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Wilderness Groups Pressure Colorado Governor on Colorado Roadless Rule

The ups and downs of the Colorado Roadless Rule (CRR) process stretching over 3 years are close to producing a tangible result. COHVCO, Colorado Trail Preservation Alliance and the BlueRibbon Coalition have followed this process - with a magnifying glass - and have done an excellent job of protecting motorized interests.

Recently, radical environmental groups have put pressure on Colorado Governor Ritter to make changes in the Rule, despite that fact that it was crafted using over 100,000 comments from individuals and organizations, and hundreds of public meetings around the State. The fact that the Colorado Rule enjoys support from a wide range of stakeholders across Colorado won't stop the Wilderness activist from trying to slip in a back-room deal during the change of Administrations.

In October, I attended a meeting of the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee (RACNAC) in Salt Lake City. It was my impression that the environmental community may have been buying time, hoping to stop the Colorado Rule in the event that Senator Obama was elected President. My impression seems to have been proven correct, as there has been a recent notice of an extension that allows the next administration to "review" the CRR. The Governor's representatives to that meeting strongly supported the Colorado Rule.

Of further concern is that the motorized public cannot, at this time, support the specific language of the Final Rule because we don't have it yet. This creates the difficult situation of not being able to weigh in directly upon the argument except to support the proposed Rule, which we have already done.

September 23, 2008

A copy of the complaint is linked to this public notice:

• Original Court Document:  San Bernardino County Complaint to Quiet Title 
  Note:  This doucment was scanned as an image; screen readers will not work
• Tagged Court Document:  San Bernardino County Complaint to Quiet Title
  Note:  This document was converted with an OCR reader and tagged for use with a screen reader

Should you have any documents that would assist in the BLM’s evaluation of these claims related to Goff’s, Nipton, Halloran Summit, or Halloran Springs roads, the four roads under the administrative jurisdiction of the BLM, please forward these documents no later than October 15, 2008 to: Bureau of Land Management, California Desert District Office, 22835 Calle San Juan de los Lagos, Moreno Valley, California 92553, Attention: Alan Stein.  

Proposed Colorado Roadless Rule and Draft Environmental Impact Statement Available for Public Comment; Public Open Houses Planned

Denver, CO, July 25, 2008 – Today the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Department) published in the Federal Register the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule to address the management of roadless areas on National Forest System (NFS) lands within the state of Colorado. The associated draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) is posted on the U.S. Forest Service Web site at http://roadless.fs.fed.us/colorado.shtml

People will have 90 days to comment on the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule. The comment period for the DEIS will begin on the day the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publishes the Notice of Availability (NOA) in the Federal Register and will end the same day as the comment period for the Rule, which is October 23, 2008.