About three-quarters of attendees at a public forum examining a Denver Democrat’s proposal to create 33 wilderness areas in Colorado – including two in Montezuma County – supported the idea Monday in Cortez by a show of hands.
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette held the forum Monday at City Hall. About 100 people attended the forum, part of DeGette’s three-day visit to Southwest Colorado to view areas proposed in her bill for wilderness designation.
New wilderness areas, should the bill pass, include 14,339 acres of the proposed Weber-Menefee Mountain Wilderness and 26,776 acres in the Cross Canyon Wilderness. In Dolores County, the bill would create a 34,867-acre Dolores River Canyon Wilderness.
In total, the bill, which DeGette has tried unsuccessfully to pass for 20 years, would create 33 wilderness areas in Colorado totaling 740,000 acres.
Designation of the new wilderness areas, DeGette said, would not increase management restrictions on the lands or add environmental protections because the areas have been managed since 1991 by the Bureau of Land Management as wilderness study areas, based on a 1980s survey of lower-altitude areas of federal lands that might be suitable as wilderness areas.
No new oil and gas leases would be allowed on the lands, but existing mineral rights holders would be allowed to pursue development of their claims, DeGette said.
“Cross Canyon has leases from the 1950s, but people haven’t tried to excavate because the terrain is so difficult to develop. But there would be no new leases,” she said. “In essence, what the bill does, it would protect the areas in perpetuity.”
Clint McKnight of Durango said too much emphasis was placed on economics in examining the value of creating the wilderness areas.
“We need to look at their qualities as wilderness habitat. I think it’s wrong to look at them solely through an economic focus,” he said.
Kris Abrams, whose property backs up to Weber Mountain, said many people have heard property owners near the proposed wilderness areas are against the designation, but she’s in favor of the Weber-Menefee Mountain Wilderness.
“A lot of people directly affected support this bill,” she said.
The national political scene, she said, is currently “about pitting people against each other,” she said. “I hope we can avoid that with this.
Indeed, DeGette said Colorado’s small congressional delegation often “punches above its weight” because the delegation often bands together on issues important to the state.
That is unlikely to happen in this instance.
In July, U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, proposed the Colorado Recreation Enhancement and Conservation Act. In addition to more land protections in the San Juan Mountains, it seeks to release wilderness study areas in Montezuma County, including Weber Mountain, Menefee Mountain, Cahone Canyon, Cross Canyon, Squaw and Papoose Canyon (the Colorado portion).
At the meeting, disagreements remained about DeGette’s proposal to convert 33 areas of the state from wilderness study areas to wilderness areas.
Montezuma County Commissioner Keenan Ertel said the Weber-Menefee proposal is inappropriate for wilderness area designation because it is surrounded by urban interface, including the town of Mancos and U.S. Highway 160.
He noted communications towers, while technically not in the proposed wilderness area, overlook it and depend on service roads that if not in the wilderness area, come close.
“Menefee doesn’t meet the minimum qualifications for a wilderness area, and the BLM has said that itself,” he said.
After the 2012 Weber Fire, which consumed 10,133 acres just south of Mancos, noxious weeds have developed in the burn scar, but the BLM has not allowed aerial spraying to deal with the situation, Ertel said.
“It affects all adjoining property areas,” he said.
Chris Barns, who drafted the original wilderness study area proposal for the BLM in the 1990s, told Ertel the BLM should allow appropriate technical means to deal with the weeds.
However, fellow county Commissioner James Candelaria said the BLM still has not permitted aerial spraying.
Mesa County Commissioner John Justman said the broader problem is a lack of economic flexibility throughout the Western Slope because of an imbalance between private and public lands in favor of public land. “The Western Slope has 26% of the state’s land mass and 56% of its federally owned land,” Justman said, adding, “In Mesa County, we don’t feel we need wilderness areas. How much is enough?”
parmijo@ durangoherald.com