Last days for Roadless comments!

At his talk last night, Dave Foreman didn't talk about just saving wilderness and wild critters, who talked about rewilding -- creating full landscapes that can support the large carnivores essential to healthy wild ecosystems.

And key to rewilding, he insists, is maintaining the health of large core areas, and forging corridors connecting large core areas.

And at the core of good healthy core wild areas are roadless areas.

In Colorado, roadless areas are at a key juncture: Protected in 2001 as a lame-duck president, Clinton created his Roadless Rule that protected Western roadless areas. Then it was knocked down by the courts. Then-president Bush allowed Western governors to propose their own plans for their respective states, which Idaho's and Colorado's opted to do.

Idaho's plan was lame as "protection," of course. But Colorado Governor Bill Ritter formed a committee that held hearings around the state to carve out a plan for the state that Ritter called an "insurance policy" in case the Bush Administration or some following administration came up with a really bad law.

Good idea. But in August the Clinton Rule was since returned by the courts. And Ritter's Colorado plan is in several important ways weaker than the Clinton plan.

The idea, then, is to urge Governor Ritter to either accept the Clinton Rule, or bolster a Colorado roadless protection plan that is at least as strong as the Clinton rule.

Learn more here.

Send the Governor an email supporting roadless protection here.