The Colorado State Land Board voiced serious concerns about the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting public lands Thursday while hesitantly approving a $50 million sale of the La Jara Basin to the federal government.
An army of heavyweights descended on the board’s five commissioners in recent days, leaning on them to follow through with a plan in the works for nine years to sell the La Jara Basin to the federal government. The pressure followed recent revelations that the board was considering canceling the deal and walking away from more than $43.5 million in federal conservation funding allocated over the last three years.
“This project is essential to the San Luis Valley, to Colorado and to the nation,” Ken Salazar, the former secretary of the Interior Department, U.S. senator and Colorado attorney general to Colorado, said in an interview with The Colorado Sun.
A month ago, the commissioners pondered a first-ever proposal to abandon the long-planned sale of the 45,952-acre La Jara Basin to the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Colorado Parks and Wildlife for $49.6 million, citing in part a growing uncertainty that the Trump administration would protect and conserve the land.
On Thursday, the board — with two new commissioners and a new director appointed in June by Gov. Jared Polis — voted 4-1 to move forward with the plan first proposed in 2017 when the Land Board determined the sprawling La Jara Basin parcel on the western edge of the San Luis Valley south of Del Norte was delivering barely half a percent of its market value for Colorado schools compared to its market value. The $50 million sale could generate nearly $5 million a year for public schools.
The parcel was part of the original 1876 land grant from the federal government when Colorado became a state. The land board owns 2.8 million acres with a mission to generate revenue from that land to support Colorado schools.
The La Jara Basin plan — funded with more than $43.5 million from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund over the last three years, including $5.52 million for the Forest Service and $9 million for the BLM in 2025 — transfers 21,800 acres to the Rio Grande National Forest, 21,700 acres to the BLM and 2,224 acres around La Jara Reservoir to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
The deal is the largest Colorado project supported by the Land and Water Conservation Fund and was orchestrated by the nonprofit conservation group Western Rivers Conservancy. The state Land Board in 2024 allocated $3.5 million to the conservancy to negotiate the complex disposal of the La Jara parcel. The allocation was the largest distribution from the Land Board’s investment and development fund for the fiscal year.
The Thursday vote followed nearly three hours of impassioned – and unanimous – testimony from local, regional and federal officials and residents supporting the plan, including from Salazar.
La Jara Basin “just as important” as the Great Sand Dunes
Salazar in 1999 was Colorado’s attorney general when he helped expand Great Sand Dunes National Monument into a national park. A year earlier he had campaigned against two ballot measures that would have amended the state constitution to allow Front Range water interests to tap state trust lands in the San Luis Valley for sale to Front Range cities. Voters rejected Amendment 15 and Amendment 16 in November 1998.
The Sand Dunes were getting about 150,000 visits a year in the late 1990s, Salazar said. Last year, the park drew more than 430,000 visitors to the San Luis Valley who stirred an estimated $31 million in local economic activity.
“The La Jara project is just as important to the valley as the Great Sand Dunes,” Salazar said. “It’s a win-win that protects water in the valley and is supported by everyone. It would be a great mistake to turn the clock back on this project.”
The board was scheduled to vote on the La Jara Basin sale at its Oct. 15 meeting. The board voted 3-1 to continue with the plan in June. The 489-page board packet for the October meeting suggested the Land Board could “hold and improve” the La Jara Basin parcel. The board’s October staff report — and the Nov. 13 meeting packet — highlighted “federal stewardship uncertainty,” pointing to the Trump administration’s recent slashing of federal land management agency staff and budgets. Land Board staff also noted that the failed attempt by lawmakers to dispose of federal lands earlier this year created “increased uncertainty as to whether federal ownership will, in the future, continue to be the de facto conservation that it has historically proven.”
Deb Froeb, chairperson of the Land Board commission, kicked off Thursday’s meeting with some context around how the cancellation option emerged. She said Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s proposal earlier this year to sell as much as 3 million acres of federal land was an “existential threat” that “caused us significant concern.”
“That was the catalyst to say ‘Whoa, let’s take a minute,’” Froeb said, dismissing widespread speculation that the board’s sudden consideration of canceling the deal involved a new offer from a private buyer. (The La Jara Basin is close to San Luis Valley ranches spanning several hundred thousand acres owned by two billionaires.)
