Task force on roadless land wraps up recommendations

Concessions included for coal companies, logging, ski industry

Deborah Frazier, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 12, 2006 at midnight

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A weary task force, in its second sudden-death overtime meeting, finished recommendations Monday for protecting Colorado's 4.1 million road-less acres.

The task force, a 13-member bipartisan group, worked for almost a year on rules for managing the state's largely untraveled estate of federal land.

"It was hard work," said Russ George, director of the Department of Natural Resources who chaired uncounted hours of meetings, public hearings and heated debates that broke several deadlines.

The recommendations, which now go to Gov. Bill Owens, made concessions for temporary roads for logging to protect communities from fires and to access existing energy and mineral leases. The ski industry won the right to build roads on up to 10,000 acres of currently roadless territory, and coal companies won an exemption that could expand operations and roads on up to 80,000 acres in the North Fork Valley.

For all the flexibility the more conservation-minded task force members showed toward the industry-related members, they failed to win protection for roadless areas until the final rules are set.

Last year, Mark Rey, U.S. undersecretary for Agriculture, promised protections for the nation's roadless acres during the state-by-state process. But a recent round of oil and gas leases allowed new roads in roadless areas, including almost 15,000 acres in Colorado.

Another batch of oil and gas leases, including leases on more roadless land in Colorado, will be offered in November.

Several governors have included the interim protections in their recommendations, but a last ditch effort to protect Colorado's roadless acres failed Monday.

Eddie Kochman, a retired Division of Wildlife biologist, again proposed adding interim protections to the task force recommendations.

The vote on adding protections to the recommendations failed 8-to-3, but the split shifted to 6-to-5 on a compromise that would have asked Owens to include the protections in his proposed rules.

Jim Lochhead, an attorney specializing in natural resources, and Melanie Mills, an executive vice president for Colorado Ski Country U.S.A. shifted their "no" votes to "yes" on the compromise.

"It leaves me very anxious for all the good work we put in," said Steve Smith, a task force member representing the Wilderness Society. "In the 3,000 comments we received since our last meeting in August, 90 percent mentioned the interim protections as important."

George said he opposed the protections because the roadless recommendation process didn't give the state authority to address the protections. "We have more important issues to deal with without getting wrapped around that where we have no authority," George said.

Owens will send his proposed rules to federal officials by Nov. 13, and a decision could be made this year. Owens is not bound to follow the task force recommendations in his proposed rules. "The governor and his staff will take a close look at what we've done," George said. "The governor has not in any way told us what to do and I'm not going to tell him what do to."

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