Colorado’s Culture of Recreation | Fighting for the Right | Going With the Flow | Wilderness Wary
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Conflict on the Rocky Mountain Playground
HEADWATERS | F all 2010 Currents................................................................................................... 1 Watermarks............................................................................................. 2 Colorado’s Culture of Recreation.......................................................... 3 Shared Space, Clashing Values............................................................. 6 The challenge of managing user conflicts in Colorado’s great outdoors
Colorado Foundation for Water Education 1580 Logan St., Suite 410 • Denver, CO 80203 303-377-4433 • www.cfwe.org
Board Members Rita Crumpton
Fighting for the Right........................................................................... 11 To float or forbid: the controversial line between public access and property rights on Colorado’s streams
Justice Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr.
Going With the Flow............................................................................ 18 Water management adapts to include recreation
2nd Vice President
President
1st Vice President
Taylor Hawes
Boating on a Grand Scale.................................................................... 22 A couple works to protect an iconic river, and a local one
Callie Hendrickson
Ranching in the “Midst”...................................................................... 23 Bill Trampe navigates a transitioning economy
Assistant Secretary
Wilderness Wary................................................................................... 24 Additional acres proposed for the nation’s highest level of government protection ignite strong feelings against exclusion
Treasurer
River of Words 2010............................................................................. 28 On the cover: Kayakers are among the private boaters impacted by attempts to limit access to streams through private property. Cover photo by Kevin Moloney, inset image by Nathan Fey.
About the authors… Joshua Zaffos is a Fort Collins-based freelance writer who reports on the environment, science and politics. He has written for High Country News, Earth, Fly Fisherman, and Orion, among others. Of researching this story, he says, “It’s pretty fascinating to explore the demographic trends and projections behind recreation planning in the state, and how managers are trying to accommodate a diverse mix of users and activities, while also protecting the resources that draw us outdoors in the first place.” Wendy Worrall Redal grew up hiking, fishing, skiing and riding motorcycles with her dad. Now a Boulder-based freelance journalist, Wendy is still an avid skier, dog owner and lover of wilderness and says, “Travel plans for parks and forests are real assets for people like me, who like varied pursuits on our public lands. Through researching this story, I’ve developed gratitude for the efforts of our land managers to both sustain and make available the beautiful places we love to play in.” Based in Boulder, Jerd Smith is a freelance writer and editor with an interest in water issues. She has won numerous awards, including Stanford University’s Risser Prize for environmental reporting. Having closely observed Colorado water issues for more than a decade, Jerd says, “I’ve driven down more than one or two country roads in Colorado and seen streams, wide and narrow, that are strung with barbed wire and signs barring floaters. And while those outside the water realm might see the question of who can float rivers as simple, the realities are always much more complex, especially in Colorado.” George Sibley lives in Gunnison and spent the last couple decades teaching journalism and regional studies at Western State College. His essays and articles have appeared in publications including Harper’s Magazine, Technology Illustrated, High Country News and Colorado Central. George says that writing on water management and recreation for this issue made him realize the hard truth in Justice Greg Hobbs’ observation that, “We are no longer developing the [water] resource; we are learning how to share the developed resource.” Denver-based freelancer Allen Best has written about water issues for Planning Magazine, Forest Magazine, and High Country News, among others. During years he spent living in Eagle Valley, he would walk and ski through some of the Hidden Gems campaign’s proposed new wilderness areas. Writing about the growing difficulty in designating wilderness, he says, “There always were arguments, often heated, but in the early decades they were primarily about extraction versus preservation. Now, the arguments are more fractured, and recreation is the dominant issue.” Emily Palm lives in Golden, where she writes freelance outdoor recreation and environmental articles. The Fort Collins Coloradoan publishes her bi-weekly ski column “Steep Shots” in the winter, and other work appears in publications including The Christian Science Monitor, The Aspen Times, and the Summit County Citizens Voice. When interviewing the individuals profiled in this issue, their dedication struck a chord: “Both sides want healthy watersheds and have a deep commitment to living a lifestyle that resonates with them.”
Secretary
Reagan Waskom Alan Hamel
Becky Brooks Tom Cech Matt Cook Rep. Randy Fischer Jennifer Gimbel Rebecca Mitchell Reed Morris Chris Piper John Porter Chris Rowe Rick Sackbauer Robert Sakata Travis Smith Steve Vandiver Sen. Bruce Whitehead
Staff Nicole Seltzer Executive Director
David Harper Office Manager
Kristin Maharg Education Program Associate
Aaron Parker OSM/VISTA Program Assistant
Mission Statement The mission of the Colorado Foundation for Water Education is to promote better understanding of water resources through education and information. The Foundation does not take an advocacy position on any water issue. Acknowledgments The Colorado Foundation for Water Education thanks the people and organizations who provided review, comment and assistance in the development of this issue. Headwaters is a magazine designed to provide Colorado citizens with balanced and accurate information on a variety of subjects related to water resources. Copyright 2010 by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education. ISSN: 1546-0584 Edited by Jayla Poppleton. Designed by Emmett Jordan.
Kevin Moloney
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his issue of Headwaters might take some of our readers by surprise. Why would the Colorado Foundation for Water Education, an organization focused on, well, water education, tackle an issue like user conflicts in recreation, which is clearly a land-use concern? Why are the conflicts between boaters and landowners, fishermen and water managers, ATV users and hikers, or backcountry skiers and snowmobilers of any concern to Headwaters readers? I believe that CFWE’s mission to provide accurate and balanced information is only useful if our stakeholders use that information in their decision-making processes. And since it is difficult to make water decisions in a vacuum anymore, the views and positions of a variety of stakeholders must be accounted for. Within the ever-growing diversity of interest groups impacted by water professionals’ policy and management decisions, recreation stakeholders represent a wide array: from hunters to hikers to horsemen. Whether those decisions regard instream flow filings, new consumptive water rights applications, expanded infrastructure projects, management of existing collection and distribution systems or the impacts of a recreational activity on water quality, recreation stakeholders have a seat at the table now more than ever. It also occurred to me during the tumult over rafting access in the last legislative session that individuals with different philosophies of use have been arguing since before Pinchot and Muir clashed over the Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite in the early 1900s. We could learn something from these conflicts of the past—how they were resolved (or not), and what hindsight reveals. Even though the right of a hiker to have a quiet experience or the right of an ATV rider to have adequate places to play does not have direct water resource implications, how that historic conflict has been handled can be instructive to professionals dealing with similar problems today. Finally, CFWE is looking to grow the community of people involved in our work. CFWE’s current strategic plan has us identifying and working more closely with organizations whose membership would align with our mission of unbiased water education. The CFWE Board of Directors has decided to focus current partnership efforts on organizations who work with elected officials, the media, and the recreation community. We hope that this issue of Headwaters will introduce CFWE’s good work to those involved in recreation management and planning, as well as those who just love to get outside. For our existing members and supporters, we are working hard to create new ways to connect. We recently set up a discussion forum on our website, where you can chat about and give feedback on the contents of this issue of Headwaters. And as with every issue, this edition will be archived indefinitely online so you can refer back to it or send relevant stories on to friends and colleagues. As always, thank you for your support in bringing water education to all Coloradans.
Executive Director Fishermen ply the waters of Taylor Park Reservoir on the west side of the Sawatch Range near Tin Cup, Colo.
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aving children has changed the way I experience Colorado. Backpacking was always my favorite. Now the only “pack” I’ve been carrying is a child strapped on in one way or another. My family plans its activities accordingly. We stick closer to home, choose easier trails and car camp, which has its perks. Recently, we camped in Rocky Mountain National Park and visited a few family-friendly “trails” that were about as short as they come. Was it beautiful and scenic? Yes. Serene? Not at all. It was a busy summer weekend and there were people everywhere. I had to choke back some disappointment that the experience wasn’t all that I’d had in mind for a weekend “away from it all.” Despite the myriad opportunities available to recreate in Colorado, at the most accessible, popular destinations it is increasingly common to find oneself rubbing elbows with other adventurers. With more people living here than ever before, more of us are taking to the hills— maybe precisely because we are looking for room to breathe. But crowding on the playground, where Jayla Poppleton with youngest son, Theo, in the broad array of recreational purRocky Mountain National Park. suits don’t always mesh, means the potential for conflict to rear its ugly head is high. Some of the tension underlying recreational conflict stems from deflated expectations. When you carve out the time and dedicate resources toward pursuing a certain experience, and that experience is somehow thwarted, it is disappointing to say the least. Whether kayaking, mountain biking, backcountry skiing or fishing, these are activities that, for many of us, are central to who we are. Thus, much is at stake. Not only is recreation tied to many Coloradans’ livelihoods, but outdoor pursuits transcend simple pleasure to sustain the human spirit. Snowshoes and boots transport us to wild spaces, where the beauty and silence helps us decompress. Boats, skis, bikes, ATVs—the equipment gets us out there, tests our mettle and provides a rush. Fishing poles and rifles, too, become an excuse to go to the forest or the river and touch something wild. Camping, out of a backpack or the car, offers a forgotten glimpse of a starry sky typically eclipsed by city lights. As different as we may be, without such satisfying and stress-relieving experiences, the day-to-day might have more propensity to overwhelm. In this issue, we focus on recreational conflicts, not only between different breeds of outdoorsy types, but also between the recreational community and traditional water management. In addition, we investigate the controversy that came to a head this year between boaters and landowners, who disagree over who has the right to use streams flowing over private property. And we also cover the disputed idea of protecting more public lands as federally-designated wilderness, which would not be managed with recreation as an utmost priority and would, in fact, exclude some forms of recreation entirely. As we grapple with the rules and tweak the framework that nurtures recreational opportunity in Colorado, an important consideration will be mutual respect. It’s like my mantra to my children at the playground: think of the other, take turns and play nice. And of course, have fun! n
to Jayla Popple Editor
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By Joshua Zaffos
Colorado’s Culture of
Recreation With 300-plus days of sunshine a year and a diverse geography of plains, mountains, canyons and rivers, Colorado has a distinct advantage when it comes to luring people outside. More than 75 percent of Coloradans—not to mention tourists from out of state—participate in some outdoor recreational activity every week, in locales ranging from urban greenways to wilderness areas, according to Colorado’s Statewide Comprehensive
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Kevin Moloney (2)
Outdoor Recreation Plan, known as SCORP.
Commercial whitewater rafting in Colorado had an estimated economic impact of $142 million in 2009. Here rafters prepare to take on the Gunnison River.
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“Colorado, no matter how you look at it, is ahead of the game when it comes to getting people outdoors and recreating.”
Colorado’s relationship with the outdoors is partially responsible for the state’s current standing as the fittest in the nation—or “least obese”— as declared in June by the Trust for America’s Health. The financial benefits attributed to recreation are also telling. “Active recreation”—bicycling, backpacking, climbing, snow sports, paddling, trail running, hunting and fishing—contributes $10 billion a year to Colorado’s economy, according to the most recent assessment by the Outdoor Industry Foundation, completed in 2006. And the broader spectrum of recreation and tourism in Colorado is credited with generating $21.5 billion in sales in 2007—while agriculture was at $7.2 billion—out of statewide receipts totaling $450 billion, according to a 2009 report commissioned by the Front Range Water Council. “Colorado, no matter how you look at it, is ahead of the game when it comes to getting people outdoors and recreating,” says Scott Babcock, strategic planning program manager for Colorado State Parks. Yet the patter and tread of millions of feet and wheels and paddles poses a management challenge to recreation planners. Officials must protect natural resources and figure out how to accommodate all the different types of outdoor enthusiasts at a moment when Colorado’s population is growing and becoming more diverse. With demographic changes, residents’ interests and outdoor choices are changing, and land managers are heeding the trends. A growing urban population, for example, has introduced different user expectations to Colorado’s historic recreational agenda of skiing, camping, hunting and fishing. Urban families stick closer to home and seek less active recreation opportunities. In 2006, Colorado’s most popular outdoor activities included sightseeing, walking, pleasure driving, picnicking and wildlife viewing, according to data collected by the National Survey on Recreation and Environment. Agencies are trying to accommodate fluctuating user demands by manag4
ing sites with certain activities in mind. Geocaching, an activity where hikers use handheld GPS units to find fixed caches, has become increasingly popular so State Forest and Cheyenne Mountain state parks now rent navigational devices. Other parks and natural areas focus services on mountain biking, cross-country skiing or off-road travel. “Parks can’t be all things for all people,” says Babcock, “so we try to account for local, regional and statewide recreational trends.”
