, the dramatic increase in the number of lease sales and the diminished workforce, Webster said it’s critical to participate in the public process.
“We still have to comment. We still have to put out the best available information, share the best available research, get the best possible data compiled and sent to the BLM so that we can show that these are valid concerns,” Webster said.
As the federal administration increases pressure on Colorado and other states to develop more energy, Webster and others see an erosion of public input in decision-making around federal public lands.
“They’re proposing to even further cut the public out of this process,” he said.
The BLM is also considering adopting a new rule that would cut the 90-day public process down to 10 days, make it cheaper to lease federal land for energy development, include a per-page fee for protests that exceed 50 pages, and reintroduce noncompetitive leasing.
The net effect, Webster said, “really is almost taking and turning our public lands into corporate lands.”
Conservation Colorado hopes to see bipartisan efforts from Colorado’s delegations to push back on the proposed rule, which is open for public comment through Aug. 24.
“There’s a need for our decision-makers in Colorado that represent us in D.C. to find a common-sense solution to rectify this to ensure that the local input and interest and concerns of their constituents are being considered by the federal government in these decision-making processes,” Webster said.
In terms of the next step for the Roan, Freeman said Earthjustice is still engaged with many of the original plaintiffs and concerned citizens from the original lawsuit, which was filed in 2008.
The scoping period for the December lease sale ended July 9, beginning a 30-day window for the BLM to review input. A 30-day public-comment period begins Aug. 12.
“Because the Roan is such an important place, threatening it with oil and gas development again is going to trigger a lot of resistance from Colorado communities and Colorado residents who value the Roan,” he said. “I think what they’re hoping to do is persuade BLM that they really shouldn’t backslide on what was really a historic success story.”
