NEW WEST FEATURE

In Colorado, Leaders Seek Common Ground on Wild Lands

By David Frey, 3-20-11

	Photo by Flickr user Recusant Pyx.

Much of western Colorado’s rural Garfield County is public land. Forest Service land mostly makes up the higher elevations. Bureau of Land Management land lies below. It’s a Republican-leaning county whose leaders bristled when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a new “wild lands” policy to protect remote BLM landscapes.

Neighboring Pitkin County, home to the slopes of Aspen, has less BLM land, is heavily Democratic and supports the new wild lands proposal.

Their differences echo across the West. Western legislators, mostly Republican, have come out against the measure. Environmental groups and some outfitters and outdoor recreation groups have supported it.

In Colorado, county commissioners from across the state are trying to find a middle ground that could be adopted across the country.

“I think there’s been a misrepresentation of how Westerners feel about wild lands,” said Matthew Garrington, Denver-based representative for the Checks and Balances Project, a government and energy industry watchdog group. “Colorado has a $10 billion a year outdoor recreation industry. Clearly the conservation values of our wild lands are essential both to our economic health and quality of life. For those reasons, there’s actually been substantial support for it by outfitters and local officials in the West.”

At Colorado Counties Inc., a group that represents the interests of county officials, the organization hasn’t taken a position on the measure (the National Association of Counties opposes it), but its eight-person public lands committee came down 5-3 in favor of the Salazar measure. Mountain counties like Pitkin; Eagle County, home to Vail; San Miguel County, home to Telluride; La Plata County, home to Durango, and Ouray County sided with the Interior measure. Garfield, Moffatt and Alamosa counties opposed it.

“Instead of making it them against us, how can we come together to find common ground?” asked John Martin, the Garfield County commissioner who chairs the committee. “We’re trying to take the politics out but most people are trying to put politics into it.”

In December, Salazar appeared in front of an REI outdoor gear retailer in Denver and announced the new policy (see the New West article here), intended to provide more protection for lands considered to have wilderness values. The order restored a wilderness policy to the BLM, the nation’s largest public lands agency, which had been without one since 2003 when its policy was struck in a settlement between Interior and the state of Utah and others.

The new wild lands designation, which Salazar said would put wilderness values “on the same platform” as other uses, including oil and gas drilling, would be implemented through a public process.  The order directed the BLM to crate an inventory of public lands with wilderness characteristics. Unlike designated wilderness, which can only be created by Congress, and wilderness study areas, which the BLM typically manages as if it were wilderness until Congress acts, wild lands could have their designation changed by the BLM.

The announcement met a backlash from conservative Western legislators, who feared it was creating de facto wilderness and restricting energy development. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., called it a “war on the West.”

“There is simply no possible way that this administration can argue that wild lands designation will not impact oil and gas production on our public lands,” said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who leads the conservative Congressional Western Caucus.

Supporters praised Salazar for restoring wilderness considerations to the BLM.

“The economic value of these open spaces and rivers is not in doubt – it is a proven resource on which our businesses and an array of other related businesses depend to ensure current and future profitability,” said a letter to the Senate and House natural resource committees signed by 50 Western outdoor recreation business owners and outfitters.

“You tend to have the heavy mineral-development counties very opposed, very concerned that this might affect future leasing. It might affect their economic survival,” said Pitkin County Commissioner Rachel Richards. “Then you have communities that are more dependent on tourism and hunting and their seeking management practices that don’t further degrade public lands.”

Richards supports the wild lands designation, but she said Salazar might have done better introducing it to skeptical communities. Added provisions, like ensuring that local governments will have a seat in the public process, could make it easier for them to swallow, she said. And Colorado, known for being more “purple” than other Western states, which tend to lean left or right, might be the place to place to find a middle ground, Richards said.

“You have a lot of opponents and proponents kind of reading more into it than really exists,” she said. “I do not think it is de facto wilderness.”

Follow David Frey at www.davidmfrey.com and on Twitter.

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