A demographic lens
Babcock is a lead author of the 2008 SCORP. The detailed report, released every five years, assesses the state’s recreational habits and needs and brings together recreation planning staff from federal, state, local, nonprofit and academic entities to consider use patterns in order to develop a vision for future outdoor activities. According to SCORP, Colorado’s population growth has included late-career and retiring baby boomers who generally have plenty of disposable income and leisure time. The state is also accounting for greater diversity and ethnicity, especially an influx of Hispanic families. State and municipal parks and other public lands have seen increases in large, familyoriented picnics and events at dispersed camping areas, Babcock says, often at facilities designed for smaller groups. Meanwhile, the “millennial” generation—defined by SCORP as people born between 1978 and 2003—is coming of age, and while they are generally less likely to participate in sports than previous generations, many youth are looking for “higher-intensity activities” that incorporate technology or adventure. “In general, Colorado still needs to do more to connect [certain] groups—inner-city kids, people of color, Hispanic families, and techno-savvy kids—to the outdoors,” says Babcock. Some of the impetus comes from the White House itself. President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors campaign, through the Department of the Interior, promotes reconnecting urban popula-
tions, particularly kids, with the outdoors, and Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative also promotes outdoor activity for addressing childhood obesity. Locally, some efforts are in place. Environmental Learning for Kids works with urban, “at-risk” children from metro Denver to foster connections with the outdoors and avoid potential pitfalls, such as recruitment into gangs. Since 1996, the program has reached more than 70,000 youth and their families, introducing environmental education and outdoor activities and helping them explore careers in natural resources. Groups like the Larimer County Youth Conservation Corps promote outdoor education curriculum in schools and campaign to make outside “cool,” with the idea that kids hooked early on the outdoors will grow up to be the next generation of conservationists. Other entities rooted in conservation and outdoor recreation are altering their strategies and initiatives. Voters established Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) in 1992 to fund projects that preserve the state’s outdoor heritage using up to 50 percent of Colorado Lottery proceeds. In the last few years GOCO is seeing more requests to pay for parks, trails and linkages in urban areas, says Lise Aangeenbrug, GOCO’s executive director. In response, the GOCO board updated its strategic plan and funding priorities in early 2010 to include providing accessible recreational opportunities and environmental education and stewardship programs aimed at youth and families with little exposure to the outdoors.
Venturing farther out
Lest there be any confusion over the state’s changing recreation tastes, Colorado isn’t lacking for outdoor adventurers, and one only has to look up to the tallest peaks to see what resource managers are up against. No physical land features better define Colorado than its 54 summits above 14,000 feet, but in less than three decades “bagging” a fourteener has gone from being a distinguished and bold mountaineering feat to
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—Scott Babcock, Colorado State Parks
In 1984, about 60,000 hikers climbed a Colorado fourteener, according to the nonprofit Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. This year, more than half a million people will stand on the top of one. a typical weekend outing. In 1984, about 60,000 hikers climbed a Colorado fourteener, according to the nonprofit Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. This year, more than half a million people will stand on the top of one. Some of the milder climbs close to the Front Range, such as Quandary Peak and mounts Lincoln and Democrat, attract lines of hikers on the weekends. The nearly tenfold increase in use suggests that Colorado residents and visitors are taking full advantage of the state’s expansive public lands. So, even though passive outdoor experiences are most popular, active experiences such as hiking, fishing, skiing, bicycling and paddling each count hundreds of thousands and even millions of participants annually. Federally managed public lands cover more than 24 million acres in Colorado, and nearly 5 million more acres are under the jurisdiction of the state, Indian tribes and local governments. Nonprofit land trusts, which can tap GOCO and private donors for funds, also protect lands through purchase or conservation easements and often offer recreational opportunities. In total, about 43 percent of the state is open to the public, and many popular ski mountains, river canyons, hunting areas and fourteeners are part of the public domain. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management estimates that more than 5 million visitors recreate annually on BLM lands in Colorado, including areas that used to be generally ignored by outdoor enthusiasts with the exception of hunters. Now, use is increasing at roughly 3 to 5 percent every year, according to Jason Robertson, the BLM State Office Branch chief of social and cultural resources, and mountain bikers and off-roaders are replacing hunters. Both the BLM and U.S. Forest Service are trying to meet 21st century goals and priorities that differ significantly from those of a few decades ago. Recreation has replaced cattle grazing, timber cutting and mining as the primary use of public lands, but different activities aren’t always compatible. In managing for
potential conflicts, the federal agencies rely heavily on cooperative agreements with user groups, including the Colorado Mountain Club, Colorado River Outfitters Association, the Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition, and Bicycle Colorado, which help with educating users on trail and stream etiquette. Babcock says Colorado State Parks, which has had to cut staff and manage with fewer operating funds, also relies on volunteers and “friends” groups to help with trail construction, weed control, and basic visitor services. In the future, both state and federal agencies may have to consider adding or raising fees for certain uses as well as charging for trail access. The Forest Service grabbed attention this past spring when it suggested it might start charging for access to four fourteeners in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in order to offset and discourage resource damage from hikers.
Funding might not be keeping up with recreation trends, but managers are increasingly aware of the connection back to the state and local economies. After all, Colorado’s $10 billion recreation economy is hardly negligible. Colorado State University resource economist Catherine Keske has determined that the average fourteener climber—be it a local or a tourist— spends $107 a day during an expedition on supplies, travel, lodging and food. Conservation groups and land managers hope the research, which relies on hiker surveys, helps build further support among communities where access to summits has been limited because of private land claims. On BLM lands near Grand Junction and Fruita in western Colorado, mountain bikers from around the world flock to ride single track through the desert, and the budding recreation-based economy is not lost on managers considering where to provide access and activities. “We are trying to look at how uses we allow benefit local communities,” says Robertson. The link between economy and rec-
reation also holds true for more urban recreation areas, even when users are not traveling far to enjoy them. Jeff Shoemaker, executive director of the Denver-based Greenway Foundation, says, “We have a catchphrase: ‘Green equals green,’” referring to the correlation between providing open spaces for recreation and creating financial value. Working with local governments and other partners, the Greenway Foundation has spent three and a half decades and $100 million to extend trails and parks along the South Platte River in metro Denver. Financial estimates indicate the investment has returned more than $10 billion in economic benefits to the region, while also creating recreational opportunities for people more inclined to stay close to home to enjoy the outdoors. The foundation and others continue to fine-tune their vision for the growth of the South Platte greenway, relying heavily on public input and demographic data. Greenway planners are now focusing on maximizing different user experiences, from biking, kayaking or picnicking to fishing and rollerblading. Shoemaker also hopes to see future land-use planning along the South Platte include goals for the greenway such as adding more pocket parks and trail spurs as well as extending the greenway into industrial areas that are in the process of transitioning to mixed-use residential. The planning team behind SCORP also sees integrating recreation into land-use planning as a priority—just as important as maintaining public health and fitness, managing environmental resources, coping with budget cuts, and providing diverse recreational opportunities. Whether the agenda involves transportation planning or oil and gas development, recreation managers want a seat at the table. “We want to make sure that [industry and government] specialists in these other areas are aware of recreation,” says Babcock. “We want Colorado to remain a leader in outdoor recreation, and we also want to share our successes with other states.” q
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When green equals green
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The challenge of managing user conflicts in Colorado’s great outdoors
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By Wendy Worrall Redal
undreds of miles of trails across thousands of acres of public open space add up to a back-door paradise for Boulder residents like James Dziezynski. Any time he’s not at work or asleep, you’re likely to find Dziezynski taking full advantage of Boulder County’s many nearby opportunities for recreation. A hardcore mountain biker, Dziezynski relishes the single track at Heil Ranch, a 5,000-acre tract of open space on the north edge of town. You won’t find him there with his border collie, Fremont, however, as Heil Ranch—a haven for wildlife—is off-limits to dogs. Fremont accompanies him elsewhere, though Dziezynski is worried that plans for new leash laws may inhibit the dog’s freedom in a number of locales the pair currently enjoys together. Sometimes, this biker and hiker-cum-writer seeks solitude in high-alpine environs. Author of “The Best Summit Hikes in Colorado,” he appreciates the restorative peace of wilderness, away from foothills throngs—unless, of course, you’re talking about bagging fourteeners, which has become a crowded pastime in its own right. While Dziezynski is but one individual, the multiple ways he uses Colorado’s public lands demonstrates the challenge in managing for different user experiences and expectations. Hikers don’t like sharing trails with horses and mountain bikes. Dog lovers yearn for more places where their pups can romp off-leash. Non-dog folk worry about encounters with pets along a narrow trail. Wildlife aficionados would rather not see dogs on trails at all. Fly fishermen resent flotillas of noisy rafters, who in turn don’t want power boats on peaceful stretches of river. Target shooters and ATV riders square off with campers seeking quiet, while snowmobilers skirmish with backcountry skiers as both covet powder-filled slopes and meadows for their competing versions of fun.
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Getting on Track with Off-Highway Use
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uring an era when just about every conceivable outdoor activity is on the rise, the growth in off-highway vehicle use is staggering. Between 1995 and 2008, Colorado’s OHV registration program charted a 223 percent increase in registered vehicles—now at about 133,000 OHVs each year—which observers chalk up to the increased affordability and capability of machines and riders’ growing recognition of the state’s vast suitable terrain. The astronomical increase has had some overwhelming impacts. The vehicles’ inherent versatility and ability to go anywhere, fast, combined with a lack of clearly marked trails has translated into massive habitat fragmentation over entire landscapes. Off-trail riding and reckless behavior can also harm streambeds and water quality, spread invasive weeds and disturb archaeological sites. It only takes a few negligent jeeps, motorbikes or ATVs to scar landscapes and make the whole motorized community look like scofflaws.
Environmentalists and “quiet-use” recreation groups, who advocate for hiking and backpacking, backcountry hunting and fishing, cross-country skiing, and other “human-powered” activities, also contend that the noisy engines ruin the tranquility of open lands and contribute to air pollution. On-the-ground conflicts and debates over the best use of approximately $3 million in annual registration funds—for trail construction versus resource protection and monitoring—between OHV riders and quiet-use groups have escalated, but after years of reactive management, public-lands officials, with support from all corners of the recreation spectrum, are resolving some of those issues. The federal land-management agencies have undertaken travel management plans of an unprecedented scope. The U.S. Forest Service announced its Travel Management Rule in 2005, requiring all national forests and grasslands to identify and designate trails and areas open to motorized use and to restrict cross-country and off-trail travel. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management aims to have similar, comprehensive travel planning in place by 2015. Corey Corbett, manager of operations for the nonprofit Colorado OffHighway Vehicle Coalition, understands the need to manage for different uses, but he laments the loss of some historic and popular OHV routes and worries new wilderness designations could further reduce access. “There’s a huge growing demand for off-highway use in Colorado and a declining supply” of motorized trails, Corbett says. In order to protect its reputation and rein in careless or uninformed riders, the motorized community is promoting
Colorado’s multitude of recreational users may share a passion for the outdoors, but they are driven by different sets of values, and according to Michael Manfredo, head of the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources department at Colorado State University, they don’t necessarily seek the same thing from their experiences. While some may restore their spirits while hiking or snowshoeing in a quiet, unaltered environment, others find release in downhill skiing at busy resorts or jeeping on old mining roads that lace the high country. Manfredo’s research looks at the role of attitudes and values to yield insight into why conflicts arise over the use of natural resources. His research team believes a broad-based values shift is underway in the United States. As populations modernize, becoming more urban, educated and wealthier, Manfredo says they are moving away from a domination8
responsibility within its ranks, and the coalition supported a new state rule to control vehicle noise, which went into effect this past July. The Responsible Recreation Foundation’s flagship program, Stay the Trail Colorado, is an offshoot of the coalition’s educational branch. Stay the Trail focuses on education, bringing an informational trailer around to OHV hot spots, and has developed an extensive state map detailing legal motorized travel access. Program staff meet with OHV clubs around the state to distribute maps and educate riders on trail etiquette and new rules. Jack Placchi, the BLM’s trails and travel management coordinator for Colorado, says the combination of consistent state funding with on-the-ground support from motorized and non-motorized recreation stakeholders is helping to maintain, sign and monitor trails and to reduce conflicts. Enforcement to keep people on designated routes, however, is still lacking, says Roz McClellan of the Rocky Mountain Recreation Initiative, who spent the past year campaigning for part of the $3 million in registration funds to be dedicated specifically to enforcement. In mid-July, the Colorado State Parks board moved to insert enforcement language into guidelines that help determine where the OHV fund money, distributed through grants, ultimately goes, though McClellan called the language weak and says the OHV coalition has since sued the board to reverse the change. Without enforcement, McClellan believes there will always be maverick riders who flout the designated trail system the BLM and USFS are trying to establish. q —Joshua Zaffos
oriented perspective toward nature to embrace “mutualist values.” That shift, evident in Colorado, includes viewing wildlife as having the same right to exist as humans possess and appreciating natural resources more for aesthetic—versus traditional utilitarian—values. When such a shift occurs in places where utilitarian values have long prevailed, such as Colorado, it is accompanied by sharper conflict, reflecting different generational views and urban-rural divides, Manfredo says. It can be tough policy terrain to negotiate for management agencies, which are historically oriented toward traditional values and resource development. On top of changing values, the sheer number of fresh air-seekers pooling from a growing population naturally exert more pressure on public lands, especially in the most readily accessible areas. When their sought-after experience
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Kevin Moloney
Chuck Ogilby, who owns and operates Avalanche Ranch on the Crystal River near Redstone as well as Shrine Mountain Inn at Vail Pass, was an early member of the Vail Pass Task Force.
