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If you can’t see open space, is it still open?

Compiled by Allen Best EAGLE, Colo.

Compiled by Allen Best

EAGLE, Colo. — If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

You’ve heard that question, and that was fundamentally the same question in Eagle County for the last two years as the citizenry loudly debated in the pages of the Vail Daily and elsewhere the virtues of acquiring a ranch at the entrance to Glenwood Canyon for open space.

The 4,830-acre ranch, owned by the long-time sheep-ranching Bair family, was part of a complicated package of land parcels and financing partners, ranging from private donors to the federal Bureau of Land Management. The land had been appraised at $17 million, but the various groups pooled $5.1 million. Eagle County’s $2 million was the deal-maker or breaker.

But not many residents of Eagle County – which includes Vail, Beaver Creek, and some suburbs of Aspen – will get to see all the land. The deal ensures only that nobody develops the ranch, although the ranch owner can expand his tourist business. But public access will be limited to only a small portion of the ranch, several hundred acres along the Colorado River. Driving by on I-70, people can see little of the ranch that is being preserved. There are no public roads to other areas of the ranch.

The land’s major value will be its wildlife habitat.

Opponents loudly denounced the deal, calling it welfare for the ranch owner and a poor use of the county’s new property tax, which generates $2.9 million annually for open space preservation.

A leading critic of the plan, County Commissioner Tom Stone, a Republican, said the money could be spent more wisely in acquiring land near where people can see it, use it, and where they now live, which is to say in the Avon-Edwards area, 35 to 45 miles to the east.

But in the end, the swing vote in favor came from Commissioner Michael Gallagher. Returning from the Mayo Clinic, where he was being treated for effects of Agent Orange from when he was in Vietnam 35 years ago, Gallagher stated his position with what observers said was both conviction and grace. "This is future-looking," he said.

Greens like the Terminator

SACREMENTO, Calif. — Environmentalists say they are pleasantly surprised with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although they didn’t support him during last year’s recall campaign, a growing number of California environmental leaders say Schwarzenegger is apparently greener than they anticipated, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

They still grumble about Schwarzenegger’s fleet of gas-guzzling Hummers – he still owns four of them (down from seven), but is retrofitting one to run on hydrogen. But on issues from coast protection to staff appointments, from air pollution to water supply, Schwarzenegger has taken actions that environmentalists cautiously cheer.

"We didn’t really know him," said Felicia Marcus, vice president of the Trust for Public Land in San Francisco. "We’re still in the honeymoon period, but now I think people feel there may well be a record of real accomplishment with this administration."

Low-cost carriers double-edged sword

ASPEN, Colo. — Aspen may yet be the premiere winter destination resort in the United States. Yet, like other resorts in Colorado, it also depends upon skiers from metropolitan Denver. But this winter, they were more scarce.

Bill Tomcich, who directs reservations operations at Aspen and Snowmass, believes the downturn is due to the arrival of Frontier, Ted, and other low-priced carriers operating out of Denver. That resulted in more people flying into DIA on their way to ski vacations.

But it also resulted in more people from the Front Range going elsewhere rather than to skiing. For some, the choice became a three-hour flight to Mexico or a three-hour drive to Aspen for the weekend. Aspen, he suspects, lost out to Mexico.

Steamboat boxing in retailers

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo.–Steamboat’s city council has passed an ordinance that more tightly regulates big-box retailers, defined as being stores 100,000 square feet or larger.

But a speaker at a recent conference, Carl Steidtmann, predicted that no such big boxes would arrive in Steamboat. Instead, the big retailers are moving toward smaller, pseudo-neighbourhood shops similar to what Wal-Mart has done. Instead of supercentres, it is now opening groceries in 40,000-square-foot buildings, or about one-quarter the size of a supercentre.

Reporting all this in an editorial, The Steamboat Pilot went on to add its doubts about stifling economic development, but also suggested why the city council would want to regulate retailers. "Losing Steamboat’s Western, small town character and unique shops to national brands packaged behind smaller, trendier storefronts could pose an equal threat," said the newspaper.

Reagan a quick study on slopes

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Ronald Reagan wasn’t known as a skier nor as one who cared deeply about the environment. But at Lake Tahoe he was.

Reagan, then governor of California, went to Heavenly Valley in 1968 to meet with his counterpart from Nevada, Paul Laxalt. Reagan, then 57, took a ski lesson, and he had soon gone from snowplowing to launching off moguls.

