A WILDERNESS PROPOSAL
FOR
COLORADO
Forty-nine conservation groups ranging
from the Sierra Club to the Sheep Mountain Alliance have proposed
the creation of 1.3 million acres of additional wilderness in
Colorado. Instead of high-elevation rock and ice, these lands are
primarily desert and canyon country managed by the Bureau of Land
Management. In a recently published proposal, the groups would
designate 48 areas as wilderness – 31 areas and about 660,000 acres
more than the BLM recommended. With an eye toward preserving
important ecosystems and corridors between existing wildlands, the
183-page proposal describes the wilderness value of areas such as
the Adobe Badlands near Delta County, Lower Rio Grande Canyon near
the New Mexico state line, and the Vermillion Basin, in the
northwest corner of the state. Conservationists say the BLM was
hasty in disqualifying some potential wilderness. Norm Mullen, a
staffer with the Colorado Environmental Coalition, says oil and gas
development threatens many of the state’s most spectacular roadless
areas. For more information or a $12.50 copy of Conservationist’s
Wilderness Proposal for BLM Lands, contact the Colorado
Environmental Coalition,
303/837-8701.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A wilderness proposal for Colorado.
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