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Almost daily, I get an email from somebody or another
that asks When are you going to write something about
the proposed new White River National Forest management
plan?
Generally I reply that I can't even keep up with developments in the local National Forest, Pike-San Isabel, and so I'm not about to tackle another one, especially when the plan weighs 14 pounds, my shelves are already heaped with unread reading matter, and I already wear bifocals.
Besides that, White River National Forest flanks
Interstate 70 on the Western Slope as the highway crosses
Summit, Eagle and Garfield counties. Thus it appears that
there's already a management plan in operation, since down
here, we refer to that area as a Sacrifice Zone.
A few years ago, it seemed like a good theory. The Sacrifice Zone would be a swath 10 or 15 miles wide along I-70, set aside as a preserve for corporate tourist industries.
There they could go about the vital work of installing fast-food franchises, constructing chipboard condos and fabricating world-class four-season amenity-laden destination resorts. In exchange for that chunk of Colorado, they'd leave the rest of us alone.
Unfortunately, that hasn't quite worked, and the first symptoms appeared early in this decade. One rotten February afternoon I was sitting in a tavern in Buena Vista, catching up on gossip with a friend, when I glanced out the window and saw a horrifying spectacle.
In broad daylight on Main Street, a Copper Mountain bus was disgorging serfs, and on a visit to Leadville a fortnight later, there were more such appalling sights. The world-class tourist industries had escaped from the Sacrifice Zone to launch an invasion of our valley.
The Upper Arkansas Valley had formidable defenses, too. Right at the top, at Climax, were immense tailings ponds, the remnants of the largest underground mine in the world and the glory-hole that had once been Bartlett Mountain. Nature-loving recreationists from the Sacrifice Zone never tired of telling us how ugly all that was, and so it seemed reasonable that they would just stay away so as to protect their delicate eyes from that horror.
The river's other headwaters fork was the route of a
busy transcontinental railroad line -- often noisy and
redolent of diesel fumes and inside a forest that had once
been leveled for charcoal and thus could not qualify as
old growth.
The two forks met near Leadville, which was a Superfund site and thus obviously a place where no self-respecting health-conscious Vail resident would even drive through, let alone spend time in.
Every so often, a mine drainage tunnel would break loose, sending orange heavy-metal water down the river, or a train would wreck, spilling other toxic matter into the water supply.
On down the river at Buena Vista, the state correctional facility often sent raw sewage into the river, which flowed through another Superfund site at Smeltertown, just above Salida.
Throw in plenty of idiosyncratic gun-toting residents, many of whom abided in trailer houses or shacks, with yards that boasted burros, goats, chickens and old cars on blocks. With this array of defenses against the I-70 culture, I figured we were protected, no matter how they managed White River National Forest.
But I was wrong, of course. Our valley keeps losing heavy industry while improving its environment and property values. The Sacrifice Zone is creeping southward, and the White River management plan will likely have something to do with how fast it oozes.
From what I've read, the plan's preferred option would close many White River trails and roads to snowmobilers, bicyclists and the like. The problem with that is that more of them would head south into our area, and as far as I'm concerned, our forest already gets plenty of visitors. Lest I sound selfish, I will point out that every neighbor I've asked feels the same way.
However, there is someone from the Sacrifice Zone whom
I'd like to invite here: Sloan Shoemaker of the Aspen
Wilderness Institute. He wanted even more restrictions in
White River forest with more wilderness management because
There's only going to be as much wildness and only as
many species as we consciously allow.
If I understand this correctly, it means that we humans have the power to determine which critters can abide in a given area. Or at least, some humans do -- I'm not among them.
Thus I'd like Shoemaker to visit sometime. At our house, we consciously allow humans, two cats and a dog, and we tolerate bats and birds.
But even though we consciously try, we have so far been unable to disallow deer, skunks, ants, wasps, gnats, mosquitoes and aphids. Shoemaker apparently knows how we can adjust our consciousness so as to control which species can visit or live on our lot, and I want to learn how it's done.
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