New Senate public lands caucus charts bipartisan course

The group was formed in the wake of a Republican effort to sell wide swaths of public lands.
E&E DAILY |A bipartisan Senate caucus aimed at protecting public lands charted its course at a launch event Monday, just months after a congressional push to sell public lands rallied dozens of lawmakers to kill the proposal.
The group, dubbed the “Senate Stewardship Caucus,” will focus on promoting bipartisan legislation to conserve public lands and waters.
“We are at an inflection point with our public lands,” co-Chair Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) said at the launch in Washington’s Union Station. “It’s time we reinvigorate our focus on stewarding those public lands, how those public lands work together, how they work with their local communities, how they work with industry and make sure that we are actually serving the needs of the American people.”
The event was hosted by Nature Is Nonpartisan, a group founded by conservative climate advocate Benji Backer.
Along with Sheehy, Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) will co-chair the caucus.
Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-N.M.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) all have joined the caucus and attended the event.
A similar caucus was launched in the House this year, co-chaired by Reps. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) and Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.).
Heinrich, who is the top Senate Democrat with jurisdiction over public lands, said the caucus can be a catalyst to move bipartisan public lands legislation like the Great American Outdoors Act — which lawmakers are pushing to reauthorize after it expired last month.
“We need, I believe, a caucus, that can come together from both sides of the aisle and accelerate the amount of work that we’re doing in this space,” Heinrich said.
“Everything that’s durable, everything that’s lasted the test of time that I’ve worked on in the conservation space has been bipartisan.”
Heinrich said the caucus could also be used to help advance a long-stalled wildlife habitat recovery bill that Tillis has backed, the "Recovering America’s Wildlife Act."
“Bet on it,” Heinrich said. “There’s still very active conversations going on around RAWA."
The formation of the caucus comes several months after Republicans passed a partisan budget bill to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Senate ENR Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) pushed a measure in the Senate version of the bill that could have sold off wide swaths of public lands. Lee was forced to pull his plans after a mutiny from Republicans, including Daines and Zinke.
Heinrich said while the caucus is not in direct response to Lee’s effort, the pushback against it helped organize defenders of public lands across the aisle on Capitol Hill.
“That created the conversation space for a lot of us,” Heinrich said. “We started really having a lot of conversations about where are the spaces where we align and we can work together, and why aren’t we doing more of that?"