The federal government is poised to hand over tens of thousands of acres of Colorado wilderness to oil and gas companies in what conservationists and data indicate is the largest public land lease sale the state has ever seen.
On 16 June 2026, theBureau of Land Management (BLM)will auction 170 parcels covering 155,816 acres across eight Colorado counties, land that serves as critical migration corridor, winter habitat and foraging ground for the nation's largest elk herd. The sale is the direct result oflegislation signed by President Donald Trump in 2025, and it marks a significant reversal of years of habitat protection policy.
The June sale dwarfs anything Colorado has seen in recent decades. Rocky Mountain Wild, a Denver-based conservation organisation, describes it as the largest oil and gas lease sale ever proposed in Colorado. More than 100 parcels sit in Moffat County, which bills itself as the 'Elk Hunting Capital of the World' and relies on hunting tourism in part for its economic stability.
About two-thirds of the acreage lies just south of Dinosaur National Monument, a remote park that is among more than 40 certified International Dark Sky Places in the United States, areas with exceptionally dark night skies. Tom Kleinschnitz, Moffat County's director of tourism, warned that the industrial activity accompanying oil extraction could jeopardise that designation. 'Things like that could put that status in jeopardy,' he said. 'In the long run, I think it's important to keep these areas as pristine as possible.'
A 2,360-line spreadsheet compiled by Rocky Mountain Wild enumerates 17 rare plants andendangered specieswhose habitat could be imperilled by fossil fuel exploration and extraction. These include the black-footed ferret, wolverine, boreal toad and Colorado pikeminnow, as well as threatened plants such as the Colorado hookless cactus and Parachute penstemon.
The Trump administration is offering tens of thousands of acres of Colorado elk habitat to oil and gas companies.The lease sale could impact America's elk, pronghorn, and mule deer populations.pic.twitter.com/FsZ9EjgrvT
The June sale does not exist in isolation. It is one of four large lease sales in Colorado since Congress passed and President Trump signed H.R. 1 in 2025, legislation that included provisions to encourage drilling on the nation's public lands.
H.R. 1 prioritised fossil fuel extraction over uses such as recreation and conservation, mandated that federal officials hold a minimum of four lease sales each fiscal year across nine western states including Colorado, shortened public comment periods and reduced the discretion land managers hold over whether to offer acreage for lease. This stands in contrast to the preceding administration's record: just six sales were held in Colorado across President Joe Biden's entire four-year term, covering only several hundred acres.
The law also cut the royalty rate that energy companies pay to extract publicly owned resources. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduced the federal onshore royalty rate from 16.67% to 12.5%, reverting to a rate that had been unchanged since the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, before Congress raised it in 2022. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog organisation, calculates that applying the higher rate over the last decade would have generated an additional $1.5 billion per year for the public. For Colorado specifically, the state could lose approximately £115 million ($148 million) in revenue from future production on roughly 81,000 acres sold in 2026 alone, according to that same analysis.
The environmental stakes extend beyond wildlife. Several parcels listed in Weld County, home to the state's largest and most productive oil field, could result in up to 150 new wells, and emissions from those wells would worsen smog in a region that already fails to meet national air quality standards, according to conservation groups.
Source: International Business Times UK