is marred by other users with different expectations, conflict often becomes more vociferous. Dean Winstanley, director of Colorado State Parks, sees such conflict vividly at two of the state’s largest and busiest parks, Cherry Creek and Chatfield Reservoir. Since they were set aside more than 50 years ago, both parks have become “radically urbanized,” serving the diverse recreation needs of Denver-area residents, says Winstanley. They are especially popular among dog owners who treasure the huge expanse of designated offleash space. But the impacts on resources, as well as conflicts among hikers, equestrians and mountain bikers, have become a headache for park managers. To address these conflicts, the agency has developed a management plan for each park, paying attention to input solicited regularly from various users. Trail crews, funded by park entrance fees, post signs and use other forms of visitor education to head off potential conflicts, but these simple methods don’t always work, says Winstanley. At Cherry Creek, for example, fences are being erected to demarcate off-leash areas for dogs when signs have been ignored. In some instances, Winstanley says trained facilitators have been called in to help achieve the compromises necessary for solutions. For managers of federal public lands, four-legged friends are less of an issue than conflicts between motorized and non-motorized users. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have identified unmanaged motorized recreation as the biggest threat to public lands nationally, says Aaron Clark, recreation campaign director for the Southern Rockies Conservation Alliance. The alliance coordinates 26 Colorado organizations’ efforts to promote better public lands travel management within the state. The organization’s goal is not to remove motorized vehicles, says Clark. “Our main goal is to put off-road vehicles into places that are sustainable, away from sensitive species and habitats and where they don’t overwhelm the resource for other visitors.” When a four-wheeler encounters a hiker, it’s inconsequential for the motorized user, Clark notes. But the noise and odor of a single vehicle, let alone a fleet of them, can completely alter a hiker’s experience in a way that even horses or mountain bikes do not. The only way to address that impact may be separating uses, says Clark. “You simply have an inherent incompatibility that you cannot mitigate.” Despite the fact that motorized users constitute only 10 to 15 percent of total recreation users on Colorado public lands, they have access to 80 percent of that space, says Clark. The problem is “an ocean of motorized use on our public lands with islands of
quiet. Our public lands should offer the opposite.” Achieving such a goal bucks historic trends in federal land management, Clark acknowledges. “The original goal was to create access,” he says. But decades ago, motorized recreational vehicles weren’t a presence to be reckoned with. “Now, the mere driving of a vehicle has become recreation.” A 15-year-old project at Vail Pass is an oft-heralded success story for overcoming the motorized/non-motorized impasse. Responding to rising tensions among winter sports enthusiasts of various stripes, the Forest Service assembled a group of concerned citizens, some with economic interests at the pass, in the mid-1990s. The Vail Pass Task Force has since become a model for addressing user conflicts, according to Chuck Ogilby, former president of the task force. Ogilby, who is co-owner of the Shrine Mountain Inn atop Vail Pass and a board member of the 10th Mountain Division Hut Association—a system of 29 backcountry huts in the Colorado Rockies connected by 350 miles of trails— helped spearhead the task force effort. In addition to cross-country skiers, snowshoers and a growing number of snowmobiles with the capacity to push ever farther into stashes of deep powder, there was a commercial helicopter operator, a commercial snow cat service and private snow cats competing for space on the 55,000-acre winter recreation area at Vail Pass. “The non-motorized group was really frustrated,” says Ogilby, and they beseeched the Forest Service to cordon off some portion of the area from the whine of engines that marred their backcountry experience. It was not uncommon for cross-country skiers and snowmobilers to get into yelling matches in the parking lot, a flashpoint for conflict as users funneled through the same narrow access point to their winter playground. In the case of Vail Pass, separating use areas has proved the key to reducing conflict. The task force’s efforts led to the delineation of areas for motorized and non-motorized users, including trails as well as large, open play areas. “It took a long time,” Ogilby says. “It was painful.” Initially, compliance was voluntary. Enforcement was nonexistent until the advent of a federal fee demonstration program during the 1997-98 season, the first such winter project on the White River National Forest. The purpose of the program is to collect fees—currently $6 per person per day—that help maintain and manage heavily used recreation areas while enhancing visitor experiences. The program’s success at Vail Pass is partially due to the way user fees were allocated. Half were spent on enforcing the rules, including fines for closure violations; the other half were spent on
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grooming motorized trails. “There was equal value perceived for both groups,” says Ogilby. Despite growing numbers of snowmobiles in recent years— including the advent of hybrid “sled-skiers,” who access more remote backcountry skiing terrain via machine—the situation at Vail Pass “gets better every year,” says Ogilby. Improved signage results in fewer altercations, and he says, “Everybody is getting more and more used to the program.” Segregating use has been implemented in other settings as well. At Bestasso Open Space west of Boulder where Dziezynski likes to mountain bike, Saturdays and Wednesdays are reserved exclusively for hikers. That removes their anxiety over encounters with bikes hurtling down the single track. But no days are set aside just for bikers—not the fairest of solutions in Dziezynski’s view. He would like the freedom to ride at higher speeds without worrying about scaring—or barreling into—a hiker in his path. Sometimes mixed approaches don’t work. At Richmond Ridge, a stretch of Forest Service land on the back side of Aspen Mountain, two sets of powderhounds are holding out for the long-awaited release of the White River National Forest travel management plan to learn which group will prevail. Sled-skiers want the right to use their own snowmobiles to access prime terrain that skiers with Aspen Mountain Powder Tours currently enjoy. The tour ferries skiers via $350 snowcat excursions made possible through a permit arrangement with the Forest Service, an arrangement the sled-skiers decry as an exclusive and unfair use of public land. Efforts to achieve agreement between user groups were not successful, says Rich Doak, recreation, heritage and wilderness officer for the White River National Forest, who does not foresee a compromise. Such an impasse is the least desirable scenario, he admits, when his agency is forced to sit in the middle and make a decision for one side or another. “It’s always better when we can bring two opposing sides together and get them to talk,” but users “must be willing to bend and flex.” The White River National Forest’s travel management plan, expected in early 2011, attempts to create high-quality recreation experiences for particular sets of users in specific areas, says Doak. For example, if off-road vehicle riders are privileged in an area, trails and campsites will be designed around their needs. Hikers and non-motorized campers won’t be excluded, but their interests will be secondary. Communicating where to go to attain a desired experience will be essential in creating the best possible recreational opportunities for diverse sets of users, Doak says. “The key is not to set up false expectations.” If hikers know they may encounter horses or mountain bikes 10
iStock.com
Heath Mackay
Hearing little more than the sound of skis sliding through snow is part of backcountry skiing’s appeal.
or dogs off leash, they are less likely to be upset. Sometimes, signs can accomplish that task. Other times, rangers or other onsite personnel in addition to permitting systems that limit visitors and fund enforcement and maintenance are necessary. Katie Stevens, manager of the BLM’s McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area near Fruita, believes the fee-based permit system currently sought by the agency for weekend use on the popular Ruby-Horsethief section of the Colorado River will improve the user experience there. Currently, too many people are vying for limited space. The 20-mile stretch of river between Loma and the Colorado-Utah state line saw more than 20,000 user days and more than 18,000 nights of camping in 2009. Multiple groups converge on the same campsites, human and dog waste pollutes fragile riparian habitat, and mature cottonwood galleries along the river have been lost to unattended campfires. The BLM’s management goal for the area is to provide an immersed-in-nature experience that reduces stress and encourages environmental sensitivity for boaters—a near-impossible task with too much use and too little oversight. The proposed $7 per-person permit fee will go a long way toward enabling Stevens’ staff to facilitate the restorative experience most users seek. Not everyone supports using fees to regulate use and finance management of public lands. According to Kitty Benzar, president of the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, the public lands agencies already have sufficient budgets to do their job. She implies that the extra funds are being used to “overdevelop and urbanize our public lands.” And while she’s not opposed to using a permit system to limit use in popular areas, such permitting shouldn’t be determined monetarily or certain users will be displaced for the wrong reasons: “[It] undermines the entire concept of public lands where everyone has access and is welcome.” While many outdoor recreation enthusiasts may find more structure, rules and fees contrary to their desire for a “natural experience,” the fact is that Colorado’s public lands are already in danger of being loved too much. And, says Winstanley, “It’s only going to get more complicated.” Jay Heeter, who coordinates the Backcountry Snowsports Initiative for the Colorado Mountain Club, says, “The biggest necessity is a willingness to see one another’s point of view. We all love to use these lands. The question is, how do we define the greatest good for the greatest number of people?” To preserve a future for recreation, that question must be broadened for the benefit of Colorado’s incredible recreational resources themselves. Ultimately, if those resources are not wellmanaged, they may not be in a condition for users down the road to enjoy, no matter what their preferred activity may be. q
Loud and fast, snowmobiles cruise deep into backcountry and provide a thrilling ride.
C o l o r a d o f o u n d at i o n f o r W at e r E d u c at i o n
Nathan Fey
By Jerd Smith With additional reporting by Jayla Poppleton
Fighting for the Right To float or forbid: the controversial line between public access and property rights
Kevin Moloney
on Colorado’s streams
At the beginning of the Taylor River Ranch property, a steel cable spans the river just high enough for boaters to duck under. Signs posted by landowners, visible along numerous Colorado streams, imply legal action or criminal prosecution against boaters who float through their property (above inset and opposite page).
