Colorado College has come up with its usual poll results, touted in the usual outlets. From Center for Western Priorities:
Bipartisan majorities in Western states oppose Trump’s rollback of public lands protections
Missoula Current | Axios Denver | Axios Phoenix | News from the States | Aspen Public Radio | Wyoming Public Media | Grand Junction Daily Sentinel [editorial]
Here’s what Steve Wilent posted about it in 2018 and my comments.
Below are the funding sources for the effort. I’m ambivalent about bringing up funding sources, but Dee in response to the Breakthrough’s piece commented that Breakthrough was funded by East Coast billionaires. At the time I thought, so what? Isn’t everything funded by East or West Coast billionaires? It’s unlikely that large organizations can be run on the bank accounts of FS retirees, for example.
The State of the Rockies Project at Colorado College is primarily funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which recently renewed its support with an $800,000 grant in 2024. Other key supporters include the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Western Conservation Foundation, and Trinchera & Tercio Foundation, along with private donors and alumni.
If you’re interested in following funding, it’s easier nowadays I think via AI on google searches. Interesting that the Western Conservation Foundation is funded by a DAF (so we don’t know the funders) and by RF Catalytic Capital which is in turn funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Here’s a link to Hewlitt’s current plan.. I thought this was interesting..
To date, we are approximately 65% of the way toward the foundation’s long-term goal of protecting half of the North American West. In the past five years, our grantees achieved new protections on approximately 10 million acres, which was our goal. The strategy’s goal in this respect was intentionally modest, as we focused more on the new work of building inclusive coalitions, which is slower to show progress but will, we believe, produce greater and more durable gains over time.
You can also check out what they are granting and to whom for how much. I wonder whether they might support some aspects of federal lands recreation programs if they could be argued to fit with their conservation or communication goals. Example page:
That was a bit of a rabbit trail, but I have recreation funding on the brain. They could probably fund a volunteer coordinator on each NF and BLM unit, training and equipment without batting an eyelash. Which would have direct real-world positive impacts on the environment. I would guess more so than strategizing or coalitioning or communicating to reduce carbon emissions by 2050.
I’d like to believe this poll, but the people keep voting for politicians hell-bent on destroying and privatizing public land. It doesn’t make sense. Perhaps the people, like the politicians, just tell the pollsters what they think they want to hear.
These funders’ goals look like protecting the environment, and you seem to be thinking that recreation consumption of the environment is the same thing. Or that unmanaged recreation is an obstacle to protecting the environment, which may be true locally, but not at the scale they are thinking about.
FWIW, these groups mostly don’t seem focused on public lands and don’t fund litigators. Center for Large Landscape Conservation is science-oriented and Heart of the Rockies does private land conservation.
Are you also disagreeing with the poll results? In response to Jake, my impression is that this issue is typically not on the top of the list of voters’ concerns, so they are willing to make sacrifices here to get something else (though they probably haven’t really thought that through).