Politics of wilderness: Bill to protect study areas may have hope
Politics of wilderness: Bill to protect study areas may have hope
May 13, 2009
By: Dave Phillips
McIntyre Hills - These lonesome, wandering canyons west of Canon City, studded with ancient juniper forests and clutches of old growth Douglas firs, have been wild since time immemorial. But they have repeatedly failed to be wilderness.
Politics of wilderness: Bill to protect study areas may have hope
May 13, 2009
By: Dave Phillips
McIntyre Hills - These lonesome, wandering canyons west of Canon City, studded with ancient juniper forests and clutches of old growth Douglas firs, have been wild since time immemorial. But they have repeatedly failed to be wilderness.
So have the 40,000 acres of windswept grass tussocks and mesas of Table Mountain just north across the Arkansas River. So have the hidden granite pools of Beaver Creek on the south side of Pikes Peak. So have the rocky river banks and boulder-tumbled hills of Browns Canyon near Salida.
They are all wilderness study areas, which means they are swatches of public land that meet the wild and roadless criteria to become official wilderness areas. But they've never had the legislative clout to be formally protected by Congress.
Not that people haven't tried.
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, Denver, has introduced legislation called the Colorado Wilderness Act to protect these places and others in every session of Congress since 1999. In the partisan atmosphere of Congress, where Republicans often paint wilderness designation as a threat to people being able to use public lands, the bill, which would set aside more than 1 million acres, mostly on Bureau of Land Management land, has always failed.
That may change this session.
Wilderness-friendly Democrats now control both houses of Congress and the White House. This spring, they passed legislation that protected more than 300,000 new acres of wilderness in Colorado, creating protected areas in Rocky Mountain National Park and Dominguez Canyon near Grand Junction. It was the first wilderness designation since 2002.
"The whole dynamic has changed," said Kristofer Eisenla, a spokesman for DeGette. "Whereas under the Republican leadership this bill got nowhere, there is really momentum now. We are optimistic this bill can move forward."
He said DeGette's staff is making small changes to the bill she introduces every session, and hopes to introduce it soon.
For all the legislative ground these wilderness study areas have covered, they remain largely unknown to hikers. For anyone who loves solitude, mountains and wildlife, they are worth exploring.
"It can be a challenge. A lot of them have no formal trails or trailheads. They can be rough country to reach. So they rarely get visited," said John Stansfield, a longtime Colorado Springs wilderness advocate and conservationist.
On a recent morning he hiked into the hidden canyons of McIntyre Hills.
Anyone who has driven U.S. Highway 50 west of Royal Gorge had skirted McIntyre Hills. It is the rough and broken wall on the south side of the river, with narrow, twisted canyons that climb 2,000 feet to the plateau above.
Stansfield has been visiting the area for over a decade and has never seen another hiker.
"This area is truly wild," he said near the mouth of one of the canyons. "It has never been logged, never been mined, never been used for anything. And it's full of wildlife."
There was no trail to follow. Stansfield made his way up a pebbly stream bed. In a few steps, he came to a bend in the canyon, and the sound of the highway was replaced by the plaintive spring calls of Clark's Nutcrackers.
In 1976, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, required the BLM to inventory areas to see whether any had large, wild, roadless areas that would be fitting for wilderness designation. Candidates that met the criteria became wilderness study areas. The BLM usually manages them like wilderness areas, which really means it just lets them be wild and usually does not approve them for other uses, such as roads or mines.
It takes an act of Congress to officially protect them.
In the 8.3 million acres of BLM land in Colorado, there are 53 wilderness study areas covering 772,000 acres. Most of them are in low-lying canyons and dry hills that are a stark contrast to most of Colorado's existing 43 wilderness areas, which are on high mountains, often above tree line.
"There is very little of this low pinon forest and canyon country protected," Stansfield said. "These are important for wildlife."
The dry, rocky canyons on both sides of the Arkansas River are home to deer, bighorn sheep, elusive ringtails and the highest concentration of mountain lions in the state.
"Areas like this are also important corridors. They connect existing wildlife habitat."