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trespassing signs posted along Colorado’s streams and rivers signal boaters that they are about to cross through controversial waters. Some are crisp and formal; others are scrawled in spray paint on aging plywood. The message to boaters is the same: keep off the premises. At times the simple visual message has been accompanied by aggressive action. Boaters say they have faced firearms pointed in their direction and watched bullets skip across the water. Commercial raft guides have witnessed a client hooked in the cheek following an intentional cast by a guest at a private fishing resort. Kayakers have gotten caught in barbed wire they believe was erected maliciously. At the same time, ranchers say boaters have unnecessarily cut fencing they use to keep their cows in. Fishermen staying at riverside resorts have complained about boats disrupting fish pools. And private landowners have called outfitters’ clients obnoxious. Such conflicts have cropped up across Colorado, from the Arkansas River to the Yampa, from South Boulder Creek to the Taylor River. At their core, each questions how a public resource—the state’s hallmark rivers and streams—can be used by the public while protecting the property rights of those whose lands run alongside, and under, the streams. This year, after a 2009 confrontation between landowners and rafters in the Taylor River Valley near Gunnison, Colorado Rep. Kathleen Curry attempted, with House Bill 1188, to pass a new law that would have more clearly defined public access to rivers, at least for commercial rafters. Her bill drew hundreds of people to the stately marble halls of the Old Colorado Supreme Court chambers in downtown Denver to listen to the heated testimony echoing from hearing rooms. “You had to search even to find a place to stand,” said Doug Kemper, executive director of the Colorado Water Congress, a nonprofit group representing water interests across the state. Hearings ran late into the night. Constitutional ballot initiatives, four from pro-rafting groups and 20 from private land coalitions, each trying to protect their interests, flooded the Secretary of State’s office even as the legislation was 12
C o l o r a d o f o u n d at i o n f o r W at e r E d u c at i o n
Nathan Fey
No
still being drafted, according to Kemper, whose organization was asked to weigh in. HB 1188 would have sharply limited the ability of landowners to press trespassing charges against boaters given certain conditions. It also would have made it easier to prove a pattern of use that would give commercial rafters legal access to streams that they had traditionally paddled. And it would have added to existing protection under Colorado’s recreational use statute for landowners against liability. But as the bill passed through the Legislature, it was reduced to merely remanding the issue to the Colorado Water Congress for study, and it died in the Senate. Legal experts say the bill failed because it tried to declare that there had always been a right to float on Colorado rivers, something that cannot be established without a strong legal foundation. In a sense, the bill as introduced went too far for some, by including any river stretch that had been commercially rafted at least once prior to 2010. On the other hand, it didn’t go far enough, focusing narrowly on commercial use and excluding private boaters. But Curry said the bill died because of misinformation distributed by private landowners and agricultural interests who opposed the measure. “They said every river in the state would be opened up for every kind of use. But members of the House knew it was limited to commercial rafting on historically run rivers,” she said. Nothing, in the end, happened at the Capitol. Weeks later, far from Denver, a confidential settlement on the Taylor was reached, after Gov. Bill Ritter strongly urged both parties to come up with a solution. The settlement, which allowed some floating to resume, will last for four years. Each side of the statewide dispute agreed to withdraw its ballot initiatives while the search for a solution continues. “We are hopeful that mediation [on the Taylor] will calm things down and drive people who have issues to come together,” said Bob Hamel, a commercial raft outfitter and president of the Colorado River Outfitters Association, which represents 170 commercial rafting companies. “But the settlement didn’t solve anything. It just put a band-aid on the hot spot.” Gov. Ritter has formed a 17-member task force that will develop a process for settling disputes on a case-by-case basis, under the notion that a one-sizefits-all approach is unlikely to work across all of Colorado. But outfitters like Matt Brown, one of the parties involved in the Taylor River agreement, are wary
Kevin Moloney
Owner of Scenic River Tours, Matt Brown is party to the settlement reached on the Taylor that will allow his company to continue rafting the stretch of river it has guided for three decades, at least for the next three seasons.
that the “goodwill” process Colorado has historically relied on to allow boating on streams crossing through private property could unravel. “Sooner or later we’re going to run into someone who will not budge on this and that will end it all,” said Brown, who owns Scenic River Tours. “Really, the basis of the whole dispute,” he said, “is that landowners firmly believe they have the right to exclude people from floating through, while everybody else firmly believes they have a right to float down the river. You can’t put those two groups together to come to a compromise unless people know exactly what the law and their rights are.” Up to this point, the problem is that the law remains unclear.
Who is in the right?
In the United States, the navigability of a river is key to determining who can use rivers. If a stream is navigable by federal standards, then it is controlled by the state and open to the public. Such massive waterways as the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri were declared navigable early on because they connected states to each other and were used to conduct commerce. Colorado, for the most part, doesn’t have those kinds of rivers. Though its eight major river basins are the genesis of a water supply that serves millions of people from Los Angeles to New Orleans, the rivers that are born here are too puny to navigate except by smaller, private craft like rafts, kayaks and canoes. Most of Colorado’s waterways are not formally considered navigable, and as a result, where streams traverse through private property, courts
have decided the landowners technically own both the streambed and its banks. Although they don’t own the water flowing through their property, the issue of whether someone can float down “their” stretch of river is sticky. Modern rules governing Colorado rafting have been shaped for 31 years by a state Supreme Court ruling known as People v. Emmert, in which the trespassing conviction of three private fishermen was upheld. In this 1979 ruling, the court said the Colorado Constitution granted public ownership of state rivers and streams only to protect the power of water right holders to take water from the stream through appropriated water rights, not to grant public access to the waterway. But even then, the two dissenting justices cried foul, arguing that the decision failed to address the public nature of the streams. One of the dissenters, Justice Carrigan, wrote: “The majority opinion dramatically alters the law in Colorado as it has been perceived by the many boaters, rafters and tubers who for years have sought rest, recreation and relaxation on our beautiful streams and rivers…Those who in our state constitution dedicated our natural streams ‘to the people of the state’ were not elitists. They did not reserve the enjoyment of these great natural resources to the few. Nor did they exclude from such pleasures all but the few who owned land on stream banks. If the recreational use of streams was not among those uses for which streams were reserved to the public, it is impossible to conceive what uses were contemplated and reserved by the constitution.” The majority of the court, however, declared that the public did not have the H e a d w at e r s | Fa l l 2 0 1 0
“Really, the basis of the whole dispute is that landowners firmly believe they have the right to exclude people from floating through, while everybody else firmly believes they have a right to float down the river.” —Matt Brown, Scenic River Tours
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Kevin Moloney
Steve Roberts owns Harmel’s Resort on the Taylor River and is tired of commercial raft companies floating over his 3/4-mile stretch of riverbed property.
The law remains muddy on the issue of civil trespass, where a landowner could take a boater to court to have him or her directed to stop running the river.
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right to float on a nonnavigable stream through private property without the landowner’s permission. Anyone who did so could be convicted of criminal trespass, whereby they could be arrested and prosecuted. But, after Emmert’s conviction the Legislature amended the state statute defining “premises” for the purpose of criminal trespass to explicitly include only the stream banks and beds while deliberately excluding the water itself. And so, the law has been largely interpreted to allow boating through private property as long as contact with the streams’ banks or bed is avoided and boaters don’t get out of their boat. Incidental contact, where boaters hit a rock or accidentally touch part of the streambed could technically still be considered trespassing. But in Gunnison County, home of the Taylor River, the local sheriff and district attorney have issued statements saying they will not try to prosecute anyone for bumping a rock, or even getting stuck on one, as long as their intent is to keep moving downstream.
Civil trespass
The law remains muddy on the issue of civil trespass, where a landowner could take a boater to court to have him or her directed to stop running the river. In 2001, Gateview Ranch sued Cannibal Outdoors for civil trespass on the Lake Fork of the Gunnison near Lake City. A pre-trial ruling issued by the water court stated, in effect, that the Legislature’s prior change to the criminal code did not deprive landowners of their right to maintain an action for civil trespass against boaters. However, nothing in the case was binding; Cannibal went out of business before a final judgment was
reached. Brown believes it was legal costs that drove Cannibal out: “They basically ran the outfitter dry.” The confidential agreement Brown is party to on the Taylor came about after a riverside ranch, now called Wilder on the Taylor, was bought by an out-of-state developer, who promptly determined to exclude Brown’s Scenic River Tours and another outfitter, Three River Resorts, from running the 2-mile stretch of river crossing through the property—a stretch they had floated through for three decades. Brown has held a federal permit to raft the Taylor since 1977—most of the 7-mile stretch runs through U.S. Forest Service land— which limits the number of clients he can ferry downstream each season, a number that he says hasn’t changed in these 33 years. To reach the agreement, Brown had to cut those numbers back significantly. Now, Steve Roberts, whose family has owned Harmel’s Resort on the Taylor since 1957, is threatening legal action. Brown says he used to take all the Harmel folks rafting, until they parted ways following what he calls a “disagreement in business.” Roberts had allowed private rafters to float the 3/4-mile stretch of river running through his property for years, but after investing $100,000 to improve trout habitat and re-stocking the river each year for his clients’ enjoyment, he objects to commercial rafters floating through. Roberts, whose clients also go rafting farther upstream, says he’s always been a supporter of rafting, but not if it harms his fishery. He believes commercial outfitters should at least be required to pay him for access and is so fed up with the situation that he’s placed the resort up for sale. Brown is equally frustrated: “Just tell me what the rules are, and I’ll play by them.”
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Boaters report continued threats from landowners taking the matter into their own hands—they’ve faced armed property owners on the Blue and Taylor rivers, barbed wire strung across boatworthy streams like the Uncompahgre, South Platte and St. Vrain right at head height, and trees they think may have been intentionally dropped across the Elk River to create dangerous “strainers.” And some property owners have threatened to file trespassing lawsuits or have tried to have river outfitter’s permits revoked, even on river stretches like Willow Creek in Routt County that have been commercially boated for decades. Meanwhile, property owners grow increasingly frustrated over their inability to prevent what they view as trespassing into their private property.
Access permitted and denied
Colorado boaters can legally float through private lands without risk of civil trespass either via easement… or by receiving permission from landowners.
Kevin Moloney
As of this year, Colorado is one of only two states that has not resolved the issue of floating through private lands. North Dakota is the other. In Wyoming, boaters have broad public access to streams because the Wyoming Constitution grants ownership of the water to the public. The same is true in Montana and New Mexico. Idaho has broad public access too. And in Utah, incidental contact and portaging are allowed; the only prohibited activity is walking on the streambed without landowner permission, and even that was permitted for a brief period, before the Utah Legislature moved this spring to reverse a state Supreme Court decision from 2009. Colorado boaters can legally float through private lands without risk of civil trespass either via easement, where it
can be proven that use has occurred routinely or continuously over at least 18 years, or by receiving permission from landowners. Sometimes, the issue is gaining access to the river, and boaters often utilize public put-ins and take-outs, floating through private land in-between. State agencies, such as the Division of Wildlife, sometimes pay landowners for access to streams so that people may fish, for instance. On the Yampa, Colorado State Parks manages access points it has acquired through easements and clearly marks segments of private and public water along the riverbanks using color-coded signs so boaters can be respectfully aware. On public lands, boating is typically legal, though commercial trips are often regulated through permit systems and are then closely monitored by state and federal agencies. On the Arkansas, the most heavily rafted river in the United States, according to Hamel from the Colorado River Outfitters Association, rafting is governed by a series of agreements that are overseen by Colorado State Parks. Rafting on most rivers is regulated by a patchwork of local, state and federal agencies. In many areas, limits on commercial rafting help protect the peace. On one section of the Arkansas, where Hamel rafts, commercial rafters have to be off the river by 5 p.m. And in particularly sensitive areas, such as the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park or the Cache La Poudre, where Wild and Scenic designation is in place, raft companies have carefully planned launch windows, some as brief as 30 minutes up to two hours, according to David Costlow, who
Wade angling, such as this fisherman is enjoying on the Taylor River, is not allowed on private streambeds in Colorado without express permission from the landowner. H e a d w at e r s | Fa l l 2 0 1 0
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Nathan Fey
Warning boaters against floating through, the Taylor River Ranch posts a sternly-worded sign and runs a steel cable across the river. Whether they and other landowners can legally prohibit access to the stream’s surface remains contested.
runs Rocky Mountain Adventures in Fort Collins. In that time, outfitters must unload their boats, settle their guests and move their vehicles to minimize disruptions. Such limits are helpful in balancing use of the rivers, but not in all cases. As fishing ranch owners like Roberts consider the investments they have made in providing a serene, high-quality fishing experience for guests, they’re fighting for their constitutional right to deny access to boaters, whether they be private or commercial. John Hill, a long-time water attorney who represented the landowner in the Taylor River dispute, and his partner Dick Bratton say key to the river access conundrum is privacy and the ability for private property owners to keep people out. “The most important attribute of private property is the right to exclude others,” Bratton explained. “If the government is going to try to take that away, then it is going to have to pay.” He suggests landowners should be compensated for relinquishing a portion of their private property right. Boating rights, he says, will also have to co-exist with the rights of ranchers to maintain cattle fencing in rivers and with fishing club owners who want to protect investments in fisheries and stream habitat. And Bratton argues that these are as important, and practical, as the rights of boaters.
