My Page: Paul Andersen
New West Feature
Healing Colorado’s Independence Pass
In October, a helicopter lifted the last sections of a metal snow fence from the Continental Divide on Independence Pass. For the first time in 50 years, the delicate alpine life zone in Aspen’s high mountain backyard was clear of tons of unsightly debris.
On other sections of this highest paved pass in Colorado (elevation 12,095 feet) huge stone walls stand where erosion once poured silt and rocks onto delicate alpine tundra, causing siltation in the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River. Ugly road cuts have been healed and riparian areas restored. The snowmelt waters of the Roaring Fork once again run clear.
The snow fence was a misguided effort by the Forest Service in the 1960s to sequester water for the insatiable thirst of Eastern Slope agriculture. Long lengths of slatted metal fence were installed to form snowdrifts on the East side of the Continental Divide, drifts that would purportedly melt and feed streams at the headwaters of the Arkansas River. However, the fences failed to perform, and left Independence Pass with an unsightly mess.
The $6 million snow fence removal project began as an esthetic issue, which left some of the snow fences dismantled on the tundra. It later grew into an ecological mission as biologists realized the fences were collecting enough snow to damage low-lying cushion plants that proliferate on the tundra. Snow that was usually scoured off by wind smothered these sensitive tundra plants, as did snow fence debris from disassembled pieces.
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Colorado Nonprofit Offers Aerial Views of a Changing Landscape
Astronauts who looked back on Earth from outer space for the first time quickly understood the importance of the biosphere, which biologist E.O. Wilson describes as a “razor-thin” bubble shielding the earth from the void of space. Putting people into high places has that impact – an immediate, personal, visceral realization of how nature enfolds the earth.
EcoFlight, a nonprofit aerial reconnaissance program based in Aspen, has been putting people into high places for 11 years, revealing environmental threats to a multitude of landscapes. The hope is that passengers aboard will gain a new perspective of large-scale land use issues like forest clear-cuts, beetle infestations, water pollution, strip mining, road building and gas and oil drilling.
But thanks to a new partnership, not everyone has to pay for a coveted spot, limited to four at a time, in EcoFlight founder Bruce Gordon’s single-engine Cessna.
Gordon’s “virtual tours” will soon provide links to Google Earth that he says will convey the impact of being on board.
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