Marty Durlin

Online Editor

More than 90 formal protests from local governments, organizations and individuals, plus a letter from the Salazar Brothers…taken together, they’ve halted the auction of 144,000 acres of prime land in southern Colorado’s Rio Grande National Forest — at least for a while.

The BLM announced the deferral of 84 parcels from its May 8 oil and gas lease sale “until additional analysis can be completed.” But a spokesman for the BLM said the agency is “completely unsure” of how long the leases may be deferred (all part of The leasing protest game). The agency cited information “received from the public, local governments and our own internal review” as the reason for the deferral. Among the concerns: the impact of gas and oil development on lynx habitat (the deferred parcels are within the core release area used by the Colorado Division of Wildlife to reintroduce lynx), potential damage to the cutthroat trout and other wildlife including the greater and Gunnison sage grouse and the boreal owl. There was also a general outcry from the public — concerned about the impact of oil and gas development on health and quality of life.

One protester, retired organic farmer Greg Gosar, put it this way: “Now our life’s work and final dreams could possibly be sacrificed to a short-term, destructive, and so far impotent attempt by the out-going administration to deal with world-wide energy problems. We are deeply angered at the shallowness and futility of this idea.”

Three parcels near Crestone (one of the local governments that filed a formal protest) will still be auctioned May 8.

Ernie Atencio

I just read Craig Childs’ excellent cover story in the current issue of HCN about the thin line between plundering archaeological sites and what we take to be legitimate archaeology. I can imagine archaeologists out there bristling at the suggestion that they are just glorified pot hunters. But it reminded me of something my daughter said many years ago.

She was three and we were wandering around a potsherd-littered landscape on the Colorado Plateau. They were irresistibly beautiful, big, polychrome pieces and she had collected an armload, but she knew the rules and understood she couldn’t keep them. “But I just want to hold them for a while,” she said. As she was reluctantly scattering them back where they came from, she said, “I wish someone would invent a new national park called Finders Keepers National Park.”

Yeah, that would be a popular one, but with the public’s obsession about collecting souvenirs it wouldn’t last long.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

“Save a logger – eat a spotted owl.” That bumper sticker adorned pickups all over the Northwest in the ’80s, as loggers blamed the rare bird for the decline of their industry. Now a plan to protect the northern spotted owl is going back to the drawing board.

The owl, which hit the endangered species list in 1990, helped put the brakes on timber-cutting across the old-growth forests of Oregon, Washington and Northern California, and logging companies have been pushing the industry-friendly Bush administration to find a way around the restrictions (see our stories “When is a barred owl a red herring?” and “Spotted owl or red herring?“).

The administration has tried twice now to write a recovery plan for the bird. The first attempt got a failing grade from scientists assigned to review it, and now the second draft has flunked as well. The new plan underestimates threats like wildfire and logging, say the biologists who evaluated it; they call the plan’s habitat analysis “deeply flawed.” The Associated Press reports:

“We identified several areas where we thought their science could be improved,” Sustainable Ecosystems Vice President Steven Courtney, who led the review, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Some of those areas were relatively important. However, in other areas they did a pretty good job.”

Among the failings, Courtney said: “The method they used to design the amount of habitat to be preserved, the technique used was wrong, was not based on good science.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service promises to take the critique to heart in its final version, due next month. Want fries with that owl?

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

In Utah, off-roaders are drawing a line in the sand, pushing for their right to drive all-terrain vehicles on public lands. Washington County resident Dan Jessop was just found guilty of riding his ATV on a closed road. He got six months’ probation and a $300 fine; now he’s planning to appeal the case.

Jessop says that Sawmill Road is county-owned and that the Bureau of Land Management had no business shutting it down. The feds say the road, on BLM land, is under their control. Fellow four-wheelers have raised more than $30,000 to help Jessop fight the fine. (As an interesting aside, a hiker ticketed by the Forest Service for not paying a much-loathed access fee rallied only $4,500 to her defense — see our story “Fed up with paying to play“. Apparently if you’ve got a $5,000 ATV, you’ve also got bucks to burn).

With crackdowns on illegal off-roading all over the West, and with many Utah counties feuding with the feds over control of dozens of dusty backroads, ATVers see Jessop’s case as their chance for a showdown. They’ve already won one round — last fall, the BLM recognized Kane County’s claim to Bald Knoll road, on public land near the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (see our story “The road more traveled“).
(Read on …)

Francisco Tharp

In Zion National Park, Hank and Mariangela Landau own a little piece of red-rock paradise. And in Petrified Forest National Park, Mike Fitzgerald is selling land within park boundaries to fund his retirement.

