JUNE 2020

Average Citizen Goes Wild: My Decades with Wild Connectionsby Lee Patton

Pikes Peak view from the foothills south of Canon City.Photo: Robert Epley

Indelible in Memory: The Places We Mapped and Restoredby Jean Smith

One evening in January 1995 Rocky Smith (no relation) and I did a slide show for some fifty folks in the under-

renovation auditorium of the American Mountaineering Center in Golden. Volunteers stepped up, a steering committee was formed, and we joined the state-wide coalition of conservation organizations to investigate the actual boundaries of “roadless areas” across all the Colorado National Forests.

I count that evening 25 years ago as Wild Connections birthday. It was the first public event that highlighted the need to identify and protect the millions of wild acres located on public lands in the South Platte and Arkansas basins. Our focus was the Pike-San Isabel National Forest that was losing roadless lands to ever expanding motorized travel routes. We were sure that the official USFS inventory of these lands woefully under-estimated the acres that were truly roadless.

People step upInventorying these roadless areas wasn’t going to happen by itself. I am forever grateful for the support of Enos Mills Sierra Club, the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project and our

In the mid 90s when I was teaching high school in Castle Rock, I had my desk positioned so that I could gaze out the

classroom window at the wide-angle vista of Devil’s Head poking over the Rampart Range. (My students had to look at me.) That view, cutting off the hyperactive development around the school to reveal only green ridges, made me into a Pike National Forest fanboy. On weekends, I’d play up there—mountain biking on Dakan Mountain or hiking in Lost Creek Wilderness. When I heard via Sierra Club that volunteers were needed to map the roadless areas in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest, I rushed to find out more.

At a Denver organizational meeting, Jean and Art Smith explained how mapping volunteers would spread out over the central Colorado foothills and mountains armed with old-century equipment—topo maps, 35mm cameras, and data collection sheets. The purpose was to “ground truth” a segment’s roadlessness by driving passable roads to their dead ends and hiking impassable ones. My first mapping experience was at Thunder Butte, just south of Deckers, where I discovered new wonders—the sheer rock faces of Thunder

Continued on pages 6 & 7Continued on page 10

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2168 Pheasant Place Colorado Springs, CO 80909info@WildConnections.orgwww.WildConnections.org

Mission: Wild Connections, a science-based conservation organization, works to identify, protect and restore lands of the Upper Arkansas and South Platte watersheds to ensure the survival of native species and ecological richness.

Board of Directors 2020

Jim Lockhart-PresidentColorado Springs, Colorado Attorney

John Stansfield-Vice PresidentMonument, Colorado Author, Professional Storyteller

Alison Gallensky-SecretaryWestminster, ColoradoGIS Specialist

Claude Neumann-TreasurerDenver, ColoradoCivil Engineer

Board Members

Misi BallardEnglewood, ColoradoEnvironmental Activist

Karl Ford, PhD.Denver, ColoradoEnvironmental Scientist

Kristin Skoog,Colorado Springs, ColoradoSoftware Engineer

Staff

John SztukowskiSalida, ColoradoConservation Director

Jean Smith, FounderColorado Springs, ColoradoNon-profit Administration, retired

Landscapes Editor: Jim Lockhart

Layout/Design: Christine Hill

President’s Message: Everything is “Hitched”By Jim Lockhart

Reality often intrudes to force a change is our plans and objectives. As 2020 began, we at Wild Connections looked forward to devoting the year to a celebration of our 25th year as an organization. We planned a number of celebratory events, beginning with a mid-March “Celebrate 25” event at Cheyenne Mountain State Park, to be followed by a series of other special events and hikes. We also planned to launch a campaign to strengthen Wild Connections financially and organizationally so that we could begin our second 25 years on a sound footing.

Then the COVID-19 emergency happened. Instead of meeting in person to plan or celebrate, we are learning how to conduct virtual conferences. Instead of traveling to backcountry areas to watch spring unfold, we are walking around our neighborhoods or making short trips to local parks. We are learning, in a hard and “cold turkey” way, how much we appreciate our wild areas and how important they are to both our physical and mental health. We are also discovering how much we are truly connected, in that the actions and decision that each of us makes will determine how the future shapes out. John Muir’s famous statement that everything is “hitched” to everything else applies as much to our human environment as to the natural world.