Moving beyond disagreement
Dave Johnson, who has guided fishing trips on the Roaring Fork for 15 years and owns Crystal Fly Shop in Carbondale, thinks floaters should give private landowners the respect they deserve, including picking up trash, not getting out of the boat and minimizing “noise pollution.” People in the Roaring Fork Valley are “sympathetic to the 16
floating public,” he said, and “no one is inhibiting public access in this valley.” The town of Carbondale, recognizing the importance of the fishing industry locally, has even required landowners to provide easements up front as a condition to having new developments approved in some instances. And in Garfield County, several subdivisions have voluntarily offered similar fishing easements, which “greases the skids” when it comes to gaining approval, according to one land-use planner there. Johnson thinks if legislation is necessary in the future, it should apply to the general, non-guided public. But he also says, “If people are going to be buying boats, they need to educate themselves in order to be compliant.” American Whitewater is producing a video to inform its membership about the laws, boaters’ rights, and how to manage conflict and “be a good neighbor,” said the organization’s Colorado Stewardship Program director Nathan Fey. “We want to teach them not to infringe on someone else’s rights but still be within their own.” The organization is also proposing alternatives to barbed wire that could keep cattle from escaping confinement without posing a public safety hazard; they suggest a “curtain” made of PVC pipe hung vertically from a high wire across the river. Cows would see it as a barrier while boaters could sneak through. On the Arkansas River, Colorado State Parks, through its partnership with the Bureau of Land Management at the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, helped a rancher place large boulders at river’s edge to keep cattle from crossing the property line via the river without using hazardous barbed wire. Both groups cite other examples where individual agreements to allow boating while mitigating a landowner’s
just concerns have been worked out. Recently, Colorado State Parks purchased a small piece of land from a property owner near Buena Vista who was concerned about trespassing and liability related to boaters getting out to scout and portage around an irrigation ditch and dam pourover. The landowners were also genuinely concerned for the boaters’ safety. State Parks used the riverside land to create a small portage trail that is well-marked and will soon be delineated from the rest of the property by a short rock wall. American Whitewater worked out an agreement with the private fishing club Sportsmen’s Paradise in 2008, resolving a decades old conflict on the South Platte River. Historically, kayakers would put in on public land upstream of the club, then paddle through 2 miles of fishing club property to reach their destination: Wildcat Canyon and its world-renowned Class V whitewater. The frustrated club members had hung a trash rack from a bridge, creating a dangerous obstacle the kayakers had to portage around, and tried to have the boaters arrested. Recognizing it was going too far, the club now allows boaters to drive through its gated property, with conditions, in order to reach an alternate river put-in on the downstream end of the property. “It’s a unique case,” said Fey, “but it’s what the governor is looking for with his task force.” Other groups have come together or are in the process of forming to address local access and private property issues. At the Arkansas Recreation Headwaters Area, a citizen’s task force operates proactively to resolve conflicts. It’s composed, says Hamel, a bit “like Noah’s Ark.” There are two representatives each from seven stakeholder groups, including private boaters, commercial boaters, private landowners, environmental groups and local governments who meet five times a year. The task force will hear landowners’ complaints and investigate. If a commercial outfitter is in the wrong, Colorado State Parks can revoke permits or place them on probation. In other instances, solutions like the portage trail are devised. Key to its success, says the recreation area’s park manager Rob White, is that “everybody’s buying in.” In western Colorado, the diverse coalition Club 20, which calls itself the “voice of the Western Slope,” has added a subcommittee to look at voluntary agreements between landowners and boaters. Kent Vertrees, a longtime avid boater and commercial guide who recently joined the subcommittee, says they will be
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looking at existing agreements around the state, fine-tuning strategies and trying to develop other win-win options, but that such outcomes are always dependent on willing landowners.
Long-term, blanket solutions
Despite existing win-win agreements, whether this kind of conflict can continually be resolved via negotiation isn’t clear. Lori Potter, a natural resources attorney and an advocate for the public’s right to float, says negotiated agreements that have opened and maintained access to some private stream segments are uncertain and difficult to achieve. “Negotiated agreements have worked in some instances and failed miserably in others,” Potter said. “For rivers on which there is a series of private owners, such as the South Platte, it is extremely difficult to resolve the issue by negotiation because there are so many different landowners with different philosophies and agendas, and each could demand a separate agreement with different terms.” Hill thinks incentives for private landowners to grant access, such as tax breaks similar to those used for landowners who agree not to develop their land to preserve its natural beauty for the public’s benefit, may be useful. But ultimately, the courts will likely have to determine whose rights prevail. Mark Squillace, director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado, would like to see the question of navigability for Colorado’s rivers resolved legally, as it has been in other states using a federal test for navigability known as the Daniel Ball Standard, by which rivers must be considered navigable by law when they are navigable in
responsibility
isn’t clear. Some believe Colorado’s growing population makes it inevitable that conflicts will arise as more people seek to use the same streams and that when they do, existing conflicts in the law will be uncovered. Kemper has a different take. This year’s controversy, he says, masked what has been more than 30 years of reasonable accommodation on the rivers, agreements that no one knows about “because they are successful.” “The existing law has been what it’s been at least since Emmert. If you seek a legislative change, are you going to fix the issue or make it worse? There is some uncertainty about this access issue, but in attempts to clarify it, you have to be careful not to create another set of problems,” Kemper said. Curry believes the mediation process Ritter has initiated holds promise but that the Legislature remains the proper place to resolve the issue, or at least give guidance to the courts, and it demonstrated with painful clarity this year that it cannot do so. “This is dead in the Legislature until some more trust can be built,” she said. Until the rules are better defined, property owners, outfitters and private boaters alike are swinging between offensive and defensive postures in the battle for their rights. Some are standing firm on philosophical ground. Others are trying to walk a fine line toward peaceful resolution. Will an overriding truce be found? Bratton thinks not: “Until there is litigation to determine what the law is, this isn’t going to be settled.” And that means that use of the streams where no trespassing signs dot the riverbanks will likely continue to be disputed, at least for the foreseeable future. q
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HEADWATERS Trim: 7.375" x 3.333" Bleed: None Live: NA
zero waste
fact as highways for commerce. States such as Alaska have determined that commercial recreation is sufficient to establish navigability, he said. “It seems to me that there is a compelling argument that if a stream is capable of being used in its natural condition, as it existed at statehood, then it is navigable. And all of this goes away.” Bratton and Hill disagree. Historically, it has been difficult to establish navigability based on such activities as log floating and trading, they say. And so far, no one has been willing to pay the $300,000 to $500,000 it would take to research and bring a case to determine navigability based on commercial uses. Even if Colorado remains a “universe” of nonnavigable rivers, as one lawyer put it, many believe the courts need to weigh in on the question. “A basic legal framework, enacted by the Legislature or decreed by the courts, would level the playing field and make it feasible for both rafters and landowners to come to the table with neither one holding all of the cards,” said Potter. Such a legal framework would need to clarify some issues for landowners: whether they have the ability to protect assets such as private fisheries, what barriers constitute criminal obstruction, do they need additional liability protection from instances where a boater might incur injuries floating through the property, and how to protect their privacy. Similarly, rafters would need more definitive protection against incidental contact and guidance on whether certain activities are allowable: dropping anchor, eddying out, standing in the river to dislodge a stuck raft, fishing or portaging around hazardous obstructions. Why 2010 has been so tumultuous
A group of private boaters takes advantage of reservoir releases to float through the spectacular canyons of the lower Dolores River. Unless McPhee Dam releases a minimum of 800 cubic feet per second, the river is too low for rafting; from 2001 to 2004 and again in 2006, there were no boatable days, even for kayakers, below McPhee.
Going With the Flow Water management adapts to include recreation By George Sibley With additional reporting by Jayla Poppleton
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s the story goes, a group of private boaters had put in for a two- to three-day trip down the Dolores River in southwestern Colorado. Forecasts for releases from the McPhee Dam upstream were favorable, and the group had everything timed and loaded. But the water didn’t last, and the group found themselves stranded down a river, without a river. Whether a true tale or urban legend, the prevalence of this campfire story has dogged boaters on the Dolores River for years. On a river considered by American Whitewater to be an icon of the West, second only to the Grand Canyon as a uniquely southwestern, multi-day float with high-quality rapids, unpredictable flow management has led to a steadily declining boating industry. Although some of that decline can be attributed to the “dry 2000s,” whitewater recreation on the Dolores has effectively shrunk by 75 percent from what it was during the “wet 1990s.” “People come from all over the world to float the Dolores,” said Nathan Fey, director of American Whitewater’s Colorado Stewardship Program. “If they could better predict flows it would have far-reaching benefits to the area.” The Colorado River Outfitters Association reported that in 2008, with 868 commercial users on the Dolores, direct expenditures in local communities were nearly $100,000, with a total economic impact of $246,000. Statewide, water-based recreation—including boating, fishing and skiing, to the extent it has become a form of water-based recreation due to the growing importance of snowmaking—is a multi-billion dollar industry. But despite its strong presence today in Colorado’s economy, water-based recreation is struggling for access in places where most of the water has long been appropriated for more traditional agricultural, municipal and industrial uses. Such uses are fundamentally at odds with recreation because they take water out of the rivers to use it while water-based recreation, with the exception of snowmaking for skiing, depends on water being in the rivers and reservoirs. Water managers at all levels, from local towns and conservancies to the largest federal projects, are still in the throes of working out the complex challenges stemming from recreation’s new demands.
