Sneak Peek of the Week
Opposition to Dolores River national monument plan focuses on mobs, mining and motors
400,000
Size of a proposed national monument spanning five counties along the Dolores River
In the past 10 days, nearly 2,000 people have signed an online petition opposing a proposal that asks President Joe Biden to designate a national monument around western Colorado’s Dolores River.
“I think it absolutely, positively could be a threat,” petition organizer Sean Pond told The Colorado Sun. “If you look at the history of monument designations over time, more and more restrictions are put in place as more people start coming. We could start losing access. These are public lands me and my family and our neighbors have enjoyed for decades.”
Pond once had a career in the nuclear industry in the West End of Montrose County, home of the Uravan Mineral Belt, which is one of the country’s richest caches of uranium and vanadium. Now he rents paddleboards and off-road vehicles to tourists.
He says a monument designation would bring crowds that could lead to future bans on motorized travel, which would hinder grazing and hunting. He worries a monument would ban mining in an area where residents have spent almost half a century waiting for a nuclear revival that would resuscitate uranium mining and milling.
“A lot of local people have a lot of concerns,” Pond said.
The 10-day surge in sudden opposition to the 1-year-old idea of a national monument surprises the conservation advocates who are floating the proposal.
Scott Braden, a Western Slope conservation advocate whose Colorado Wildlands Project is among the 13 conservation groups behind the monument proposal, said the petition “is making mischaracterizations about what a monument will or won’t be.”
“It will not end ranching. It will not close Jeep trails. It will not stop hunting. That is simply not what we are proposing,” Braden said.
There is no final map with the monument proposal, which would follow the Dolores River through Montrose and Mesa counties and complement proposed legislation to increase protections for the river corridor through Montezuma, Dolores and San Miguel counties. The idea, supported by groups like the Wilderness Society, San Juan Citizens Alliance and Sheep Mountain Alliance, would allow existing rights, including oil and gas leases, mining claims, grazing rights and motorized access. It would not impact water rights. Most existing mining activity is outside the proposed boundary lines and there is not a producing mine within the proposed monument.
“We hope to have the opportunity to allay some of these concerns and continue to have productive conversations with everyone in these counties,” Braden said. “We hope to have many opportunities to persuade people that this monument could be a good thing for the Western Slope.”
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
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In Their Words
Two years later, Full Circle Everest summit continues to increase diversity in the outdoors
It’s been almost two years since the Full Circle Everest climbing team reached the summit of the world’s highest peak, nearly doubling the number of Black athletes who have stood atop Mount Everest.
“Now we have this whole group of kids who see Everest as something more approachable,” expedition member Eddie Taylor told The Sun after his historic ascent.
Colorado Sun freelancer Chloe Anderson recently caught up with Taylor, a teacher and track coach at Centaurus High School in Lafayette, and asked if the Everest summit is helping to grow diversity in the outdoors.
“I think it’s made a lot of changes,” Taylor said. “There are certain careers, professions and activities that you feel like you could never do. We wanted more people to be able to see themselves in us.”
Evan Green, a Full Circle climber and photographer from Santa Fe, said the team’s ascent of Everest inspired a lot of people.
But it’s also one of those things that’s going to be a lot more long term; it’s not like we’re going to see an immediate rush of people going out,” Green told Chloe. “It’s a small piece of the whole puzzle, but I think we definitely helped move things forward.”
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read Chloe’s story
Breaking Trail
Latest CPW map shows Colorado wolves wandering close to Wyoming, where wolf hunting is legal
Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s monthly map of wandering wolves in Colorado shows the state’s newest predators roaming west close to the border of Utah and north along the border with Wyoming.
When Colorado Parks and Wildlife released 10 Oregon wolves in December in Grand and Summit counties, one of the criteria for picking the central Colorado locations was distance from state borders.
The map released Wednesday showed that no wolves have crossed Interstate 70. The predators were wandering close to I-70 in last month’s map. It also showed some of the state’s 12 GPS-collared wolves roaming close to Wyoming, where hunters can and do legally shoot wolves. Does that trouble Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which sent a team of 15 to Oregon to capture wolves and fly them to Colorado in December? The agency declined to comment.
Wyoming hunters used an electronic call of a distressed antelope to lure a wolf they shot in May 2019, killing a male that was part of the first wolf pack recorded in Colorado since the 1940s.
“It was no mistaken shooting,” the shooter told WyoFile reporter Mike Koshmrl. “We knew what it was. And when we saw it, we wanted it.”
In 2020, hunters killed three more wolves in Wyoming within 2 miles of the Colorado border, just north of Moffat County, according to exemplary reporting by Koshmrl, who secured U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigation reports through a public records request and interviewed the hunters. One of them killed a wolf mere seconds after it crossed through a gate on the state border.
Wyoming officials do not publicly report wolf killings. The state manages wolf hunting as “trophy game” and allows hunting in 14 zones in northwest Wyoming, with the season running from Sept. 15 through Dec. 31 and one zone allowing hunting through March 31. A resident license for a wolf is $21. Outside of those 14 managed zones around Yellowstone National Park, hunters are allowed to kill wolves as predators without a license any time of the year.
The maps compiled by Colorado Parks and Wildlife come from data sent by GPS collars that record a wolf’s position every four hours. The map shows watersheds where a collared wolf was recorded in the last month. Colorado Parks and Wildlife makes sure to emphasize the vagueness of its maps. Just because a wolf visited a watershed it does not mean the wolf is presently in the drainage.
New plan for mountain lions on the Front Range as human-cat interactions increase
3,800 to 4,400
Estimated number of mountain lions in Colorado
If you’ve ever ambled through a craggy canyon in the Front Range, chances are good you’ve been watched by a mountain lion. The canine carnivores can thrive at the confluence of wildlands and cities.
There are historic numbers of the cats roaming the Front Range, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which has tracked mountain lions east of the Continental Divide for almost 20 years. And there are historic numbers of people as well.
“That’s the problem we face every single day,” Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman Kara Van Hoose told Sun reporter Tracy Ross. “With more and more people choosing to live here and expanding into places not previously developed, mountain lions and humans are interacting more than ever.”
So Colorado Parks and Wildlife is updating its Front Range mountain lion management plan, following a 2020 update of its management strategy for mountain lions on the Western Slope.
The new plan will consolidate management of the existing six units on the Eastern Slope into one area, stretching from New Mexico to Wyoming, with an annual review that balances a healthy female lion population with the number of lions killed by people.
The updated management plan lands as animal advocates gather signatures to place a mountain lion hunting ban on the November ballot.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife is gathering public input on the new management strategies for mountain lions at meetings in early March.
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story by Tracy Ross
— j
Corrections & Clarifications
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