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Trees not only keep you from seeing the forest, but they stand in the way of an improved Colorado economy.
This is sort of complicated, but bear with me. Colorado is required to release certain quantities of water down both forks of the Platte so that endangered species like whooping cranes have habitat in Nebraska. That was one reason that the Environmental Protection Agency killed the proposed Two Forks dam a few years ago.
Water that flows to Nebraska doesn't help Colorado. If there was a way to increase water flow, then Colorado could keep more while still giving Nebraska its share.
How to increase water flow? Research at the Fraser Experimental Forest shows that strips of clear-cutting increase water yield from the mountains, partly because the remaining trees function like snow fences, allowing drifts to pile higher, and partly because trees consume water.
With that scientific evidence in hand, the Coalition
for Sustainable Resources
plans to sue federal land
management agencies. If the feds allowed more trees to be
cut, then more water could flow to endangered species in
downstream states -- and there would be more water for
Colorado's growth and prosperity.
How much water do we waste on trees? Plenty, as nearly as I can figure. One reference says statewide average annual precipitation is 15.4 inches. Spread that across our 104,247 square miles, and you get 85.6 million acre feet.
The average Coloradan uses 4,190 gallons a day at home, farm and work, so the current population consumes 17.6 million acre feet a year.
Subtract that from the 85.6 million that falls from the sky, and we've still got 68 million acre feet. On average, we export about 10.5 million acre feet a year to downstream states. Much of that results from legal obligations, difficult to evade, and Nebraska wants more -- so let's say 15 million.
That still leaves 53 million acre feet -- 17 trillion gallons a year -- which isn't accounted for. That's enough water for 11 million more Coloradans, atop the 3.5 million now present: 11 million more new arrivals to buy spacious lots at Highlands Ranch, to wear glowing Bronco-fan outfits, to sign Doug Bruce petitions, to arrive simultaneously at the grand opening of a shopping mall, to idle in front of you on the freeway.
To attain that earthly paradise, all we apparently have to do is whack down the unproductive trees -- phreatophytes -- that are sucking up that precious water.
Nor should this noble effort be confined to the mountains, for there are also trees on the plains.
Although plains rivers today are distinguished today by their lines of phreatophytic trees, early accounts of trips up the Platte and Arkansas report scant verdure.
John C. Frémont on the South Platte in 1842: a
country alternately clay and sand, each presenting the same
naked waste.
Josiah Gregg on the Arkansas in 1831:
the river is so entirely bare of trees that the
unthinking traveler might approach to its very brink
without suspecting its presence.
Zebulon Pike on the
Arkansas in 1806: a barren soil ... presents neither
moisture nor nutrition to nourish the timber.
Gregg guessed that frequent prairie fires eliminated the trees, except on river islands. I've read that buffalo, either by eating or trampling, might also have demolished most prairie groves.
In either case, we know how to restore things to the condition when Colorado had enough water for the Nebraska cranes. Don't merely clearcut along the Front Range and in North Park, but also restore the vast herds of buffalo, and, just to be sure, torch the prairies every five or ten years.
And as long as we're protecting endangered species and
their habitat, I note this Frémont observation from
July 7, 1843. We surprised a grizzly bear sauntering
along the [South Platte] river
who eventually swam
to the opposite side. We halted for the night a little
above Cherry Creek.
Denver is historic grizzly habitat. Grizzlies are an endangered species. The solution is becoming clear.
Turn loose a dozen grizzlies at Confluence Park. As they spread through the metropolitan area, feeding and breeding, human population growth should reverse as the faint-hearted are discouraged by bad publicity, the prudent flee to civilization and many others join the food chain.
As human population declines to a reasonable level, water consumption will also decrease. Colorado will be able to help the whooping cranes in Nebraska, while accommodating endangered grizzlies in one of their traditional habitats.
No need for clear-cuts, and restoration of the bison herds and prairie fires could be postponed, perhaps indefinitely. Meanwhile the rivers would carry more water to deserving wildlife.
Obviously, the Coalition for Sustainable
Resources
hasn't thought this through. They're bound to
run into hard-core opposition with their logging plan,
whereas they would enjoy wide and fervent public support if
they put it this way: Do you want trees and grizzlies, or
11 million more people in Colorado?
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