Regional
(2010-06-16)
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The Hidden Gems proposal would mark an unprecedented wilderness expansion in Colorado.
Photo by Kirk Siegler
Wilderness debates used to be cut and dried. You had those who wanted to save prized pieces of land against those who wanted to extract more resources like oil and gas and timber. But in the Colorado mountains, a new type of wilderness debate is emerging; one that seems to be pitting outdoor enthusiasts against one another.
Overlooked 'Hidden Gems'
Sloan Shoemaker is hustling up a series of switch backs on a rocky trail a few miles southwest of the resort town of Vail.
"It's too bad that your microphone doesn't have a smell o meter on it, because it really smells good right now," he says.
The pungent snow berry bushes are bursting. The aspen leaves are finally out, providing welcome shade as the trail winds through a proposed wilderness called West Lake Creek. It's one of more than three dozen sites across the central mountains that Shoemaker says deserves new, federal wilderness protections.
"Some of these little hideaway places, like this creek we're walking along now, just didn't get the same attention," he says. " But from an ecological perspective were equally or more valuable, so these little hidden gems, these overlooked areas, really capture the essence of what we're trying to accomplish here."
As director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop, Shoemaker is the brainchild behind the Hidden Gems campaign. It would no doubt mark an unprecedented expansion of wilderness in this state; 250,000 acres in fact across Summit and Eagle counties. The idea is to create more contiguous, protected, wildlife habitat. Most of the sites are lower altitude forests like this and high deserts. They're not the iconic, rocky peaks that many of us would think of as wilderness.
"We have run into this difficulty of people accepting that these areas that don't have that scenic splendor actually qualify under the wilderness act," Shoemaker says. " We have people saying, that's not wilderness, wilderness is up there, where you can't get to.'"
Battle Lines Drawn Over Access
"Difficulty" is one way to put it. Unbridled opposition another because some worry this is the first step toward closing off some cherished public lands.
About fifteen miles away from West Lake Creek, as the crow flies, Jack Albright of the White River Forest Alliance is steering his Jeep on a bone-busting four-wheel drive track. It cuts through a lush scrub oak forest in the mountains above the town of Basalt.
"I would like Wilderness Workshop to really explore the workshop part of their name, a little bit more than the wilderness part of their name, and let's go to work," he says.
Albright says he supports more wilderness where it's a good fit. But he says Shoemaker's proposal is too big and includes too many areas like this; where people in Jeeps and on snowmobiles and mountain bikes have grown used to accessing over time.
"We want to maintain access so that those fundamental Colorado experiences can be had, by people of all abilities," Albright says.
People, like Larry Rinierson and his wife Laurel, who almost as if on cue, rumble up beside us in their jeep a few minutes later. Larry Rinierson says this jeep road is the only way he can get up here to spot wildflowers and enjoy the views.
"It's my road, I'm part of the owner of this piece of property you and I are standing on, very small, but I help pay taxes to protect it, and so I don't want it taken away," Rinierson says.
Paradigm Shifting
That's a familiar refrain made by wilderness opponents here and across the West. But down in Glenwood Springs, at the headquarters of the White River National Forest, supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams says the Hidden Gems proposal is a marked departure from the ages-old fights between wilderness protection and resource extraction.
"It's really all about recreation, which is a sign of the times," Fitzwilliams says. " This is the most heavily recreated forest in the nation, and it's a sign that some of these paradigms are shifting considerably."
Fitzwilliams has tried to distance himself from either camp. But he points to the White River's current management plan, which identifies about 80,000 new acres of possible wilderness. Much of that was contained in an unsuccessful wilderness bill in 2002 sponsored by former congressman and current GOP candidate for governor Scott McInnis. That was opposed by conservationists because of its scaled-back size. But Fitzwilliams says many of the lands targeted then and now by the Hidden Gems campaign have too many user conflicts.
"If areas currently open to, for example snow machines, would no longer be allowed. We're going to deal with the fallout of people not being able to snow machine where they have been," Fitwilliams says.
A Pitch for Wildlife Protection
Back in West Lake Creek, Sloan Shoemaker doesn't buy those assertions.
"There's no basis to that claim that anybody's access is getting cut off," he says.
Shoemaker says much of the land in the proposal is already being managed as wilderness anyway. He says his campaign has made concession after concession and redrawn numerous boundaries to accommodate off-road vehicles and mountain bikers. He's not sure it can get any smaller.
"Ethics is all about self-restraint, and I think that's what this campaign is all about, us humans need to restrain ourselves so that those important places that exist for the wildlife as well as for our own renewal, are still available into the future," Shoemaker says.
The Hidden Gems proposal has been on the table in one form or another for almost a decade now. But wilderness advocates say they've never been this close. They now have the ear of Congressman Jared Polis, who is considering introducing a bill. But Polis, a democrat, has been getting an earful from all sides in recent weeks - and he's given no timeline for when such a move might occur.
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