Kate Thompson
Down on the Dolores
The primary purpose of the Dolores Project, consisting of McPhee Dam and Reservoir on the Dolores River, is to provide a dependable water supply for irrigable lands outside the Dolores Basin, in the Montezuma Valley of the San Juan Basin, where irrigators hold pre-1900 rights on most of the river’s water. It also has some municipal users and delivers to the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation. But since the Dolores Project first began delivering water in 1986, much has changed in the management picture. Additional obligations for the project were laid on one by one. The original Environmental Impact Statement acknowledged that building McPhee would impact recreational boating downstream, and stipulated that the Bureau of Reclamation should operate the reservoir to maximize rafting days. Now whitewater boaters in the canyons below the dam are lobbying for more predictable releases of excess “spill” water they feel should be timed such that they can take advantage. Fishermen, meanwhile, desiring a healthy sport fishery downstream of the dam—one of the project’s authorized purposes—are concerned as the reservoir’s designated “fish pool,” set aside specifically for ongoing releases to benefit trout, has fallen below the targeted volume. In addition, the Bureau of Land Management is revisiting previously identified
“outstandingly remarkable values” that qualify the Dolores for Wild and Scenic River designation, which implies proscriptive federal involvement in river management. And three “sensitive” native fish species in the lower Dolores could also draw a larger federal presence if they become “endangered.” All of these competing pressures come home on the Dolores Water Conservancy District, which is contracted by Reclamation to manage McPhee Dam. The district essentially operates McPhee according to a “fill and spill” policy: fill the reservoir and only then, if there’s additional inflow, let excess water go downstream. Flows below the dam for most of the year—or all year during dry years—are insufficient for boating. The district says rafters need at least 800 cubic feet per second on the Dolores. This year, there were 11 such days, and only four at the rafters’ preferred level of 1,000 cfs or more. During wet years, when forecasted runoff is high, the operational procedure shifts to “spill and fill” in an effort to avoid overfilling the reservoir and creating a host of other problems. District manager Mike Preston, whose first year on the job was 2008, a wet “spill and fill” year, says he was initially popular with boaters. “We released 185,000 acre feet over 85 days,” he said. The past two years have been drier, with only 30,000 acre feet spilled in 2010. While the district wants to please boaters, Preston says it will always err on the side of filling the reservoir for its municipal and agricultural users. The district is, however, confronting the reality that it has more users to serve than its traditional ones. Reclamation formed a spill committee that includes recreational stakeholders to assess snowmelt projections and the likelihood of filling the reservoir as well as how to handle any excess water. Still, such planning doesn’t guarantee a positive outcome for boaters. In late May and early June of this year, just a few weeks after the committee determined McPhee wouldn’t have any extra water, the district spilled above 800 cfs, enough for kayakers and rafters, for seven days with several more 1,000-plus days coming a few days later. The problem, says Fey, is that only locals paying close attention can take advantage of such last-minute, unannounced releases. Fey views the committee as a potential opportunity, however, to examine whether collecting additional data could make projections more accurate and allow Reclamation to take more risk in scheduling releases. Preston says he is all for having the best data possible, but that some variables will always defy predictability, especially temperature. He says the line between “fill and spill” and “spill and fill,” however, could be tweaked. The district has facilitated the participation of other concerned citizens through a different venue. Former, longtime district manager John Porter summarized the motivation for doing so in a sentence: “If anyone says they are a stakeholder, then they are, and you’d better listen to them and figure out how to talk with them.” Porter followed his own advice when Chuck Wanner of the San Juan Citizens Alliance’s Dolores River Coalition approached him in 2002 about environmental and recreational issues on the lower Dolores. Together they set up what has become the Dolores River Dialogue, a gathering of stakeholders working to “improve the ecological conditions downstream of McPhee Reservoir while honoring water rights, protecting agricultural and municipal water supplies, and the continued enjoyment of rafting and fishing.” Assessing the flow requirements for native fish species and how they differ from those of the tailwater fishery is taking up much of the Dialogue’s time right now, according to Preston. The Dialogue also spawned a Lower Dolores Working Group, which itself has around 50 stakeholders
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Compromise over flows
Stakeholders on the Dolores might look for hope at a similar process that has been used successfully since the late 1970s on the Taylor River, a tributary of the Upper Gunnison River. The Taylor has the classic Colorado mountain river profile: mountain streams converging in a high-altitude park, then dropping into 20-some miles of beautiful canyon—with a 200-foot dam at its head, backing up a 100,000 acre-foot reservoir. Taylor Park Dam was built in the 1930s to store irrigation water for the Uncompahgre Valley 100 miles to the west. From then until 1975, the Taylor was functionally an on-and-off canal rather than a river, carrying reservoir releases on demand to the Uncompahgre irrigators. But in the 1960s and ‘70s, Reclamation built the three Aspinall Unit power and storage dams in the Gunnison River canyons lower down, and a 1975 exchange agreement permitted storage of the Uncompahgre water in the new Blue Mesa Reservoir. Since that water could be moved between the two reservoirs independently of irrigator demands, the Taylor could run like a “real” river again. But a real river by whose standards? Upper Gunnison Basin irrigators want water held back for late summer use; a healthy flatwater recreation economy on the Taylor Park Reservoir behind the dam wants high reservoir levels; a growing whitewater rafting industry below the dam wants good reservoir releases through the summer; and a slew of fishermen along with landowners who own substantial stretches of riverside property want a sport fishery re-established with appropriate “fish flows,” as recommended by the Division of Wildlife. These often conflicting desires are resolved through a “Local Users Group.” Every spring, armed with Reclamation’s April estimate for the year’s runoff, representatives from the user groups map out a flow regime for the summer and fall. This has evolved, over a couple of decades, into a generally amiable meeting in which all parties know that they 20
Drought and the Recreation Industry Although there is never a shortage of recreation to be enjoyed in Colorado, the water we boat on and the snow that we ski through is dependent upon precipitation patterns far beyond our control. While this can be great on a powder day, it also means that these activities are vulnerable to drought. In 2002, when drought impacted virtually the entire state, Colorado State Parks was forced to close several lakes and reservoirs due to low water levels, resulting in revenue reductions of $140 million. The Colorado River Outfitters Association reported a 39 percent drop in whitewater rafting days, and ski resorts were forced to make snow throughout much of the season. The Colorado Water Conservation Board recently completed an assessment that examined recreation and tourism’s vulnerability to drought and offered recommendations on how this sector can increase adaptive capacity to minimize impacts. The analysis found
that many West Slope counties, home to Colorado’s year-round “playgrounds,” are among the most vulnerable. Diversification of activities and communication with the public, media and local governments were found to be the most widely recommended strategies for adapting to drought conditions. Public relations efforts to counter negative public perceptions during drought, like the idea that low flows will result in a less enjoyable rafting experience, could reduce cancellations as perception seems to significantly dictate recreational choices. By preparing for drought periods, Colorado’s recreation-dependent economy and culture may be better equipped to take full advantage of the times of abundance. —Taryn Hutchins-Cabibi The 2010 Colorado State Drought Mitigation and Response Plan can be accessed at http://cwcb.state.co.us.
will get enough of what they need to operate, and that there will be no big winners or losers. The group’s recommendation is usually adopted without major changes in normal-flow years by Reclamation and other invested agencies. Through this process, the Taylor is a “river once more,” albeit a thoroughly managed river.
Water for snow
In the case of snowmaking, where water is withdrawn from the stream to serve recreational demand, management issues look slightly different. Today, snowmaking has gone from a “backup” operation to a “necessity” in a recreational industry that is pushing the limits of natural snowfall. But snowmaking withdrawals come at a time when mountain streams are at their lowest and most vulnerable stage, causing instream flow management challenges for the protection of winter-stressed fisheries. Since 1973, the Colorado Water Conservation Board has been authorized to hold instream flow rights to keep a certain amount of water flowing through rivers for environmental benefits. In the Blue River valley above Dillon Reservoir, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin withdraw water for snowmaking from the Snake River. According to Blue River water commissioner Scott Hummer, the resorts try hard to stop short of drawing the Snake down below its state-established minimum winter instream flow of 6 cubic feet
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collaborating to help the BLM develop a Resource Management Plan for the lower Dolores that could stave off Wild and Scenic designation. Porter’s daughter, Marsha PorterNorton of Durango, is now facilitating the Dialogue and she is optimistic, pointing to a “framework” process they are using to move beyond stakeholder wish lists and develop “do-able alternatives.” She sees a focus on “what we can do together that we can’t do separately.”
Snowmaking helps resorts guarantee their slopes will be open in early and late season, according to the advertised schedule.
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per second, but they are also maximizing their withdrawal. “The slightest variation in temperature regime or weather pattern can set off the bell in the Colorado Water Conservation Board office in Denver,” said Hummer. By the time the snow guns are shut down, the fishery may already be damaged. The resorts have stipulations with the Division of Wildlife that require them to do some spring trout stocking when that happens. In their search for snowmaking water, the resorts get creative. Keystone practices a strange diversion from a diversion, pulling water from a shaft on Denver Water’s Roberts Tunnel, where water leaves Dillon Reservoir en route to Denver. When Denver Water announced it would drain Roberts Tunnel for needed repairs this fall, Keystone and Summit County worked out an agreement that involves paying Denver Water $120,000 to delay maintenance on the tunnel and allow snowmaking to continue until midDecember when, weather willing, the resort will be getting natural snow. Vail Resorts has also entered into a creative agreement with a water supplier, the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District, along with Ski and Snowboard Club Vail. Together, the three organizations installed a $2.6 million snowmaking system to use snowmaking water owned by Vail as well as treated water going stale in the district tanks under low fall demand. They make enough snow on Golden Peak for Ski and Snowboard Club Vail to begin training competitive skiers and snowboarders, including local kids and Olympic medalists like Lindsey Vonn, 45 days prior to the opening of the main resort.
Protecting water quality
Municipal water managers face another kind of recreational challenge: protecting water quality in watersheds that are also their customers’ playgrounds. The city of Boulder practices the extreme solution of simply fencing off much of its municipal supply watershed, thereby avoiding many of the problems associated with the juxtaposition of municipal watersheds and public lands managed for “multiple use.” The areas closest to town tend to be the most heavily traveled, and the rising popularity of offhighway vehicle use has contributed to sedimentation and erosion problems for municipal reservoirs. The city of Grand Junction and the Forest Service have collaborated successfully on Grand Mesa, virtually all of which is a year-round recreational mecca as well as a source of municipal and irri-
gation water for the surrounding valleys. The two entities have cooperatively managed the municipal watershed in some form since 1906, when the city actually helped fund the local ranger. Since then, the partnership has fostered many innovative activities to promote watershed health and reduce the likelihood of catastrophic fire damage, to the extent that Grand Junction was awarded the Regional Forester’s 2009 “Water Partner of the Year” award. Forest Service realty specialist Linda Bledsoe describes a number of “agreements that kind of evolved” in her work in the Grand Valley District. Grand Junction contributed $336,000 in 2008 for vegetation treatments on Forest Service land within the city’s watershed and will have invested another $300,000 in that pursuit by 2013. Most of these funds go toward trail maintenance to reduce erosion and keep sediment out of the streams and many small reservoirs that dot the mesa. Bledsoe helped persuade the Thunder Mountain Wheelers, an OHV club, to contribute money and labor to dealing with some of their own impacts on the mesa; a day with a shovel building water bars and other trail repairs makes people more aware of their environmental impacts. “Every Forest Service line officer dreams of this sort of support and partnership,” said Bledsoe’s supervisor, Grand Valley District Ranger Connie Clementson, whose opinion is strongly echoed by Bledsoe. And so the flux continues, with traditional water managers increasingly willing to assemble the stakeholders to do the hard work of coming up with those “do-able” alternatives—not as an evasion of responsibility, but as the only reasonable way to address the multitude of conflicting requests now battering every management decision. Even something as seemingly innocuous as incorporating flatwater recreation on an existing reservoir, for example, is more complicated than it looks, as local pressure to keep reservoir levels high comes during the same season when traditional users need to draw them down. The “tectonic shift” underlying all of this was summarized a few years ago by Colorado Supreme Court Justice Greg Hobbs: “We are no longer developing the resource; we are learning how to share the developed resource.” That is, practically by definition, a matter of give and take by all parties—within a system of prior appropriation, true, but it has often been noted that a legal system too inflexible to cover changing circumstances will eventually break under their pressure. q H e a d w at e r s | Fa l l 2 0 1 0
