HD Mountains latest sacrifice to oil & gas gods

After a long battle against the San Juan Basin strain of oil-and-gas cancer, the HD Mountains succumbed the affliction on Monday when a federal judge pulled the plug on the region's legal life support.

On Monday, a district judge ruled against the San Juan Citizen's Alliance in the group's attempt to overturn a 2007 decision by the U.S. Forest Service to expand drilling in the HD Mountains, including in roadless areas. The ruling may end some ten years of legal battling to protect the unique and relatively undeveloped area.

I think this is a loss beyond the legal decision. Even beyond this particular area itself.

The HD Mountains are important not because it's a big, dramatic, alluring landscape. But because it isn't. It's a Little Place. The prime cuts have been parsed -- a few gems set aside and the rest thrown to the economic dogs. Now our hungry eyes turn to the little nooks and crannies -- the sinew and cartilage of the San Juan Basin wildlands. That's what we're eating now. We're down to gnawing the bones.

In fact, I wrote a story titled just that a few years ago, about the battle to keep oil-and-gas out of the HDs, and especially its special roadless heart. In that piece, I described the area:

The HD Mountains fall away from the southwestern corner of the San Juans like a dangling foot. Low and rumpled, never rising anywhere near treeline, they stand like choppy water between the Piedra River on the east and the flat plain of Florida Mesa on the west, finally pinching out on the south on the shores of Navajo Reservoir, the sunken middle trunk of the San Juan River. 

On the north, looming over and dwarfing the HDs, rise the massive ramparts of the greater San Juan Mountains - a landscape of ragged, jagged, snow-field-patched peaks and green, stream-laced alpine valleys. Dramatic and charismatic, the San Juans are given their due by being largely protected in perpetuity under the shield of the Wilderness Preservation Act, as the Weminuche and South San Juan Wilderness Areas.

As a relatively little landscape - only about 40,000 acres - the HDs remain little-known, little-appreciated and little-visited. Few people outside of southwestern Colorado are aware of their existence, and even those who do live here mostly know them as the area of rolling hills south of the highway when driving U.S. Hwy. 160 between Bayfield and Pagosa Springs.

Little known, maybe; but they are also, remarkably, and importantly, little developed. In fact, RARE II, a government study in the late 1970s that inventoried the remaining roadless areas around the country larger than 5,000 acres, found 23,000 acres of the HDs qualifying as official Roadless Area designation. Other surveys claim as much as 40,000 acres - all but the outer foothills of the HDs - as de facto roadless area. Still, despite the RARE II findings, the Forest Service chose to not nominate the HD Mountains for protection when they had a chance under the Wilderness Act of 1980.

Even the judge, U. S. Senior District Judge Richard Matsch, noted that "this is not an opening up of a virgin wilderness." He still, though, recognized that the issue here is deeper than a mere legal one. Even though most of the 39-page decision focused on legal issues and environmental law, Mastch made a point to note in his decision, "Gas production is the antithesis of environmental protection. The national policies expressed in NEPA and in energy legislation are in direct conflict."

If we're going to fight for what's left and defend our public lands so our kids have some to share with their kids, then we need to argue on terms beyond law and legislation. We cannot win there.

What we need, I think, goes beyond law: We need new reasons -- 21st century reasons -- for public lands, for roadless areas, for the wild and semi-wild places that are left around us. Even and especially little places.

We need to find words and ways to say anew, not what we're fighting against, but what we're fighting for. And why. 

And we need to say those things for a 21st century world, for 21st century people living 21 century lives.



So ... what might be 21st century reasons to keep our public lands -- and our last lingering little pockets and connecting corridors of wildlands -- public and safe from the hungry gods of endless economic development and ruin?


Read about the HD Mountains in "Gnawing the Bone" here.

Read about Monday's decision allowing drilling in the HDs here.

Learn more abut the San Juan Citizen's Alliance here.

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.

Swirling in the Farmers Market social eddy ...

Spent the morning at the weekly Durango Farmers Market today. I was down there with my friend Matt, and we were representing Backcountry Hunters and Anglers at a table with some folks from Colorado Wild. We were giving out info to visitors to the market about roadless areas in Colorado, and urging people to urge Governor Ritter to make the Colorado Roadless Rule at least as strong as the Clinton Roadless Rule.

Learn more about the issue here.