These Landscapes comments are being written a month before they will appear online or in your mailbox. Considering how many things have changed between the middle of March and the middle of April, it is difficult to predict what our national, state, or local circumstances will be at the beginning of June. Yet one factor that does seem to be going on without interruption is the exploitation of a favorable political climate in Washington to push forward schemes to weaken environmental protections and open our public lands to private development. The COVID-19 emergency is also being exploited to these ends.

Wild Connections continues to be active in working to protect our wild lands. In the process of learning how to connect and carry on remotely, we are forging new tools that we can use to better protect the environment.

Like most environmental organizations, we depend on our donors and volunteers to keep the organization going. We hope that we can count on your continued support. a

Epidemics happen in the wild too. BLM visit to beetle kill area on October 21, 2015.Photo: Jim Lockhart

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Summer 2020 Restoration Project NewsBy Misi Ballard

Since the early 2010’s, Wild Connections has worked to restore badly damaged public lands in the area of Badger Flats. This area north of US 24 and bounded by the Puma Hills on the west, and Park Co. Road 77 (the Tarryall Road) on the north and east, has long attracted off-road enthusiasts. Unfortunately, not everyone follows travel regulations, so the wide-open meadows and delicate countryside has suffered tremendous damage, and the resident deer and elk have all but disappeared from the area.

Through several boots-on-the ground projects, Wild Connections and our members have worked to restore and protect the Farnum Peak and Schoolmarm Roadless Areas by effectively closing off illegal tracks, reseeding, transplanting, and monitoring the effectiveness of the closures. And, according to local residents, wildlife is returning to its important winter and calving areas, once again finding grassy meadows and quiet refuge.

Wild Connections is continuing this important restoration work in Summer 2020 as we once again partner with the US Forest Service South Park Ranger District to address issues on the south side of the Puma Hills. La Salle Pass is a popular OHV route located between Badger Flats on the east and Turner Gulch Road on the west, northwest of Badger Mountain and Wilkerson Pass. Installation of post and cable fencing will provide better traffic flow and protect the roadless area to the north. Depending upon volunteer recruitment, we anticipate a one-day post and cable installation workday later this summer. We can sure use your help! We will, of course, be following all social distancing requirements. Be sure to watch the Wild Connections website for more information and plan to join us as we work together to protect and restore our public lands. a

Post and cable installation in Farnum roadless area.Photo: Misi Ballard

Depending upon volunteer recruitment, we anticipate a one-day post and cable installation workday later this summer. We can sure use your help!

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Will BLM Restore Public Input and Wilderness Back into Royal Gorge Plan?By John Sztukowski

The Bureau of Land Management’s Eastern Colorado Resource Management Plan (ECRMP), which began in 2015 and will guide the management of over 650,000 acres of public lands in central Colorado, is nearing completion. But its protocols changed after 2018, when the Trump Administration limited and ignored public input, and instead proposed only a microscopic portion of wild lands for protection.

Wild Connections began preparing for this plan in early 2013, which is when I was brought on as Wild Connections’ mapping coordinator. From 2013-2015, Wild Connections inventoried nearly 250,000 acres of BLM Royal Gorge Field Office (RGFO) managed public lands for Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (LWC)!

In preparation for the ECRMP, the BLM had to inventory all of their resources, including BLM managed lands with wilderness character. BLM initially only found about 77,000 acres to have LWC; however, after we presented our findings and submitted them to BLM during the ECRMP 2015 scoping process, RGFO went back and reassessed to find over 190,000 acres of LWCs, recognizing new areas including Echo Canyon, Eightmile Mountain, and North of Coaldale in the Arkansas River Canyon region.

This was a great first step for the BLM, and in turn for our local wildlife and wildlands, and was a very promising start to the ECRMP. And it was not just Wild Connections that highly supported LWCs in this plan. Managing for LWCs received the second most public comments, behind concerns for fracking, in BLM’s 2015 scoping public comment period for the ECRMP.

