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Judging from what I've read, one boundary between the Old West and the New West is also the boundary between Routt and Moffat counties in northwestern Colorado.
Routt County -- its seat is the ski resort of Steamboat Springs -- wants stronger protection of the public lands that attract tourists who spend money. Moffat County -- its seat is Craig, and though I have on occasion enjoyed visits to certain dives and honky-tonks along Victory Avenue, I suspect most people would not view the place as a resort -- wants more mining, drilling and grazing on public lands.
To that end, Moffat County has proposed a greater degree
of local control, one that would respect the custom and
culture,
as opposed to some wilderness declaration from
remote Washington that respects the fund-raising abilities
of national environmental groups.
More specifically, there would be a Northwest
Colorado Working Land Trust
with seven trustees, four
of whom must reside in Moffat County. It would assume
regulatory authority over 1.7 million acres of federal
land, including national monuments and forests; federal
agencies would only manage the land according to Trust
policy.
Those polices would include balancing local economic needs against environmental protection, no new wilderness designations, removal of existing protections on wilderness study areas, and wildlife management to increase big-game harvests so that more hunters will spend money there.
The Trust would need Congressional approval, of course,
and that's not going to happen in this lifetime, even with
a notarized endorsement from Interior Secretary Gale
Norton. There are just too many voters who speak
reverently of our sacred public lands
which
belong to every American [which in this context means
civilized people in metropolitan areas], not just those who
live near them [ignorant rednecks who aren't good enough
for their magnificent vistas].
And in ways, that's a pity. While we can be reasonably sure that a local land administration would operate from impure motives inspired by greed and campaign contributions, it should also be noted that a local board wouldn't have much in the way of resources.
Unlike the feds, it wouldn't have the money to subsidize below-cost timber sales or below-market grazing rates. It wouldn't be able to conduct atomic-bomb or nerve-gas tests. It couldn't afford the legal expertise for interminable delays on payments to Indian trust accounts.
In short, it's hard to see how the environment would suffer more under local control than under federal administration. And so I wish the feds would cut a deal with our Moffat County, or perhaps Catron County, N.M., and try a 20-year experiment. What's there to lose?
But there's a deeper issue. Moffat County wants an Act
of Congress to preserve its custom and culture.
When I frequented that area during the mid-70s, the custom
and culture might have been fairly summarized as Drink
and brawl, then drive fast while drunk, and shoot out the
pickup window at everything that moves if you can't run it
over first.
Things may have advanced past the American Rural Visigoth custom and culture, but the issue remains -- if Moffat's custom and culture, whatever it is now, is worthy of preservation, what about the custom and culture of other public-land counties? Shouldn't they also be worthy of federal support?
For instance, I used to edit the Summit County Journal
in Breckenridge. Our custom and culture
involved
some outdoor recreation, but to be honest, it was mostly
indoor recreation which involved the consumption of
uncontrollable substances. And rather protect our
custom and culture,
the feds did their best to
destroy it.
Much the same thing happened to people I knew in Delta County years ago -- their custom and culture involved an indigenous agriculture of a plant that has been cultivated since the time of the Pharaohs. But they got no respect from the feds, either.
Consider Leadville, whose custom and culture was mining for more than a century -- and yet the feds didn't lift a finger to keep the hoist running when its last operating mine, the Black Cloud, shut down a couple of years ago.
Nor did the feds act to preserve the railroading custom and culture of Salida when the Rio Grande began scrapping narrow-gauge lines after World War II -- indeed, in 1996, the feds even approved a merger that meant the end of all rail service hereabouts.
Chaffee County in the 1980s had a wonderful custom
and culture.
Nobody had steady work, so there was
always time to help a friend or hang out at the Victoria
Tavern. Just about every building was for sale, with no
buyers, so there were no property values
to worry
about, and without property values, we were spared the
pernicious influence of People of Money.
So I'm all for preserving custom and culture.
I'd just like to know why Moffat County's custom and
culture
is so much more worthy of preservation than
that of other Colorado counties.
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