Rewilding advocate chosen to lead Colorado State Land Board
DENVER, CO, May 18, 2025 – According to an email sent May 13, 2025, by Department of Natural Resources Director Dan Gibbs, Nicole Rosmarino is the sole finalist for the director of the State Land Board, which is the state’s second largest landowner with 2.8 million surface acres and 4 million mineral estate acres. Gibbs said, per statute, the board provides public notice for 14 days prior to a formal appointment which will occur at the next regularly scheduled public board meeting, which is June 11 and 12 in Denver. An email sent to DNR confirmed the hire Friday.
The mission of the State Land Board is to generate reasonable and consistent income over time and protect and enhance the long-term productivity and sound stewardship of working trust lands, both for the financial support of Colorado public schools. The SLB does that through leasing their trust lands for agriculture, commercial real estate, ecosystem services, mining, oil and gas development, recreation, renewable energy, rights-of-way, tower sites and water. Part of the second goal of SLB is to support future generations of agriculture lessees.
Rosmarino is the governor’s policy adviser for wildlife, agriculture, and rural economic development. She is a board member of The Rewilding Institute’s Rewilding Leadership Council and founded the Southern Plains Land Trust, of which she is the executive director. She was previously a scientist (wildlife program director) with Wild Earth Guardians.
Rewilding is purchasing agricultural land, preferably contiguous, to return it to what advocates have called the “American Serengeti.” Ranches to purchase and convert to private wildlife refuges are ripe for the picking, as she wrote in Bringing Back the American Serengeti, “given that the region has seen declining human populations since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, much of the habitat remains intact, and land prices are low.”
According to Rosmarino, public lands in the southern Great Plains are insufficient to preserve biodiversity, “as they are broadly utilized for livestock grazing and energy development, 90% of the land within our region is private, and the wildlife is often heavily hunted on public and private lands alike. Large-scale private refuges are vital to prevent the conversion of native grasslands to crop agriculture, energy development, and other land uses that would irreversibly alter shortgrass prairie plant communities.”
The Washington, D.C.-based Public Lands Council represents cattle and sheep producers who hold 22,000 federal grazing permits across the western United States. PLC advocates for the unique needs of this portion of the cattle, sheep, and wool industries by educating decision makers in Congress and federal agencies about the crucial role grazing plays in protection open space, environmental health, public enjoyment, and food security.
PLC President and Colorado rancher Tim Canterbury is opposed to the choice.
“Nicole Rosmarino has spent a career in organizations that hold radical, anti-ranching beliefs,” Canterbury said. “She has made clear that she views grazing on federal lands as an obstacle to her goals of “rewilding” the West, at the expense of families, communities, and the lands that have benefitted from generations of ranchers’ care-taking. Putting a radical activist in charge of the State Lands Board at a time when Colorado is facing important decisions about the future of our home and our economy is not good governance, it is political activism in its worst form.”
According to Colorado Cattlemen’s Association executive Erin Spaur, Colorado’s state trust lands must remain working lands. For generations, and through changing administrations, livestock producers have partnered with the State Land Board to meet its constitutional mandate: generating revenue for public schools while stewarding rangelands, wildlife habitat and rural economies.
Spaur said grazing isn’t a problem to fix… it’s a tool that works. Well-managed livestock grazing supports healthy soils, water, wildlife habitat and fire mitigation. It keeps land productive and resilient. Undermining or removing ag use from these lands would harm both the land and the trust it’s meant to serve.
“As there is new SLB leadership, we urge a renewed commitment to agriculture,” Spaur said. “State trust lands are successful because of the long-standing, effective partnership with livestock producers. Shifting away from that legacy in pursuit of untested or politicized ideas would be a mistake. There’s no reason to sideline a system that delivers for the land, the economy and the public good.”
She said CCA will continue to advocate for the needs of livestock producers and ag lessees and ensure grazing remains central to the management of Colorado’s trust lands.
Source: Rachel Gabel