A Recap of BLM’s Eastern Colorado Resource Management Plan and Lands with Wilderness Characteristics

Eightmile Mountain from Thompson Point Loop Trail.Photo: Wild Connections

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Rivers in Canyons: They Mean Different Things to Different PeopleBy Michelle White, V.P. Education, Pikes Peak Chapter of Trout Unlimited

Keep Wildcat wild because:

• More than 60% of the Front Range water supply flows through Wildcat Canyon

• Wildcat Canyon is a rare pocket of pristine, native habitat left largely untouched by the Hayman Fire

• 7.3 miles of Class V whitewater, under appropriate flows

• Spectacular geologic formations• Designated as Colorado Wild Trout Water• Outstanding habitat for moose, elk, deer,

mountain lion, black bear and Peregrine falcon• Important habitat for Mexican spotted owl and

Pawnee montane skipper• Proposed for Wild and Scenic River Designation

for its Outstanding Resource Values involving wildlife, fisheries, geologic and scenic resources

My appreciation for wild places, creeks and canyons grew out of childhood exploration. Investigations of a world that existed on the other side of the privacy fence, in the alley behind the garage, and in the creek bed lined by trees beyond the dead end of our neighborhood.

“Don’t go there, it’s dangerous.” One of the first boundaries drawn around my freedom. I went anyway. My defiance was selfish and uninformed as to the possible atrocities that might occur to a little girl playing in abandoned places alone. I lived an un-”adult”-erated existence in secret places.

To this day, I need to be alone without sign of another human being before I can pass into that world. The wild world knows no boot print before mine. The tracks are from wildlife. The trampled grass is from beasts lying down. The wild berries, shrubs and trees might show nips from grazing deer and elk. There is sound but not from motors. The peace is temporary until the sky lets go lightning and hail.

Where can you find this? You start by opening the car door.

You might have used 4WD to arrive, but the journey begins when you set your foot on the dirt and turn off the engine. That’s where it is. The Earth’s roiling core of molten iron and the gravity produced thereof creates energy that rises through the sole of your boot through your body out the top of your head and beyond, into the chain of creation as it spirals through the universe. The path is linear though your feet may wander to find the most steady placement between balls of buffalo grass. One step at a time.

Appreciate the moment as it is given. Value nature’s treasures as they are discovered: an empty bird’s nest waiting in the naked bough of a scrub oak for next year’s returning parents; a pair of newly dropped antlers, having been bumped from the itchy brow of a buck in the spring; red tailed hawk’s feather resting lightly on top of tall grass; fox scat thoughtfully left on a flat rock in the middle of a game trail.

Wildcat Canyon survived the Hayman Fire and likely all pre-historic wildfires in the region due to its profound cliffs. The grass that grows there, the berries, shrubs and trees have survived as a unique microcosm older than human years. It’s an intact ecosystem of plants and animals that have lived there uninterrupted for eons, unique to the world.

It’s important to protect the untrampled places where rivers flow through canyons. It’s more important than economic and recreational development. Appreciation leads to thoughtful evaluation, which in turn leads to action. What will be your action, I wonder? a

Wildcat Canyon after the Hayman fire.Photo: Jean C. Smith

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Indelible MemoriesContinued from page 1Steering Committee which later became the Board of Wild Connections. Art and I were retired, so I volunteered as the chair and he handled the finances. Planning, training, logistics, financial support and program design were guided by these volunteers. Eventually we incorporated as the tax-exempt Wild Connections.

Some of you will remember the early mapping. Volunteer teams were sent out to their assigned region. Regional coordinators kept in touch with their teams to make sure the documentation was accurate and complete.

Mapping data was sent to the “office” located in the Smith home and eventually to the Forest Service. Every fall teams met to debrief and reflect on that year’s mapping experiences. It all became the framework for the Wild Connections Conservation Plan published in 2006.

Places are mappedIf my own experience is typical, the places we mapped are indelibly in our memory. We can see the outline on the topo, hear the bird song, feel the rain or blazing sun, especially feel the incredibly rough ride as a road got near its end where the land beyond was wild.

Long Scraggy is one of those places for me. Located northwest of Deckers between the South Platte River, County Road 126, and the Colorado Trail, this 20,500 acres is anchored by the 8,800 ft. Long Scraggy outcrop on the east side and is carved by many small drainages in the valley below.

One weekend Art and I documented the route on the northern boundary. It was closed to vehicles, but open for non-motorized travel. We biked to where the route branched into old logging tracks, and walked northeast through the pines toward the edge of 1996 Buffalo Creek fire.

But soon we realized we were directly under the end of Long Scraggy – about 180° in the wrong direction from our destination. So back to the junction and head the other way. We found the burn and started back since the weather was looking iffy. Suddenly one of those thunder storms you don’t

Long Scraggy after the storm.Photo: Jean C. Smith

Rocky Smith trained volunteer mappers.Photo: Arthur W. Smith

want to be in came crashing down. We got off the exposed route, now turned to gumbo, and sheltered under some pine trees – probably equally unsafe. It finally stopped, and when we got back to the car, Long Scraggy was sunlit above the clouds.