Smells fishy, doesn’t it? After all, aren’t these parks the “crown jewels” of our public land systems?

Turns out, the Petrified Forest and Zion incidents aren’t anomalous. A study published by the National Parks Conservation Association says even these jewels have some rough spots. The report, “America’s Heritage: For Sale,” found about 4.3 million acres of privately owned parcels amongst the 84.3 million acres of National Park land. They also found that buying 1.8 million acres of high priority land would cost the Park Service about $1.9 billion.

And, as usual, the problem follows the dollar sign.

(Read on …)

Ed Quillen

About 15 years ago, High Country News published a long article of mine. Its working title was “Is Denver Necessary?”

Therein I argued that Denver had developed, then essentially gutted, a vast hinterland of about 300,000 square miles. The city had once seen the countryside as a source of raw materials for its industries and as a market for its products, and it invested in the hinterland. But since about 1970, the hinterland was basically a source of water for continued suburban development in the metro area.

There was more to it than that, though. The big picture was that the Mountain West had been developed as part of a Chicago empire after the Civil War. That is, the bucolic scene of steers in a mountain meadow was an extension of the packing plants of the Windy City, just as the rancher ordering from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue was part of the same extended urban system, all linked by railroads with names like “Chicago & Northwestern,” “Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific” and “Chicago, Burlington & Quincy.”

And in the 1990s, I argued, the West was coming under the dominance of a different city, Los Angeles. Instead of producing tangible products like timber, beef, and minerals, we were promoting intangibles like amenity lifestyles and quality recreational experiences.

(Read on …)

Sarah Gilman

Assistant Editor

Many Western towns were once home to a vibrant mining culture of “men with boots on,” as High Country News Editor Jonathan Thompson wrote in a recent editorial. That is, until wild fluctuations in metal prices, increased federal regulation, and ample opportunities abroad drove a number of big mining companies out of their Western strongholds. But with the rise of China and India boosting demand, metal prices are again sky-high and mining in the West, as reported in a recent High Country News package, is on its way back — for better or worse.

Now, another subset of “men with boots on” (and likely more than a few booted women) — hunters and anglers, some of the West’s longest active conservationists — is hoping that the impacts (bootprints?) of that resurgence on public lands and wildlife will be better controlled by the federal government than during booms of the past. About 400 sportsmen’s groups, led by the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Trout Unlimited under the umbrella of Sportsmen United for Sensible Mining, are calling for Congress to get moving on (longstanding) efforts to reform the antiquated 1872 mining law.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The “crown jewels of our public lands” will get another chance at permanent recognition next week. On Weds., April 9, the House votes on HR 2016. The bill would officially enact the National Landscape Conservation System, a collection of some 800 national monuments, wilderness areas, scenic rivers, and historic trails overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the importance of permanently enacting the NLCS:

“While I don’t have any particular reason to believe other secretaries [of the Interior] will come in and undo the system, the fact is it can be pulled apart to disparate units,” says Elena Daly, BLM’s director of the NLCS in Washington. “It gives us legislative authority to exist and would require legislative action to undo. It would put us on par with (the) National Park Service.”

The congressional stamp of approval also would create a systematic way to manage these areas. Currently, the 860 disparate units don’t have the same designations or protections. Some were created by states, others by various departments of the federal government.

(Read on …)

Rebecca Clarren

Yesterday Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, announced he will waive the environmental review required by 36 federal laws in order to speed construction of an 18-foot high fence along the Mexico border. The two waivers cover 470 miles of the border from California to Texas, plus a separate 22-mile span in a Texas wildlife refuge. The fence, to now be completed by the end of this year, will block illegal border crossers that travel by foot and car. The department has already built 309 miles of fence. As reported today by the New York Times,

Previously, Mr. Chertoff had used his waiver authority three times to overcome environmental hurdles along limited segments of the border in San Diego and Arizona. But as the department strives to meet a deadline of year’s end for nearly 700 miles of fencing, he has now greatly expanded the use of his waiver authority, which was granted by Congress as part of the “Real ID Act.”

“We value the need for public input on any potential impact of our border infrastructure plans on the environment,” said Chertoff in a prepared statement, “and we will continue to solicit it.”

