ShareTrails | Help Us Oppose the Dolores River Canyon National Monument

Along the Dolores River in Southern Colorado families camp, raft and recreate. We have recently seen a surge in social media social media posts promoting the creation of a national monument out of the Dolores River Canyon. Surprisingly, these posts suggest that the motivation for the advocates supporting the monument is because they used to camp along the river when younger with their families. National monument designations usually lead to the kinds of restrictions on recreation use that we see in wilderness areas or national parks. As such, it is highly unlikely that there will be any primitive dispersed camping allowed in a Dolores River Canyon National Monument. To the extent that any camping will be allowed at all, it will be in restrictive developed campgrounds that require a reservation, and they won’t be anywhere near the riparian corridor of the river itself.

It is because of restrictions like this that we are opposing the creation of giant national monuments through the abuse of the Antiquities Act in court.

While we wait for the courts to rule on our challenge, we need to speak out against further abuse of the Antiquities Act. There is currently legislation proposed by Representative Lauren Boebert and Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper to create a conservation area on the upper portion of the river, preserving the river along with dozens of other laws and regulations to protect the river. The conservation area would be more than enough protection for this area but a national monument would simply be another land grab by the administration trying to achieve its misguided 30×30 goals to lock up our public lands and waters. Send a letter to your representative below to let them know to oppose a national monument designation for the Dolores River Canyon.