BLM oil and gas leases threaten critical Colorado wildlife corridors, lawsuit says

Two environmental groups sued the Trump administration Tuesday, alleging the Bureau of Land Management violated federal law when it leased more than 134,000 acres of public lands in Colorado for oil and gas drilling earlier this year.

In their lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado, Wilderness Workshop and The Wilderness Society say the BLM’s June 2026 lease sale would “allow the development of oil and gas wells in habitat critical to some of the United States’ largest, and last remaining, migrations of pronghorn antelope, mule deer and elk.”

The agency’s failure to withhold sensitive wildlife areas from development violates its own rules and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the lawsuit argues. Plaintiffs want the court to vacate the lease sales and a Trump administration memorandum the agency has used to ramp up oil and gas leasing in Colorado and other western states.

“Our public lands are not commodities for the oil and gas industry,” Adina Nadler, associate attorney with The Wilderness Society, said in a press release. “They are spectacular landscapes that give us the freedom to explore and enjoy the outdoors, while providing essential habitat for wildlife. The administration has flagrantly cast aside these values to appease the oil and gas industry, and we will not stand for it.”

A BLM spokesperson said the agency “does not comment on pending or current litigation.” The agency previously described the June lease sale as consistent with the Trump administration’s goal to “meet the energy needs of U.S. citizens and solidify the nation as a global energy leader long into the future.”

The sale was the largest the BLM has held in Colorado in 15 years, with a total of 170 parcels spanning nearly 156,000 acres of land put up for auction — more than the available acreage in the previous six lease sales combined, according to the group Taxpayers for Common Sense. A majority of the 134,000 acres sold were located in northwestern Colorado, and a “large majority” of the parcels lie in areas designated as big game habit and migration corridors.

Another 29 parcels totaling 14,095 acres of Colorado public lands are up for auction by the BLM later this week, including a parcel near the Aurora Reservoir in Arapahoe County.

Under existing BLM rules and federal law, the wilderness advocates allege, the agency should have applied “preference criteria” to the parcels leased in June and withheld sensitive areas from the auction. Despite protests from conservation groups at the time, the agency said a 2025 Trump administration memo on lease sale procedures overrides those criteria.

“Although BLM’s own analysis showed numerous conflicts with crucial big game habitats and migration corridors and with the preservation of pristine wilderness-quality lands,” the lawsuit says, “BLM’s June 2026 lease sales offered hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands for lease without withholding any parcels based on the preference criteria, in violation of BLM’s own regulation and FLPMA.”

“The lands leased by BLM in Northwest Colorado are public lands that I have enjoyed and hunted on for years,” said Luke Schafer, Wilderness Workshop member and lifelong sportsman. “It is disheartening that productive public lands that are enjoyed by so many — lands that are critical to sustaining wildlife populations — could soon be carved up by well pads, pipelines, and access roads.”