It’ll be a little late for solicitation after we power the bulldozers, build a concrete wall, and install extra cameras, towers and roads. Such actions conducted with no environmental review or public process is shortsighted and arrogant. (Read on …)

Ed Quillen

Although I burn several cords of wood every winter, it’s still a blessing to have a thermostat that controls a natural-gas furnace. Natural gas also powers the household water heater and our kitchen stove. So I’d be a hypocrite if I opposed all natural-gas drilling and development.

Even so, I was disappointed when the federal Bureau of Land Management rejected Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s proposal to minimize the effects of natural-gas development on the Roan Plateau, a relatively untouched landscape of about 125,000 acres north of Interstate 70 between Rifle and Parachute.

Among other things, Ritter wanted 36,000 acres set aside as sensitive wildlife areas. The BLM says only 21,000 acres. Ritter proposed phased leasing; the BLM wants to lease it all at once. The City of Rifle officially opposed any drilling on the top of the plateau.

(Read on …)

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Now it’s the U.S. Forest Service that’s under the knife, as the President whacks away at the federal budgets that serve Western constituencies. According to testimony today by USFS Chief Abigail Kimbell, Bush is requesting an 8 percent slash in the agency’s budget, in favor of more military spending around the globe and more funds for homeland security,

Although the proposed budget includes an increase of $148 million for wildfire fighting, it also recommends a cut in funding for fire prevention and preparedness. The cuts could mean the loss of more than 2,700 jobs, about 10 percent of the agency’s workforce.

The USFS manages 193 million acres of national forest, most of it in the Western states. The reduction in funds would affect road and trail maintenance, state assistance, land acquisition and recreation.

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) chairman of the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee, called Bush’s budget “an unmitigated disaster.”

See more about the budget cuts in an AP story.

You can also read the testimony of USFS Chief Kimbell.

In the past few years, the Bush administration has recommended selling off federal lands. See HCN stories here, here and here.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

A plan to drill 800 wells in eastern Utah is moving forward — and threatening a canyon that’s often called “The World’s Longest Art Gallery.”

In 2004, we wrote about the BLM’s efforts to stifle an agency archaeologist who raised the alarm about the damage that energy development could inflict on the stunning rock art of Nine Mile Canyon and the West Tavaputs Plateau (see our story here).

Now the issue is finally getting national attention: Science Magazine just published an article titled “Dust Storm Rising Over Threat to Famed Rock Art in Utah” (subscription required). The Deseret Morning News also has the story:

“Since 2002, the canyon has experienced the heavy impacts of the oil and gas industry,” (Nine Mile Coalition leader) Pam Miller said in a statement. “We have all seen the utter disregard for all values except energy development and now we are saying that enough is enough — balance must be restored in our public lands management agencies.”

Miller is referring to the effects dust and one particular supposed dust suppressant has (sic) been having on the rock art.

(Brad Higdon, planning and environmental coordinator in the Bureau of Land Management’s Price field office) said the BLM commissioned a dust study that highlighted the potential for “adverse” effects on the rock art. Dust suppressants such as water and then later magnesium-chloride, now believed to be corrosive to the rock art panels, were found to be inadequate or too damaging.

(Read on …)

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Former U.S. Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck on January 22 celebrated ten years of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protects nearly 60 million acres of wilderness but still faces a variety of legal challenges.

Dombeck, architect of the roadless policy, is now a professor of global conservation at the University of Wisconsin. He said the rule has played a key role in protecting wildlife habitat, preserving clean drinking water, providing recreational opportunities and providing a defense against global warming. He said the policy has kept nearly all the land from energy development, mining, logging and roadbuilding.

In 1998, Dombeck proposed a temporary moratorium on road construction in inventoried roadless areas across the National Forest System. The Forest Service adopted an 18-month moratorium in February of the next year, during which 1.7 million public comments were filed, most favoring protection of roadless areas. The Rule was officially issued by the U.S.F.S. in January of 2001. The Bush Adminsitration repealed the Rule in 2005, but a federal district court ordered its reinstatement in September 2006 in response to a suit filed by Earthjustice on behalf of 20 conservation groups.

Environmentalists are now calling on Congress to enact the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2007, to codify the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Bills have been introduced by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA).

Dombeck was part of a panel that met to assess the effect of the Rule. An audio recording of the panel (a teleconference) is available from The Wilderness Society, along with more information.

For background on the Roadless Rule, see this article and others in HCN’s archives.