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Prof ile Boating on a grand scale A couple works to protect an iconic river, and a local one By Emily Palm
Alicia Thompson
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historical boats, a hobby turned loat through the Grand profession when people began Canyon with Andy calling. Thompson runs a profesHutchinson and Kate sional photography business and Thompson and the jouroffers freelance graphic design in ney would mimic that of envithe wintertime. “It’s a lifestyle of ronmentalists Edward Abbey and love,” Thompson says, noting that Martin Litton when they explored it’s enough to pay the bills, but, the canyon 40 years ago. Rather “We live very simply.” than motoring the world-famous When they’re not paddling their stretch of the Colorado River in home river, the Dolores, they work a few days, the couple guides on river enhancement projects as groups in wooden dories. board members of the Greater Over the course of the twoDolores Action Group. Creating week trip, they teach a wide river walks, bike trails and removrange of subjects from river ing junk metal from the river are ecology to canyon geology to among some of the ventures the the evolution of boats used in group has accomplished to help the canyon. Both belong to the Based in Dolores, Colo., Andy Hutchinson and Kate make boating and fishing safer. Grand Canyon River Guides, an Thompson guide educational river trips through the Grand Hutchinson remembers the association that works to protect Canyon on handmade boats. Dolores’ pre-dam days. As a colriver ecosystems and improve the guides’ lifestyle through healthcare and career coun- lege student he wrote letters and attended meetings during the seling. From protecting freshwater springs to lobbying for planning and development of McPhee Reservoir. The project’s more launch dates and getting signs posted at campsites, 1977 Environmental Impact Statement said operators should they work closely with the National Park Service on a wide attempt to maximize recreational and commercial rafting. But Hutchinson says there is room for improvement, notarray of issues. “It’s become a really nice dance we’ve done together,” Thompson says. “We consider ourselves stewards ing that dam officials don’t announce when they are planning a release—the only time the river is boatable—until the last of the resources.” The age of the river guides in the Grand Canyon surprises minute. The Dolores Water Conservancy District updates many, the couple says, but it’s a career, not a college job. “I release information weekly on its website, and a spill committhink they expect 20-year-old yahoos,” says Hutchinson, a for- tee, composed of commercial and private rafters, irrigators and mer U.S. competitive kayaker, but in reality, “Newbies are riding water managers, meets each winter to discuss the reservoir’s operating plan for the upcoming year. Such an effort is an the shoulders of giants.” Thompson began running rivers at age 18. Though she example of a sea change Hutchinson has seen in the Bureau of grew up on a farm in Maryland, the West always resonated as Reclamation and among dam officials. People are beginning to home. “I pretty much came out of the womb knowing that the listen to recreation’s advocates. Hutchinson grew up in a ranching family in Colorado’s West was my landscape,” she says. Before she began professionally guiding trips down the upper Arkansas Valley, where his ancestors moved to start a Grand Canyon in 2002, Thompson worked as a soil and geo- cattle ranch in the late 1860s after a bitter-cold winter prospectlogic researcher there for 13 years. Projects included studying ing in Leadville. Hutchinson’s niece currently runs the ranch. archeological and geologic sites and comparing before and His father sat on the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy after conditions resulting from the Glen Canyon Dam, which District board, and Hutchinson remembers many discussions has interrupted the Colorado River’s flow 15 miles upstream surrounding water politics. He has stood on both sides of the since 1963. “It’s been a really nice marriage of bringing science picket line. While in his early 20s, Hutchinson worked as a guide on to guests,” she says of her evolving career. Hutchinson remembers the first time he saw a dory. It was the Arkansas River. His parents asked him to attend a ribbonOctober 1982 during a kayak trip down the Grand Canyon. cutting ceremony near Twin Lakes, where Hutchinson saw While standing by an ancient Anasazi granary in Nankoweap his fellow river guides protesting the water project. A decade at mile 53 of the trip, he saw several dories floating down the later, he stood on the other side when he went to protest the Animas-La Plata water project. river. “I was smitten,” he says. Hutchinson will always have the ranch perspective, he Each year the couple guides three or four trips through the Grand Canyon. The other 10 months they reside in says, but while he has a sympathetic ear, he’d rather keep Dolores, Colo., where Hutchinson builds dories and restores water in rivers. q 22
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Prof ile Ranching in the “midst” Bill Trampe navigates a transitioning economy By Emily Palm
Kevin Moloney
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take the top rung.” ill Trampe knows he is It’s not just the boaters, he one of few ranchers left says, but it’s also bicyclists leavin his corner of Gunnison ing the gate open where his cows County, near the East graze and ATVs tearing up his River and north of Almont, Colo. property. “What do I do?” Trampe As others have sold to developasks, “My neighbors don’t give a ers or moved to less-complicated hoot about how it affects me.” pastures, those who remain carry Ranchers who form a united on. “’Till we’re plum out or we front seem to have an easier time die,” he says. with the changes. “There are pockA century after Illinois-born ets that are successful because Henry Fredrick Trampe began the they’ve banded together,” Trampe ranch, Trampe continues to work says, clarifying that it’s easier if the land his grandfather cultivata ranch borders fellow working ed. Born on the ranch, Trampe properties. “My neighbors are not has run the day to day operations ranchers,” says Trampe, whose for 53 years. In that time, the local property abuts developments and landscape—both physically and A third-generation Gunnison County rancher, Bill Trampe the Crested Butte ski resort. socially—has changed drastically, founded an organization to protect agricultural land. Regardless, the lifelong cattle and Trampe questions what will rancher holds a deep connection happen to the ranch his family has run for three generations. He has no heirs. What he does know with the land and resources in Gunnison County. “The only is that it will not be developed, as he committed the 978-acre reason we’re still here is because of our dedication to the resource, our attachment to the land,” he says. “It’s a dedicaproperty to conservation easements. As condos and developments take the place of working tion that I can’t explain.” His dedication goes beyond sentiment. Trampe has served on operations, Trampe has found himself amidst a culture unaccustomed to ranch life, or—more disappointingly—a culture water resource planning boards since 1976—the Upper Gunnison indifferent to ranch life. Rather than having neighbors who River Water Conservancy District board for 26 years, followed used to share the cost and know-how of fixing fences, it’s a by the Colorado River District board, where he has represented new set of people with varying demands and impacts. “Your Gunnison County since 2003. “Water is a resource that’s absoneighbors are city-dwellers that have a whole different life- lutely necessary in our desert climate,” Trampe explains. In addition, Trampe co-founded an organization in 1996 to style,” he explains, describing it as “trying to ranch in an urban help preserve agricultural land with Susan Lohr, the former setting.” As the surrounding local economy transitions from agricul- director of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. So far ture- to recreation-based, the value of ranchlands surpasses the Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy has protected the dollars cattle bring in at auction. A 2006 report from the 16,535 acres of ranchlands in the Gunnison-Crested Butte area Environment Colorado Research and Policy Center stated that through conservation easements. The nonprofit facilitates the 58 percent of Gunnison County tourists would limit their visits process for conservation-minded landowners, helping them obtain funding through organizations like Great Outdoors to the area if the farms and ranches were developed. Despite the finding, Trampe finds neither camaraderie Colorado, which has invested $11.7 million in the effort, and nor cooperation from local recreationists. Last summer as he assisting with legal and technical aspects of the transactions. worked up in the hills, he saw canoeists cutting down his fence Trampe says the process works well for ranching families expeacross the river, rather than lifting the wire and passing below. riencing generational changes: “People can recoup some of Too distant to stop them, he watched helplessly, hoping his their value and guarantee agricultural use.” The benefits expand beyond Gunnison County. According cattle wouldn’t get out to trespass on National Forest land and put his grazing permit under scrutiny. That afternoon, instead to a 2010 study by the Trust for Public Land, Coloradans reap of working on irrigation, Trampe’s employee spent valuable roughly $6 in benefits for every $1 invested in efforts to keep agricultural land and other open spaces from being developed. hours repairing the fence. It also preserves contiguous ranchland. For example, variTrampe observes a local sentiment that regards the cutting of his fence as “no big deal,” based on the presumption ous ranches along Tomichi Creek, just west of Crested Butte, the recreation community can do whatever it wants, barring have protected their land through the Gunnison Ranchland any blatant wrongdoing. “That’s what’s expected in our Conservation Legacy. “[Their] neighbors are gonna’ be agcommunity, that agriculture will step aside and let recreation based from now on,” says Trampe. q H e a d w at e r s | Fa l l 2 0 1 0
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Near Breckenridge and Frisco, McCullough Gulch is part of the Hidden Gems campaign’s proposed Tenmile wilderness area. The gulch is a popular destination for hikers in the summer and snowshoers in the winter. Photo by Lisa Smith.
Wilderness Wary Additional acres proposed for the nation’s highest level of government protection ignite strong feelings against exclusion by Allen Best
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o understand the controversy over the Hidden Gems wilderness campaign, you must first appreciate the nature of existing federal lands with wilderness designation. Since 1964, when Congress enacted the Wilderness Act, these set-aside lands have mostly been in the deepest backcountry, along the mountain spines, in places where rock faces abound and winter snows linger into summer. There are exceptions, such as where the Eagles Nest Wilderness Area lies cheek-and-jowl with residential neighborhoods in Vail and Summit County. But, for the most part, there are buffers between the frequent scurrying of people and these tracts that, by congressional definition, are “untrammeled by man” while retaining their “primeval character and influence.”
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Hidden Gems Wilderness Proposal
Areas targeted for wilderness protection by the Hidden Gems campaign lie mostly in Garfield, Eagle, Summit and Pitkin counties.
The Hidden Gems parcels: Acorn Creek Adam Mountain Assignation Ridge Basalt Mountain Bull Gulch Castle Peak Corral Creek Crazy Horse Creek Crystal River Eagle Mountain Elliot Ridge
Freeman Creek Gallo Hill Hay Park Hayes Creek Homestake Hoosier Ridge Hunter Lower Piney McClure Pass Mormon Creek No Name
The 40 Hidden Gems parcels, if designated by Congress, would shift the focus of wilderness in Colorado. These 335,000 acres west of the Continental Divide have been proposed by several conservation groups as an attempt to protect more ecologically critical land at lower elevations. Some argue that they have diluted wilderness character. Although 26 parcels are adjacent to existing wilderness areas, many are proximate to towns,
North Independent A North Independent B Pisgah Mountain Porcupine Gulch Powderhorn Addition Ptarmigan A Ptarmigan Peak Wildlife Land Bridge Red Table Ripple Creek Pass Ruby Lakes
Spraddle Creek Tenmile Thompson Creek Treasure Mountain Ute Pass West Elks Addition West Lake Creek Whetstone Wildcat Mountain AB Williams Fork Woods Lake
roads and even highways. That’s where the fight comes in. There’s nothing marginal about the value of these lands. Their proximity makes them even more valuable to a variety of users. Wilderness advocates say that’s exactly why Congress needs to protect them—against growing incursions of motorized and mechanized use as well as oil and gas exploration. We need more than rock-and-ice wilderness, they insist.
We need a broader array of ecological systems insulated from the meddling of human activity. And Congress has explicitly stated that the sights and sounds of civilization aren’t enough to disqualify land for wilderness designation. Wilderness designations rarely come without controversy. The Eagles Nest Wilderness, straddling the Gore Range north of Vail Pass, was created in 1976 with express language that gave Denver
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Sloan Shoemaker
Proposed for wilderness designation by the Hidden Gems campaign, the 55,385-acre Red Table area is dominated by Red Table Mountain, a sandstone massif that stretches 18 miles, dividing the Eagle Creek and Fryingpan watersheds. The proposal’s boundaries were adjusted to address concerns of adjacent landowners, snowmobile clubs, ranchers and the town of Gypsum.
