Bennet, Hickenlooper push US Senate to move on CORE Act

News News | Jun 19, 2023

Robert Tann

Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper speaks at the signing of the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument at Camp Hale in October. Hickenlooper is flanked by Sen. Michael Bennet, left, and President Joe Biden.
*Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily*

In a letter to the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Sen. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper called on their fellow lawmakers to advance a bill that would protect hundreds of thousands of acres of public Colorado land.

The Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act would safeguard 420,000 acres of public land in Colorado, 71,000 of which would be new wilderness and nearly 80,000 of which would be new recreation and conservation management areas.

The legislation was reintroduced earlier this month after first being proposed in 2019. Previous iterations have passed the U.S. House of Representatives five times but have failed to pass in the Senate.

Initial pieces of the legislation did pass in some form after President Joe Biden designated the Camp Hale National Historic Landscape and the Tenmile Recreation Management Area a national monument in October. Early versions of the CORE Act sought to create protections for those areas.

The current legislation has received support from a slew of local and statewide lawmakers, including Gov. Jared Polis and municipal officials from Breckenridge, Frisco, Dillon, Vail, Crested Butte, Glenwood Springs, Ouray and more.