Northwest Colorado Working Landscape Trust: a new way to manage or bad news for special places?

by Steve Bonowski

Northwest Colorado in many ways is the “undiscovered country” of Colorado. Moffat and Rio Blanco Counties are two of the largest in the state in terms of area, but together contain fewer than 20,000 residents. Front Rangers have heard of Dinosaur National Monument and maybe rafting on the Yampa River, or through the Gates of Lodore on the Green River. Beyond these places, the area really is a great unknown to most state residents.

The CMC has long had an interest in northwest Colorado. The club played a major role in the creation of the monument in the 1930s. A cursory review of the club archives revealed that we did a week-long exploratory trip into the Yampa Valley in September, 1936. The club has continued to run occasional trips in these two counties, mostly recently over Memorial Day weekend of 2000 to Irish Canyon and Vermillion Basin in Moffat County.

Moffat County by itself contains over 1.5 million acres of American public land. Most of this land is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency of the U.S. Department of Interior. About 13,000 acres is managed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in the Brown’s Park National Wildlife Refuge. The extreme eastern part of the county contains small segments of the Routt and White River National Forests. While Moffat County doesn’t contain the high peaks of other counties in central and southwest Colorado, it does offer hiking and backpacking opportunities almost too numerous to count. In the far northwest part of the county, hikers can find the foothills of the Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah.

As early as the late 1970s, wilderness activists who had spent most of their advocacy time working for Forest Service wilderness began to realize that BLM lands contained many places equally deserving of wilderness designation. In 1982, conservationists made their first attempt to list such areas in a booklet called Finding Freedom: A Guide to Colorado’s Unknown Wildlands. In Moffat County, several special places were identified: Bull Canyon & Skull Creek near the town of Dinosaur; Diamond Breaks & Coldspring Mountain near the Refuge; and Cross Mountain west of Craig along the Yampa River.

More work was done into the 1990s, and several other areas were identified by activists as having wilderness potential. The most spectacular of these areas is Vermillion Basin located about forty miles northwest from Maybell. The road through Irish Canyon divides Vermillion Basin from Cold Spring Mountain. Moffat County has recognized the importance of all these places by touting the existence of ten BLM wilderness study areas in the county travel map produced to help promote tourism.

In 1999, Congresswoman Diana DeGette introduced in Congress an omnibus wilderness bill to protect some 1.6 million acres of Colorado’s backcountry. About 1.3 million were BLM lands. The areas had been identified as having wilderness potential over the preceding few years. While 1.3 million acres sounds like a lot, the number actually represents only about fourteen percent of the total BLM land in Colorado.

DeGette reintroduced her bill in July, 2001, for the new Congress. It probably goes without saying that the bill has produced enormous controversy in the 2+ years since initial introduction. While the CMC has a long history of advocacy for wilderness, and designation has been found to have solid economic value for local communities, not all Coloradans agree with us. Most of the areas are in the Third Congressional District held by Congressman Scott McInnis. While he has been a good supporter for designation of several areas, including Black Ridge outside of Grand Junction and the Spanish Peaks, he has not supported an omnibus bill. Instead, Rep. McInniss asked the counties that contain proposed new wilderness areas to hold hearings to determine the desire for wilderness among local residents.

Unfortunately, Moffat County has not held the requested hearings. In lieu of hearings, the county land use board developed what is known as the Northwest Colorado Working Landscape trust. The county is promoting the trust proposal instead of recommending areas for wilderness.

The trust recognizes that there are areas in the county worthy of protection. As proposed, the trust is intended to maintain and enhance the economy, custom, culture, and natural resource values of Moffat County. Proponents point to their efforts in working with federal agencies on such projects within Moffat County as endangered fish recovery in the Green River, management plans for greater sage & Columbian sharptail grouse, and reintroduction of the black footed ferret. The trust is designed to vest decision making authority for federal lands within the county in a locally based collaborative process. All federal land within the county would be managed by the trust, including Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, BLM, and Forest Service.

The trust would be managed by a seven person board, four of whom must be county residents. Interests represented would be agriculture, recreation, retail business, minerals/industry, environment, local government, and local landowners. Three trustees would be appointed by the county commissioners, three by the Colorado governor, and the seventh by mutual agreement among the two entities. Oversight of the board would be done by a seven person advisory council representing the same interest areas and appointed by the U.S. Congress. The board would be responsible for designating “beneficiaries” of the trust who are or would be land users within the county. The ultimate purpose of the trust is to ensure that all interests and uses occur in a responsible manner and that no one interest or use will exclude another.

