Who’s defending Uncompahgre Plateau?

The Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests have finished an environmental assessment for a 20-year vegetation program covering 267,300 acres of the Uncompahgre Plateau. Some of it is the fuels work communities on the Western Slope genuinely want, 71,100 acres of treatment near homes. The rest is the part worth reading closely. The framework would authorize up to 50,000 acres of commercial and non-commercial timber harvest and treatments reaching into pinyon-juniper and sagebrush that is designated critical habitat for the Gunnison sage-grouse, and it does it through one programmatic decision that pushes site-specific choices into an internal checklist with no further public review. Twenty years of cutting approved once, on a plateau where the birds have nowhere else to go.

1. 2026Final environmental assessment released, objection period opensUSDA Forest Service · August 7, 2026
2. 2026Objection period closes

No public comment window is open on Uncompahgre Plateau right now. A call script is ready on the Public Lands Action Network, and the groups above are how the fight gets funded and argued in the meantime.

Build my lineup around Uncompahgre Plateau: the leading group here opens it, and the other seats fill from this record.