"He was extremely well-co-ordinated. I don’t think he fell once," recalled Fred Corfee, then a general partner in the ski area, in an interview with the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

By all accounts, Reagan was a playful governor on the ski slopes, throwing snow balls and in general enjoying himself. Over lunch, he talked with Laxalt, apparently about the deteriorating condition of Lake Tahoe, which is bisected by the California-Nevada border. "They had this phobia the lake would turn grey on their watch," said Coe Swobe, a former Nevada state senator.

The upshot was an interstate compact approved by both states, ratified by Congress, and signed by President Richard Nixon in1969 that created the intergovernmental mechanisms for protecting the lake’s prized clarity.

Sun Valley wants new roofs

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — The planning and zoning commission is recommending that the town require non-combustible roofs on all buildings within the next 25 years.

The proposal would apply to all new buildings and re-roofing projects. Firefighters there estimate that 75 per cent of homes currently have flammable roofing materials. An exception is made for historical buildings, if replacing roofs presents a hardship for owners, notes the Idaho Mountain Express.

EPA must explain snowmobile logic

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 issued regulations that required snowmobile manufacturers to begin producing engines that pollute less.

Instead of the dirty, carburetor-driven two-stroke engines, the manufacturers must use four-stroke engines or direct-injection two-stroke engines. The overall requirement is to have an average 50 per cent reduction in tailpipe emissions by 2012.

But the EPA let manufacturers off the hook with about 30 per cent of their models, agreeing that changes would be too expensive for manufacturers. Even with the exemptions, the EPA and industry sources estimate an average of $900 increased cost per snowmobile as a result of the quieter, less-polluting changes.

In response, reports the San Jose Mercury News, several environmental groups sued the federal government, and a federal appeals court has essentially sided with them. The court said the EPA does have the authority to require less-polluting engines, contrary to the contention of the manufacturers. As well, the federal court said the EPA must clarify why the greater pollution should be allowed to continue.

"The EPA claims this is the best they can do. The court said you need a better explanation," explained James Pew, an attorney for the environmental groups. He added that snowmobiles are the dirtiest vehicles on the road or off the road. "They emit as much pollution in a single hour of operation as a car emits over 24,000 miles of driving."

Snowmaking extends season

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — While among Colorado’s oldest ski areas, having opened in 1946, Arapahoe Basin was among the last to acquire snowmaking. But the snowmaking appears to have paid off in spades this year, the first season at A-Basn with the new technology in place.

Instead of a season from December to Memorial Day, as natural snow conditions might have accommodated, the resort along the Continental Divide opened in October and finally closed June 12, reports The Denver Post.

Although the resort has never had an earlier opening, it has often had later closings, going to July 4th most years and one year during the mid-1990s lasting until August.

Program may speed removal of land mines

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Construction is expected to begin this summer on a museum in Cambodia, where a civil war ended 11 years ago but the landmines planted during that war remain even today. An important connection for that museum, which is to tell the story of those landmines, was made at the Telluride Mountainfilm Festival.

At that festival in 2003, a Canadian photographer, Richard Fitoussi, told the story of a Cambodian who puts his life on the line daily to remove mines. Already, in one Cambodian province alone, there have been 27,000 victims, many of them children, of landmines.

After showing his slides and telling this story Fitoussi says he was approached by a man who pressed him for details, to gauge the depth of his passion. At length, the man promised him $100,000. Returning to Canada, Fitoussi says he was leafing through a Rolling Stone magazine article about summer blockbuster movies when he saw a picture of the man. His donor was a famous Hollywood producer, Tom Shadyrac.

With that donation and others, the construction is expected to begin this summer. The hope is that the museum, located near the famous Angkor Wat ruins, will draw more attention to the land mines, speeding up efforts to remove them. It may take 50 to 100 years to remove every mine.

Wolf dies on I-70

IDAHO SPRINGS, Colo. — After trotting around in the triangle between Steamboat Springs, Vail, and Winter Park for several days this spring, a wolf headed southeast along Colorado’s Front Range.

Bad choice of a travel itinerary. In the early days of June, the wolf that had wandered down from Yellowstone National Park got smacked by a car or truck on Interstate 70 a few miles west of Idaho Springs. The wolf was the first wild wolf confirmed in Colorado since 1935, when a government hunter killed what is believed to have been the last native wolf in the state.