Water lingering authority to create water diversion canals. Aurora and Colorado Springs got the same overriding language in the 1980 legislation creating the Holy Cross Wilderness south of Avon. Mining potential has often been a sore spot. Fourwheelers have groused, and in recent years, mountain bikers and snowmobilers have contested wilderness, forcing accommodation of their passions. Those same sharp-edged issues can be seen in the new dialogue, but the proximity adds tension to the conversation. The words, already hot, may get hotter if U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and U.S. Rep. John Salazar, in whose districts the proposed lands lie, agree to sponsor some or all of these parcels. On Aug. 6, Polis released what he’s calling a discussion draft of a bill to protect approximately 90,000 of the proposed Hidden Gems acres in Summit and Eagle counties as wilderness, with another 80,000 acres designated special management areas. As he continues to solicit public comment, Lara Cottingham, press secretary for Polis stressed, “The congressman is looking at making a lot of changes so that anything introduced suits the area and the people who live there.” Polis, she says, has no timeline. “The most important part is that we take our time and do this the right way.” Depending on how you chart it, this wilderness proposal has already been decades in the making. Conservation groups, dissatisfied by how the Bureau of Land Management inventoried its holdings for wilderness suitability in the 1980s, compiled their own list. Portions of those BLM lands have been variously proposed by Colorado’s congressional delegation over the years, but consen26
sus never developed. A few of the BLM lands identified long ago are part of the Hidden Gems proposal, including the red-rocked canyon country of Bull Gulch near Dotsero and the volcanic plug of Castle Peak, north of Eagle. Most of the lands now under the microscope are managed by the U.S. Forest Service, and the bulk of them lie within the White River National Forest. Conservation groups a decade ago found 750,000 acres justified for wilderness consideration there, but in its 2002 forest management plan, the government agency identified only 82,000. Several years ago, a coalition of conservation groups began more carefully shaping the Hidden Gems proposal. The coalition includes the Colorado Mountain Club, Colorado Environmental Coalition, and the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop, along with The Wilderness Society. Another 90-some organizations have signed on to support the coalition’s Hidden Gems campaign. The lands the campaign has proposed create a large quilt. To glimpse them by car you might start from Kremmling, driving south to Silverthorne. On the left would be the Williams Fork Range, draped with a proposed wilderness dropping down nearly to Highway 9. Farther along are proposed additions to existing wilderness above Green Mountain Reservoir and above Silverthorne. Even the Continental Divide above the Eisenhower Tunnel Memorial Complex has a finger of wilderness, valued as a wildlife crossing over Interstate 70. Some of the most spirited debate has been in the Eagle Valley, between Vail and Glenwood Canyon, where the issues are a microcosm of those found among the
various proposals. Consider Red Table Mountain, a long ridge of sandstone nudging 12,000 feet and apparent to I-70 travelers south of Gypsum. On the north side, creeks tumble under a tight canopy of spruce and fir trees. The land arches steeply, and if taking a hike, you might call it nasty. Saws have been rare, trails and roads remain few. Red Table Mountain is wilderness with a lower-case “w.” In 2002, the Forest Service recommended Red Table for wilderness designation and closed several roads, creating a wilderness study area. The land is also found within the Hidden Gems proposal. But Gypsum officials prefer lower-case wilderness. “It’s the best of both worlds,” says Jeff Shroll, the town manager. It’s being managed as wilderness, but with more flexibility. What Gypsum and other water providers fear are sediment problems like those Denver Water has battled at its reservoirs and water-treatment plants in the wake of Hayman and other fires in the South Platte drainage. They want motorized access to manage and protect the resource pre- and post-fire. Although, if a fire were to burn, Hidden Gems advocates maintain that ATVs and chainsaws would be permitted, in accordance with the Wilderness Act, to confront the emergency. Recreational access has been another issue in Vail and the Eagle Valley. The Wilderness Act bans not only motorized but mechanized use, which is normally interpreted to include bicycles. That prohibition gets in the craw of mountain bikers, who see their impact as minimal. “Horses create the most damage,” insists John Bailey, a member of Eagle County’s EcoTrails Backcountry Committee who is involved professionally and avocation-
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ally in mountain biking. Bailey and other mountain bikers in the Vail area have endorsed several Hidden Gems parcels for wilderness, but in other cases want a national recreation area or some other type of land management designation that would allow continued access to existing roads and trails while limiting motorized incursions. Even within the non-motorized recreation community, there are divisions. “They’re worse than Orvis fly fishermen,” fumes Bill Heicher, a retired wildlife biologist in Eagle. “Mountain bikers have this holier-than-thou attitude that they can do no environmental harm because they are mechanized and not motorized.” Livestock grazers also disagree about the value of wilderness. The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association philosophically opposes such a designation. Paoniabased rancher Mark Roeber, who chairs the trade group’s Federal Lands Committee, says he and other grazers want to be able to use ATVs, motorcycles and trucks to manage their herds, fix fences and repair stock ponds. However, Gems advocates cite the support of several ranchers in the Carbondale and Redstone area, and also report support in the Eagle and Gunnison areas. Further, they point out that grazing is a specifically authorized use in wilderness areas, and although the act requires ranchers to use the least-disruptive tool, some motorized uses may be allowed, particularly if specific language is written into authorizing legislation. The most basic disagreement has to do with whether the Forest Service, as a land-management agency, has either the resources or the resolve to protect fed-
eral lands from abuses. Roeber thinks the agency can do the job but needs flexibility. So does Scott Fitzwilliams, the White River National Forest supervisor, who disagrees with the bulk of the campaign’s proposals that go beyond the 82,000 acres initially recommended by his agency. Because of its ban on chain saws and other motorized tools, wilderness designation makes trail construction and maintenance far more labor intensive— even while the Forest Service struggles to keep up with its existing workload. Fitzwilliams also contends that wilderness designation hinders the ability of the Forest Service to manage tracts of land where 80 percent of trees are dead or dying. Even the increase in motorized use that threatens the forest primeval will not automatically be better managed with substantial wilderness designation. In the absence of enforcement, education and signage, Fitzwilliams says, “Wilderness is a line on a map.” The person who helped draw many of those proposed lines is Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of the Wilderness Workshop and a prime architect of Hidden Gems. He says wilderness designation is important for precisely the same reasons many oppose it: “We commonly hear the statement that the Forest Service is just doing fine. ‘Leave it to them.’ We don’t have faith in that, because the Forest Service has a multiple-use mission.” Human activities, not forest fires, worry Shoemaker. Energy extraction illustrates the threat. The White River National Forest management plan released in 2002 imagined only 22 gas wells. New estimates have been revised
to 1,000. “Those crystal balls for determining what is coming down the pike just aren’t good enough,” says Shoemaker. Recreation represents a broader, more pervasive threat. Population growth compounded by technological advances for mountain bikes, motorcycles and snowmobiles has loaded the dice. In 1983, mountain bikes were heavy, had no suspension systems, and had no more than 10 or 12 gears. “There was a limit to what you could do with it,” says Shoemaker. “Imagine what it will be like 10 to 50 years from now, with more people and two more turns of the wheel of technological innovation—how much harder it will be to protect some of these places. [Hidden Gems] might be the last shot.” Many compromises have already occurred. Hidden Gems retreated its wilderness boundary in many areas to exclude existing mountain bike and ATV trails as well as areas where there are significant fire and watershed concerns. Additional adjustments are inevitable with recreation groups, livestock grazers and water users vying for access on their terms. As indicated by Polis’s discussion draft bill, the 335,000 acres proposed by Hidden Gems are far from a foregone conclusion. The intense whittling away is a process similar to the way wilderness-quality lands themselves continue to fall off the map. The 1964 Congress empowered the nation to set aside wild spaces “where man himself is but a visitor who does not remain.” In the years since, wilderness has never been established without dissent. As individuals, we hate restraints. But as a group, maybe we need them. q
Attorneys At Law
Bratton Hill Wilderson & Lock, LLC 525 North Main St. Gunnison , CO 81230
970.641.1903
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Helping landowners, special districts, and water companies acquire, use and protect their water resources for over half a century H e a d w at e r s | Fa l l 2 0 1 0
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River of Words 2010 Many young Coloradans environment. They are first judged on an international level and then returned to Colorado Humanities to be judged within the state. Teachers or other instructors can access more information, including entry forms and “Teaching the Poetry of Rivers” lesson plans, prepared by the award-winning poet Kathryn Winograd and sponsored jointly by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education and
Heaven
Blizzard
Before my granddad died, he told me about
I work with wind. I mound in big piles. I come from the sky. I feel my friends with me when we land. I affect life with my cold touch. I wish to stay forever. When I melt in the mountains, I create a stream, a flood, a raging river. I cut through mountains, buildings, valleys. I re-build next year doing the same thing.
heaven and why it existed. He said the night sky was a huge black blanket, that every soul could peek through and watch over us. He believed the stars were smiling faces of those past, who watched me every day. My granddad said he would be one of those past, and would watch over the world he loved. I’ve looked at the stars in the sky, trying to find that new smiling face so I can smile back. DiAnna Rowe National Grand Prize, Category II (Grades 3-6) 6th Grade, Greeley
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Colorado Humanities, at www.coloradohumanities.org/content/river-words. Poems may be submitted throughout the year, but must be postmarked by Dec. 1, 2010 to be considered for 2011 awards. The Colorado Foundation for Water Education is pleased to share a selection of the 2010 winning poems, including a national grand prize winner from Colorado!
Will Snodgrass 1st place, Category I (Grades K-2) Polaris at Ebert Elementary, Denver Amy Turino, Teacher
Wolves He is majestic as he flows silently, through the dark reaches of the pine forest. He leads his pack across treacherous rivers and under beautifully giant trees. They travel for hours, never tiring. Their tough feet withstanding the sharp rocks and spiny pine needles. To the human eye they look like grey ghosts dashing past everything. It is dark so people can see their gleaming yellow eyes. They are the ghosts of the forest and wherever they roam. They are silent hunters streaming through the mountains. Any person in the wild mountains who sees them is lucky. Wolves are very mysterious and wild creatures. Kaitlyn Seifert 1st Place, Category III (Grades 7-9) Crested Butte Community School Betsy Kolodziej, Teacher
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have found a medium for exploring the natural world through the annual River of Words contest. The goal of the international contest, co-founded by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, is “connecting kids to their watersheds and imaginations through poetry and art.” Poems, submitted by K-12 students throughout Colorado and the world, are specifically crafted in discovery of watersheds and
Remember Remember the stream you were born aside. Remember each of the pebble’s stories. Remember Zeus, know who he is. I met him on the icy glaciers of Mount Olympus, The most beautiful summit of our Mother Earth. Remember her. You are proof of her life: Red rocks, Green Grass, Blue Ocean, and Yellow Sun. Remember Uranus, your father, he is your life, too. He is the stars and the deep blue sky. Remember him through Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Remember Apollo, my inspiration, wisdom above all. Remember Poseidon. Remember his waves. He knows the origin of the universe. I heard him speak of the secret city of Atlantis. Remember the seaweed, cypress, wolf, and clouds which all have their own tribes, histories, and families. They are all living poems each in their own way. Remember that all people are you, and you are all people. Remember that you are the universe, and the universe is you. Remember that life is a cycle, and the cycle is growing just like you. Remember Michael Alisky 1st Place, Category II (Grades 3-6) Aurora Quest Academy, Centennial Micki Amick, Teacher
On the Golden Sway of the Horizon ghazal for autumn in the West
From the earth rises the slender pale aspen White as dew, drizzling down the frail aspen. Veins settled beneath the firm black ground Knot over themselves, navigating the jailed aspen. They sink into each other, one looping through itself, A kingdom of only one; hail aspen! The pooling skin leads droplets as crystal tears From sky to floor, nesting in a vale of aspen. Collecting in cupped hands of tree, the water piles, Dives down as a nightingale upon the aspen. Shift to golden hue by dusk, with others of its kind Leaves catch bending light in each swale of aspen. Water slivers down the bark-layered legs Floods easily into hollows, creating a silver trail in aspen. Triumphant river of roots stand so gracefully in shared spell Carries the line of flowing life to prevail, O aspen! Caroline Adams 1st Place, Category IV (Grades 10-12) Kent Denver School, Englewood H e a d w at e r s | Fa l l 2 0 1 0
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State Senator and CFWE Rock Southwestern Colorado
Sen. Bruce Whitehead displays his multi-dimensional talent.
by David Harper
“That guy rocks” is not a phrase you often hear in reference to an elected official. Theirs is generally the realm of quiet deliberation, careful analysis and well-measured restraint. Anyone who was lucky enough to be at Blue Lake Ranch on the second night of the Colorado Foundation for Water Education’s annual river basin tour, however, saw state Sen. Bruce Whitehead welcome tour participants to Southwestern Colorado by rocking out some river songs with Pagosa-area musician Robin Davis and his backing band.
The Foundation’s annual river basin tour is more than just revelry and tune though. This year’s journey through the San Juan and Dolores river basins also struck a chord with attendees hoping to learn about current water issues from what one participant described as a “plethora of expert speakers,” including Sen. Whitehead after he put his six-string back in its case. The events started on June 9th with three pre-tour activities—an indepth look at the Animas-La Plata Project, a tour of Mesa Verde with lectures on the paleohydrology of the cliff ruins, and rafting on the Animas River. From the San Juan Chama Diversion to McPhee Reservoir to the Anasazi Heritage Center, participants gained valuable knowledge about the current water issues impacting Southwestern Colorado. Whether it was water quality concerns, agricultural and municipal supply, tribal agreements, interstate compacts or energy development, the collaborative approach to problem solving in the region was on full display. After these few days, 90-plus participants walked away with universal lessons drawn from this unique area’s region-specific issues. In the end, translating the unique into the universal is what made this tour truly rock. Well, that and the support of our generous sponsors, without whom this tour would not have been possible: Colorado Water Conservation Board Southwestern Water Conservation District Board of Water Works of Pueblo Dolores Water Conservancy District Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District San Juan Water Conservancy District Maynes, Bradford, Shipps and Sheftel Colorado Water Institute Animas La-Plata Water Conservancy District Harris Water Engineering San Juan Citizens Alliance Next year CFWE will rock the Rockies with a tour of the Colorado River Basin. We hope to see you there. See CFWE’s Southwest Basin Tour photos at cfwe.org.
Marsha Porter-Norton, facilitator of the Dolores River Dialogue, discusses regional issues with participants.
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