Gunnison Land Bill Locks Down 200,000+ Acres, Severely Restricts Motorized Access, and Bans Gaming on New Tribal Trust Land

The Gunnison Outdoor Resources Protection Act of 2025 is a massive public lands bill that redraws the map across Gunnison County, Colorado. It officially designates hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land into new protected categories—Special Management Areas (SMAs), Wildlife Conservation Areas (WCAs), Protection Areas, Recreation Management Areas (RMAs), and significant additions to existing Wilderness Areas. The core purpose of these new designations is conservation, protecting natural resources, scientific study, and enhancing recreation, all while imposing tight new rules on how people can access and use these lands.

The New Rules of the Road: Less Room for Wheels

If you use an ATV, dirt bike, or even a mountain bike on federal land, this bill is going to change your weekend plans. Across nearly all the newly designated SMAs, WCAs, Protection Areas, and the new Scientific Research Area, the bill severely restricts motorized vehicles (OHVs) and bicycles to only roads and trails that were already designated for that use on the day the law is signed (Sec. 3, 4, 5, 7). Think of it like this: if a trail wasn't officially on the map for your wheels yesterday, it’s off-limits today. The only exceptions are for official administrative business or emergencies.

This is a huge deal for OHV enthusiasts and even mountain bikers who rely on expanding trail networks, as it essentially freezes access in these vast new protected zones. While the bill does allow the Secretary to potentially designate a few specific, pre-identified “potential trails” for future use, the default setting for hundreds of thousands of acres is now ‘no expansion.’ Furthermore, the bill mandates seasonal closures for OHVs and bicycles in several areas, including McIntosh Mountain and Signal Peak SMAs, specifically to protect wildlife (Sec. 11).

Where Conservation Trumps Extraction

This legislation also takes a definitive stance on resource extraction in certain areas. It explicitly withdraws federal land in Delta County, Colorado, in the North Fork Valley watershed, from being leased for future oil and gas operations (Sec. 9). For energy companies and landowners, this means a permanent halt to future drilling or exploration on those specific tracts. However, it does contain a carve-out allowing for the utilization of methane gas from active or abandoned coal mines, which is a nod to addressing safety and environmental issues related to existing mining activities.

For the average taxpayer, this withdrawal means those specific public lands are now prioritized for conservation over resource revenue. It also means that existing mining and mineral claims are generally prohibited in all the new covered areas and Wilderness additions, unless they had valid rights established before the law was enacted (Sec. 11).

Tribal Land and the Gaming Catch

Section 10 addresses the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe by requiring the Secretary of the Interior to take 19,080 acres of land the Tribe already owns into federal trust status, if the Tribe requests it. This is a significant step, as trust land is officially part of the Tribe’s reservation and provides a stable land base. However, there is a major, specific restriction attached: the land transferred into this trust cannot be used for any kind of gambling or gaming activity under federal law (Sec. 10). For the Tribe, this is a clear trade-off—gaining reservation status for the land, but losing the economic development option of a casino or similar enterprise on that particular parcel.

The Fine Print on Management

For those who live near the wildland-urban interface, the bill requires the Secretary to carry out vegetation management projects, including using prescribed fire, to reduce wildfire risk. A key provision here is that while the Secretary can sell small trees or biomass from these projects to offset costs, they cannot carry out any project just to harvest commercial timber (Sec. 11). Any such sale must be collaboratively developed and focused on restoring ecological health, not maximizing profit.

Finally, the bill explicitly states that no official buffer zone is created around any of the new protected areas (Sec. 11). This means that activities happening just outside the boundary—say, a noisy construction project or a new housing development—cannot be legally challenged just because they might be visible or audible inside a Wilderness Area or Special Management Area. For residents and local governments adjacent to these zones, this maintains flexibility for development right up to the boundary line.