But that's not what I want to write about here. What struck me the most about this day was the farmers market itself. And Durango itself.

It was a lovely morning, with a slight cool bite to the air early on ("That is a whisper," a friend whispered to me this morning. "It's winter whispering, 'I'm com-ming ...'" He grinned, big and happy ...). By mid-day it had given way to shorts-worthy heat -- the typical southern Rocky fall regimen kicking in.

And people were out en masse. The market -- set in two adjacent strips of First National Bank parking lots -- was like a big, swirling eddy. And everybody was happy and convivial and just loving the day. Part of 8th Street just up from the market was closed for the Durango Coffee Festival, and live music rolled out over both venues as people strolled and pushed strollers and biked and sauntered around between the two.

Downtown Durango was alive, and at its tribal, social, communal best early on this lovely late summer day. My parents were in town and I was glad they were able to enjoy it with us.

And that was the perfect place for me to be, it seemed. Always good to be able to evangelize on a street corner, of course -- but beyond that, it was three hours or more of running into friends and neighbors and co-workers and former co-workers and old friends and forgotten acquaintances and old students and meeting some tourists and several new Durangotans who I hadn't yet bumped up against in the great ecosystem that is Durango.

It was fun in the sun and sharing and chatting (and a few cups of good coffee), and it showcased some of the great features of Durango, and of mountain-town life in general: the engagement, the involvement, the caring, the out-of-doors living, the social fabric, the festivarian spirit, the endless swirling and entwining and renewing of relationships.

For us, it was certainly an easy place to push an idea like defending Colorado's roadless areas -- to people who care about their town, their community, their place. People who live somewhere because they want to live there.

Mountain-town people.

More from the science of appearances file...

[photo: Arizona Game and Fish Dept.]

Sometimes you're looking for lions, and catch a jaguar instead. Having considered this possibility, the research team attached a collar, and released the 118 pound male to continue roaming a landscape that trumps the concept of national borders. This may be the jaguar known as Macho B, appearing only as an image on motion-triggered cameras for the last thirteen years, or it may be another male migrating toward the northern portions of ancestral jaguar range; but the knowledge gleaned from this accidental trapping will further complicate the politics of fencing the empire.

So far the satellite-uplinked jaguar has stayed south of Tucson, but his ancestors once hunted the rims of the Grand Canyon. A quick glance at the habitat map I posted here last week should encourage you to consider adding jaguars to your phenological "watch for" list, and might give further incentive to teach your poodles and chihuahuas to heel.

Group fights for southeastern Utah forests

Looking for a Christmas gift for that person who can't keep away from the wonders of southeastern Utah? Give that high-country canyoneer a membership with Red Rock Forests.

Red Rock Forests is a Moab-based 501(c)3 non-profit formed nearly 10 years ago, in 1999. Originally called "Friends of the Abajos," the group is now dedicated to the protection of southeastern Utah's unique and fragile high-desert forest lands in and around the Abajo and La Sal mountains.

The organization's staff of six (including Monticello wilderness activist and writer Amy Irvine-McHarg, author of Trespass: Living at the edge of the promised land), with the help of volunteers, is working on several campaigns, including an updated inventory of legal and illegal roads in the Abajo Moutains, monitoring and commenting on Manti-La Sal National Forest management plans and proposals, and an outreach and education campaign on oil-and-gas and mineral development in the Canyonlands area.

They describe themselves thus:

Red Rock Forests strives to protect the sky-island mountains and plateaus above America's Redrock Wilderness in southern Utah, emphasizing the La Sal Mountains, Abajo Mountains, and Elk Ridge in the Canyonlands Basin. We recognize the vital ecological role these ranges play in sustaining Utah's desert wildlife and waterways. For this reason, ecology is our guiding principle, though we use education, public policy, the law, citizen action, and collaboration with other organizations and agencies to achieve protection for these irreplaceable high desert oases.

Read more of their "about us" here.

Check out their newsletters and donate to join here.

Contact Red Rock Forests at info@redrockforests.org.

Dumbasses in Hummers

Does anything get your blood pumping quite as much as this?

From the silence research facility. . .

Here at the foot of my home range, north light streams onto the glowing screen of my laptop, and my thoughts stumble through ambient noises. I could turn off the rock-flavored music on the radio, which masks the sound of passing cars and an occasional train, but the refrigerator’s deadly hum might be more distracting. After an initial meow of greeting one cat has settled on my lap. The other is asleep for now. The dog, as usual, is quiet, and this may be enough to begin.

