Greg Walcher is an influential voice on natural resources policy, known for his advocacy of private property rights and conservation. A former Colorado cabinet official and national conservation leader, he has spent decades working on energy, wildlife, and public lands issues.
As president of the Natural Resources Group, Walcher has advised policy organizations and played a role in environmental debates. His roots in Colorado’s peach orchards have given him a firsthand understanding of the importance of land and water rights, and have shaped his dedication to defending them.
Walcher sees government expansion as an inevitable force that must be actively resisted, particularly when it comes to private property. “It’s the nature of government that it always will try to expand its power no matter who’s in office,” he says.
He believes private property rights have been under assault for decades, particularly in the last few administrations. “I’m hoping that we’ll have a new direction in Washington and that some of the most egregious overreaches will be rolled back.”
One of the most pressing issues for Walcher relates to access to energy resources on public and private lands. He highlights the Kansas Natural Resources Coalition’s resistance against federal encroachment on the Quivira water rights in Kansas. “They’ve essentially notified the Fish and Wildlife Service that they’re going to have a fight on their hands if they try to use a National Wildlife Refuge for the purpose of drying out farmland and stealing water from farms,” he says. He warns that such federal overreach contradicts the very statutes under which such refuges were established, which explicitly protect existing land uses, including agriculture.
Too much Federal land ownership, particularly in the West, is a major concern for Walcher. He describes how vast swaths of land under federal control stifle local economies and governance. “Hinsdale County in Colorado, for example, is 97.5% federal land. The only town, Lake City, can never grow because there isn’t any land left for development.”
He sees the federal government’s “30x30” initiative—with its goal to place 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal rules by 2030—as an expansion of government control. “The government already owns more than 30% of all land and water,” he says. “What they really mean is they want to take control of more private land.”
The push to dismantle hydroelectric dams is another concern, and Walcher criticizes the removal of dams in the Klamath River Basin, which resulted in drying up farmland that had been cultivated for over a century. He laments that the Bureau of Reclamation, originally tasked with ensuring water availability in the arid West, now works against that goal.
“Congress hasn’t built a major water project in 50 years, yet the Bureau of Reclamation still has $2 billion and thousands of employees managing existing projects poorly,” he says. He questions how the federal government insists on sending Colorado River water to California while ignoring the potential for desalination. “They always claim it’s a technological issue, but countries all over the world rely on desalination. The real issue is California’s political will. If they can get water from Colorado for free, why spend money on desalination?”
Walcher also warns against the increasing use of conservation easements, which he believes restrict future generations’ ability to manage their own land. “Easements started as a good idea,” he says. However, their perpetual nature means that once a landowner sells an easement, future generations have no recourse. “A term-limited easement of 10 years would be far more reasonable than something that binds a family’s land in perpetuity.”
Another major federal overreach, according to Walcher, is the national renewable energy transmission corridors that threaten to seize vast tracts of private land. “The first proposal was five miles wide and nearly 800 miles long. The one crossing the Dakotas is up to 100 miles wide,” he says.
He sees these projects as part of a larger effort to eliminate fossil fuels by paving the West with solar panels and wind farms, driven by government mandates rather than consumer demand. “The government is locking up land under the guise of clean energy, but the maps are so vague that local governments can’t even properly oppose the land grabs.”
Walcher recalls growing up in western Colorado’s peach orchards, where water rights were essential for survival. His grandfather worked as a ditch rider, ensuring fair water distribution, a job that sometimes required reinforcements due to disputes. He remembers his grandfather joking, “It’s better to be at the top of the ditch with a shovel than at the bottom of the ditch where the water is gone.” His deep understanding of land and water issues led him from farming into policy, working for Senator Bill Armstrong and later leading Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources.
Despite his policy work, Walcher remains tied to his agricultural roots. His family business now focuses on bottling peach products like syrups and jams, adapting to market changes while maintaining the family legacy. “The most money you can make from peaches is selling them one at a time,” he says, reminiscing about shipping ripe peaches across the country.
But his passion for property rights remains at the forefront. “We’ve reached a point where the environmental movement, despite its success, has become intellectually bankrupt. Their solution to every problem is simply to stop everything.”