The CMC has carefully considered the trust proposal and the overall county land use plan of which the trust is a part. Since late 2000, CMC staff and volunteer activists have submitted written comments on both the land use plan and the trust and have traveled twice to Craig to present in-person testimony. The CMC appreciates the interest many Moffat County residents have in protecting the special places within the county. However, the CMC is strongly opposed to the trust proposal.

Our reasons for opposing the trust proposal are many. A primary reason given for creation of the trust is that a desire for certain land uses isn’t presently met. Our response is that the current BLM procedures for obtaining public input are both adequate and time tested. BLM is governed by FLPMA, the Federal Lands Policy Management Act of 1976. Public input into BLM land use decisions is guaranteed by FLPMA. Persons who disagree with a local land use decision can appeal to the State Director of the BLM. The appeals route goes on to the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA), the department’s highest appellate level. Beyond the IBLA, citizens can then enter the federal court system. The current system offers adequate opportunities for local citizens to have input into decisions affecting their localities.

Citizens also have access to the BLM Resource Advisory Council (RAC) for northwest Colorado. The RAC system was created in the mid-1990s by then Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit and then–Colorado Governor Roy Romer as a byproduct of an unsuccessful attempt to raise the artifically low fees charged for grazing domestic livestock on Western federal lands.

A big problem with the Trust is that a “collaborative process” would be substituted for the existing system. The new process would be weighted in favor of local residents to the exclusion of other American citizens. If all four Moffat County residents on the board agree on an issue, it doesn’t matter what the other three feel. In addition, there is no guarantee that a “good old boys” network wouldn’t develop considering how board members are appointed. There is no provision for representation of diverse views. In particular, there is no place designated on the board for any federal land managers. In addition, there is no provision for automatic inclusion of scientists such as wildlife biologists and range biologists.

“Beneficiaries” has not been defined. The CMC has offered that as an organized user of county lands for some seventy years, the club could be considered as a “beneficiary” user. However, one land use board member has advised that groups could not be “beneficiaries,” but only land uses could be considered “beneficiaries.” The CMC was further advised that the county is now seeking legal advice to assist in defining “beneficiary.” A need for legal advice seems rather obvious.

As another example, there is one recreation representative on the board. Examples of types of recreation include hiking, backpacking, off-road vehicle use, mountain biking, snowmobiling, cross county skiing, hunting, fishing, rock climbing, wildlife viewing, and landscape photography among others. CMC asked the land use board how one person could ever hope to represent all these diverse recreation activities. “Subcommittees” was the response; our view of that reply is “it’s more cumbersome bureaucracy.”

In order to substitute such a management system, congressional action would be needed. Congress has acted only one time to establish a formal local collaborative process, the Quincy Library proposal for Forest Service lands in northern California. Various laws authorizing federal agencies and processes would require amendments. These include FLPMA, NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act), NFMA (National Forest Management Act), along with acts governing the Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service. These various laws have withstood the test of time, and numerous court decisions. Various special interests would probably love to have another chance to weaken these laws.

Another problem is how lands would be designated. The CMC has offered that if an area in Moffat County is worthy of protection now, would it not also be worthy of the same protection twenty years from now? Congressionally designated wilderness, with its emphasis on true multiple use, wilderness is the best method to protect special areas. There is no guarantee that a trust board of the future would honor and uphold a trust decision of today regarding usage of a particular area within the county.

While well intended, the trust proposal has the above problems as well as others. In some ways, the trust idea is very similar to the now discredited County Ordinance movement of the 1980s where local jurisdictions in several western states attempted to take over federal lands within their boundaries, often assisted by extractive industries such as logging and mining who stood to gain by having “local control.” Collaborative efforts have their place. But only the current system of public input and appeals offers all citizens a voice in management of federal public lands, whether they live in Moffat County, the Front Range of Colorado, or New Jersey. The CMC will continue to follow this issue.

Steve Bonowski is chairman of the CMC’s State Conservation Committee and “has enjoyed the scenic views on his drives to Craig.”