Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

Dentry: Task force quietly waits for public to speak out

Published February 21, 2006 at midnight

Text size  

More Outdoors Columns & Blogs

More stories »

FIRST IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES

Want roadless areas to stay that way? What do you think elk, deer, mountain lions and goshawks would say?

Chances are, if you are a big-game hunter, high-lakes angler, backpacker, mountain biker or all the above, you knew nothing of the meeting Friday that will pretend to care whether you want national forest roadless areas thrown open to development or preserved for scenic, recreational and wildlife qualities.

To be sure, someone is asking for your input, even if they aren't exactly telling you they are asking.

Starting at 2 p.m. Friday, a 13-member task force appointed by Gov. Bill Owens will devote four hours at the Adams Mark Hotel, mostly to gather public opinion about whether roadless protection on some federal taxpayer-owned properties in Colorado should be scuttled in favor of roads.

Fish, wildlife and habitat also will get a word in edgewise for the first time, by way of detailed reviews of specific roadless areas the Colorado Division of Wildlife has been conducting.

In four meetings since November, the task force has played its cards close to the vest - perhaps aware of a September 2005 poll by Responsive Management, which showed that 80 percent of hunters and anglers in Colorado want roadless areas kept that way.

Even the agency that oversees this dubious enterprise, the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, has ventured no invitations or press releases inviting the public to the meeting Friday.

The roadless-area Web page of the Keystone Group, an organization the DNR contracted to referee the meetings, has been down and out, "under construction." Try later, at , where a link allows you to see the meeting schedule and register comments.

If you were in the loop (with industrialists and off-road vehicle manufacturers in one corner, organized sportsmen/conservationists in the other) you might have known.

Otherwise, you'd be in the dark - especially if you are a taxpayer from, say, Wisconsin or Texas, who visits your federal land in Colorado only rarely to contribute to our state's $1.5 billion hunting, fishing and wildlife-viewing tourism industry.

For the record, only 4.4 million acres are designated as roadless, out of 14 1/2 million acres of national forests in Colorado. They are the last roadless areas, outside of designated wilderness, and the only buffers for wildlife and people seeking relative solitude between alpine wilderness and snarling engines below.

Rather, roadless areas are sort-of buffers. Curiously, most aren't roadless at all. They are laced with old mining roads, logging roads and, recently, a plague of illegal roads pioneered by campers and off-road vehicle operators. The result has been erosion and the ruination of some high-country trout waters.

The U.S. Forest Service does not improve or maintain byways in such roadless areas. How could it, even if improvements were ordered? Under current funding, the federal agency never will catch up with its road maintenance backlog of $10 billion nationally, $68 million in Colorado.

Elk hunters know the situation all too well. One typical designated Forest Service road skirts the Maroon Bells Wilderness, near Marble. I hunted there during third rifle elk season, having backpacked in, instead of risking life, limb and vehicle.

The deeply rutted, narrow road edges along crumbling cliffs before climbing past a dicey limestone slide to a trailhead in the forest. Last season, a pickup slid off the edge. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the truck needed some serious towing. And that was an official forest road, in a forest roaded area.

If Colorado wants to do something constructive in the national forests, maybe it should form a task force to come up with money to improve the dangerous roads that already exist.

Needless to say, the last of the so-called "roadless" holdouts are incredibly important to hunters, hikers and, especially, to wildlife. Which is why the Division of Wildlife has been inventorying them in detail.

It is an immense undertaking, and, so far, the verdict has been unanimous. If elk, deer, mountain lions and goshawks have their way, the roadless areas will stay put.

The task force is legally bound to make its recommendations based on public input. Because the above-named critters can't speak for themselves, sportsmen and conservationists need to chime in.