Something similar occurred last year when wolves were found in the Uintah Mountains not far from Park City. In both cases, the wolves had wandered down from the Yellowstone region, where wolves were reintroduced in 1995.

Both Colorado and Utah have spent the last year anticipating the arrival of wolves, but this wolf jarred nerves that in some cases were already jangled. While several polls during the last decade have indicated two-thirds of Coloradans support the return of wolves to Colorado, that majority is heavily weighted by the state’s populous Front Range, where four among five Coloradans live.

Out on the ranches, the mood is decidedly different. The Colorado Wool Growers Association "flat out does not want wolves in this state, and that will be such a hard bridge to build," said Bonnie Kline, the group’s executive director, at a meeting of those appointed to come up with a plan.

What happens in Colorado and Utah depends upon what first happens in Wyoming. Wolf packs have done so well in Wyoming that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to delist wolves, but if that happens Wyoming wants to give residents the authority to shoot wolves on sight. The feds say that goes too far.

If the wolves are delisted, as expected, then Colorado and Utah will take over responsibility. Under current laws, Interstate 70 is the dividing line for two sets of rules. Wolves found attacking livestock or pets north of I-70 can be shot, but those south of the highway cannot. Biologists thought that I-70, which some call the Berlin Wall to wildlife in Colorado, will effectively divide the habitat between the gray wolves from Yellowstone and the Mexican wolves that were transplanted into New Mexico and Arizona.

Conservationists oppose easier automobile access

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — The debate continues in Crested Butte and Gunnison about whether to pave the west side of the road across Cottonwood Pass. Doing so would effectively create a short-cut to those driving from Colorado Springs, Denver, and other population centers, reducing travel time by 30 to 60 minutes.

High Country Citizens Alliance, an influential environmental group, argues against the paving. Faster-moving cars would kill more cattle, thus harming local ranchers, and also disturb wildlife to a greater extent, while impairing the more pristine character of Taylor Park, the high mountain valley immediately at the foot of the pass. As well, warns the group, completing the paving of the road from Buena Vista would accommodate easier diversion of water from the valley to metropolitan Denver.

Enviros cry foul in case of forest plan

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Environmental groups are crying foul in the Lake Tahoe area after the U.S. Forest Service decided that the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan, which was adopted in 2001 after a decade of work, is too complex and does not adequately reduce fire danger.

Specifically, the Forest Service has adopted an amendment that allows removal of trees up to 30 inches in diameter, instead of 20 inches as before. This change, says Forest Service officials, will allow timber companies’ profits to compensate for the expense of removing smaller trees and brushes. Those smaller trees and brushes can act as ladder fuels in wildfire.

"We can’t afford to do the amount of thinning that needs to be done with appropriations from congress," Matte Mathes, a Forest Service spokeswoman, told the Tahoe Daily Tribune. "The new decision basically gives us a way to finance the work."

While Forest Service officials predicted few of these bigger trees would be cut, environmentalists labeled the trees as old growth, and said the decision was an attempt to line the pockets of the timber industry. But Mark Johnson, a fuels specialist with the government, said too many environmental regulations in the Lake Tahoe Basin remain to think that there will be much cutting of larger trees.

Unshielded lights OK if they’re low wattage

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — Gunnison County has backed away slightly from its ordinance limiting light pollution. Previously, all unshielded bulbs were banned. Now, bulbs of up to 60 watts can be used without shields.

However, the county is sticking with a provision that says that motor-sensor lights cannot be activated by movement on a neighbour’s property or in a road or street. Such lights must be activated only by movement directly on a homeowner’s property, reports the Crested Butte News.

Red Bull too extreme for amateur athletes

SILVERTON, Colo. — Whether by foot or on wheel, transportation has been in the news of the Silverton Standard.

One news account reports official blessings from the county commissioners of an adventure race, the Red Bull Divide & Conquer, which is to include running above timberline and mountain biking, plus kayaking and paragliding in the area between Durango and Silverton. The race, described in one newspaper as a race too difficult for amateurs, will be on national television.

The newspaper also reports a few changes that will allow riders of unlicensed dirt bikes, ATVS, and four-wheelers greater access to the maze of roads around Silverton. However, the off-roaders will still not be allowed on streets of Silverton itself, and they won’t be allowed unless specifically authorized by town residents. Town officials, unwilling to pass judgment on that hot potato, are awaiting for it to be put on an election ballot in November.