Salazar said “no one ought to have any fear whatsoever” that the Trump administration might not honor the Land and Water Conservation Fund plan to protect the La Jara Basin.
“Nobody is going to come in and take this away from the people of Colorado and the people of the San Luis Valley,” said Salazar who, when he was executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, authored the 1992 amendment that voters approved to create Great Outdoors Colorado. “Look at the history of conservation in this country … and all frameworks we have put in place over the last 100 years remain in place. No one is going to mess around with this project.”
Local BLM, USFS land managers say there is no risk of the property being sold
On Thursday the board learned that a nearly $50 million sale, if deposited into the board’s $1.6 billion Permanent Fund, would deliver $4.2 million a year in interest. If the board chose to hold the property, investment could yield annual revenue around $2.5 million from outfitting permits and improved recreational access. A third option weighed by the board would have canceled the sale of 43,525 acres to the federal government, but moved forward with the sale of the La Jara Reservoir property to CPW, which manages property around the reservoir as a state wildlife area.
Colorado BLM director Doug Vilsack, who oversees 8.3 million acres in the state, said Thursday that his team was excited to acquire property in the La Jara Basin. He told the board the BLM has strict rules that prevent the agency from selling land acquired with Land and Water Conservation Fund money. He called the La Jara Basin sale a “win-win-win-win” for Colorado schools, agriculture, conservation and public access.
Troy Heithecker, the regional forester in charge of the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Region spanning more than 40 million acres of public land in five Western states, said the Forest Service was authorized by Congress and any change in ownership by the federal government would require Congressional approval.
“I do not have any concerns about this property ever being sold once it’s in federal ownership,” Vilsack said, while acknowledging — on the day he returned to work after the longest-ever federal government shutdown — that it was an odd moment for federal land managers.
Land Board Commissioner Christine Scanlan, who heads the Keystone Policy Center in Summit County, seemed skeptical of the promises of protection from the federal land managers.
“You all are talking about the federal government about the way it used to exist,” Scanlan said. “All rules are out the door. It’s one thing to say this is congressionally approved and Congress won’t roll this back. But we have an administration that does not much care about what Congress thinks.”
Scanlan said the board was “all in (on the La Jara sale) before the world went nuts.” She said the blue-state status of Colorado “puts a target on us” in a “highly partisan time.”
Land Board commissioner Josie Heath, explaining her vote against the land sale, expressed concern of the “hollowing out” of the Forest Service and BLM.
“The kind of support you see is not going to be there,” she said. “We all want to take good care of this baby but I don’t want to put it on the porch of someone who doesn’t have anyone left at home to take care of the baby.”
Commissioner Froeb, in her comments explaining support for the land sale, said “landscape-scale conservation is where you really can deliver outcomes.”
“I’m concerned about rejecting these funds and … this opportunity to be a model,” she said, noting that a large deposit into the board’s Permanent Fund would deliver returns for future generations.
Scanlan said she had been “persuaded by the community.”
“I don’t vote against a community,” she said, pleading for a community rally and support “should this thing go south. We are taking a risk by selling it to the federal government in the sense that these threats to public lands are real, they are out there and they are not going to go away.”
Heath wondered if the board did contract to sell the La Jara Basin to the government, would the Trump administration follow through with the money?
Colorado’s U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper on Wednesday wrote the Land Board a letter, urging the commissioners to approve the sale. Like Salazar, the senators worked to assuage any concerns that the federal government would not be the best steward for the basin.
“The federal government has prioritized this acquisition across three consecutive fiscal years, delaying other LWCF investments to make it possible. Walking away now would forfeit that investment and set back years of good-faith collaboration,” the senators, both Democrats, wrote. “Even though we vehemently disagree with many of the federal lands management decisions of the current administration, many of the foundational protections for public lands remain intact.”
The two senators pointed to a trio of federal laws — the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the federal Administrative Procedures Act — as well as established management plans by the Rio Grande National Forest and BLM’s San Luis Valley Field Office as “guardrails” that protect the La Jara Basin basin from any development or disposal.
Supporting the sale would establish the La Jara Basin project as a model for “community-led conservation,” the senators wrote. This opportunity may be fleeting, they warned.
“Colorado must compete on a national level for LWCF funding, and should the current board withdraw from the deal, future LWCF dollars may not be available if a future board were to seek a sale,” the senators wrote. “This is our best opportunity to work with you to permanently protect this highly valued property.”