Back from multiple trips through southwestern El Norte and the northern Sierra Madre, I’m well-stocked with beverages conducive to deep research, and trying to think of silence. I’m reading an article about “one square inch of silence” in the Hoh rain forest of northwest Washington. It’s near a trail I’ve walked, and is indeed a quiet place, though I remember a deer stepping quietly out of my path and a river flowing below dripping trees.

Earlier this month, I walked for five days through a canyon still mostly resistant to industrial noise, with a friend and local guide capable of quiet concentration, so that for periods it was possible to hear only the sound of breathing and footsteps. Louder as the scrabbly trail steepened, quieting as the grade eased. One night we slept to creek and thunder sounds, another to a river cascade. One night featured wind, drunken shouts of locals buzzed on a corn beer called tesguina, and barking dogs (my hiking friend doesn’t sleep easily, and hates the sound of barking dogs). Before daylight, I awakened to a rooster crowing. The last night had creek sounds, and the faint noise of a recently re-opened mine up the slope. Once, a jetliner passed over, and vehicles on the rim highway announced our return to constant human-generated noise. I do not recall silence.

To be fair, the creator and main promoter of the ‘One Square Inch of Silence’ concept, Gordon Hempton, does not claim pure silence as his goal, and in fact points to our rotating planet as constant background noise for any discussion of the subject. He placed a symbolic stone in Olympic National Park in 2005, and since has been using its existence to pressure the National Park Service to adhere to its stated goal of preserving natural sound-scapes. More accurately, he is talking about something known as ‘acoustic ecology,’ which of course has its host of organizations, associations, institutes and even a world forum with a scholarly looking (i. e – sleep-inducing) journal available online. Though some of these organizations looking to be suffering a bit of ennui (most references pre-date our current national economic hand-wringing, hair-tearing, breast-beating, and finger-pointing), here are some links: World Listening Project, the Acoustic Ecology Institute, the Nature Sounds Society, and World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.

The Noise Pollution Clearinghouse and the Right to Quiet Society may be of help. With time, beverages, and a fast internet connection, quixotic seekers of a more perfect acoustic ecology can battle some of these creaking windmills: car alarms, leaf blowers, muzak, motorcycles, loud mufflers, loud car stereos, train horns and even barking dogs. Madison, Wisconsin-based Noise Free America will be your guide. There, you can also find links to quiet lawn-mowers, vacuums, and for the ver-r-ry sensitive, a quiet computer cooling fan.

Gordon Hempton has made sound recordings for several decades. Jez Riley French’s blog has more, and you can buy a custom-made hydrophone of your own. The World Soundscape Project has more recordings, and a short history of acoustic ecology. My own interests lie more in finding quiet places, and respecting them. Now and then, as the noise of living engulfs me, a story triggers memories. For this, I thank Kathleen Dean Moore’s Silence Like Scouring Sand in Orion Magazine’s current issue. Check it out, while we wait for winter to blanket our chosen pieces of paradise with a quiet so pure that breathing might shatter it.

One more day to comment on Roadless Rule

The U.S. Forest Service is accepting comments on the Roadless Conservation Rule until Oct. 23.

Tomorrow.

The San Juan Citizens Alliance urges your comments to address the following:

1. Take More Time: The Bush administration is attempting to rush the process to a conclusion instead of taking the necessary time to comprehensively review the proposed rule for ALL of the effects it would have on Colorado’s roadless backcountry.

2. Support the 2001 Roadless Rule: This rule offered adequate protections for Roadless Areas and is the high standard necessary to protect all of our nation’s roadless lands - Colorado’s roadless backcountry deserves this measure of protection. More than 1.6 million public comments backed this rule when it was first proposed!!

3. Any version of a roadless rule enacted must provide these basic protections:

• The cessation of road construction including the “long-term temporary roads” noted in the Draft Colorado Roadless Rule that would last up to 30 years!
• Halting further oil and gas leasing and associated development such as pipelines and compressor stations.
• A stop to logging, coal mining and powerline construction.

Learn more at the USFS roadless website here.

Learn more about San Juan area roadless areas here.

Send your comments to COcomments@fsroadless.org,
or submit comments online here.