Every mapper has a story like that I’m sure. As a result of thousands of hours of hard work, 1.2 million acres of roadless land were identified on the Pike-San Isabel. Based in part on Wild Connections’ data, the Forest Service added 107,400 acres to its official inventory of roadless areas for the Colorado Roadless Rule. In addition, between 2013 and 2015 mappers found 246,000 roadless acres on BLM lands, most of it along the Arkansas River between Buena Vista and Cañon City. After reviewing our data, BLM increased their inventory from 77,000 acres to more than 191,000 acres. The Forest Service and BLM additions were important milestones in our saga of people and places.

Working togetherIn 2009, we itched to get our hands dirty and work on the “restore” part of our mission. Trout Creek, the first habitat restoration project, has

led to a dozen projects with more to come.

Trout and Eagle Creeks, located east of Highway 67, eventually flow into the South Platte at Deckers. Closed motorized routes being used illegally by ATVs and motorbikes were causing erosion and adversely affecting water quality.

The Forest Service brought in heavy equipment to rip and

(Top photo under the map) Rocky Mountain Mule Team packing up supplies. (Photo to the left) Trout Creek volunteers returning from trail work. (Lowest center photo) Lisa Smith, a volunteer, unloading the mule.

Photos: Jean C. Smith

contour the routes. Volunteers came out in force for weekend workdays over two summers to rake, sow native seed and mulch these tracks. We obliterated nearly 8 miles of motorized tracks, built 175 erosion structures and revegetated a 5-acre gravel pit.

Volunteers were awesome and mules were indispensable!

The USFS Rocky Mountain Mule Team packed hundreds of pounds of straw bales, seed and erosion mat up the steep work site.

Obliterating these trails reconnected three smaller Forest Service roadless areas into one. Since then, monitoring trips tell us that water quality is better, grasses are growing and the endangered Pawnee montane skipper butterfly is still breeding along Trout Creek.

All togetherWild Connections is a mature and effective force for conservation because it brings people and places together to protect the lands on which all of life depends.

This map gives a visual perspective of how inventoried lands, designated Wilderness, and restoration projects can be the basis for a region wide network of core reserves.

These in turn can be our contribution to the North American Wildways.

And it’s all built on volunteers, cooperation among conservation groups and land management agencies, and even the sweat of those mules. a

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Moving Toward Approval: The Colorado Wilderness ActBy John Stansfield

Ed Zahniser spoke from experience. “Be persistent, be consistent, be actively patient in working for wilderness,” he said—and he should know. He grew up watching his father, Howard, the author of the Wilderness Act of 1964, writing and revising 65 drafts of the legislation over nine years time.

Howard Zahniser’s struggles and those of other wilderness visionaries throughout the United States have paid off richly through the ensuing years. Since 1964, the National Wilderness Preservation System has grown to 803 areas, on 111,375,657 acres, in 44 states and Puerto Rico. Millions more acres of lands and waters with wilderness characteristics are threatened and unprotected.

Colorado provides some of the nation’s finest natural scenery, biological richness, and ecosystem services on its public lands. Currently, Colorado is home to more than 40 Congressionally-designated Wildernesses protecting better than 3.5 million acres. Nearly 90% of the designated areas reside on lands managed by the Forest Service and Park Service, mostly at higher elevations.

To date, only five Wildernesses reside within Colorado’s eight million acres of Bureau of Land Management lands. Most BLM holdings, often overlooked by Congress, are mid-elevation ecosystems providing habitats for a staggering variety of plants and wildlife.

Conservationists approached Colorado Representative Diana Degette about her interest in BLM Wilderness areas. As she describes events, “This group of citizens gathered input from communities across the state and eventually presented their proposal. . . Understanding the need to preserve Colorado’s public lands, I took the group’s proposal and introduced it as a bill in Congress in 1999.”

Like Howard Zahniser, Degette has shown persistence, active patience, and a consistent appreciation for protecting wildlands by reintroducing the Colorado Wilderness Act (CWA), in every legislative session for the past 20 years. Details can be found at degette.house.gov

Currently, the bill would protect over half a million acres located in 32 specific areas on public lands across the state. CWA includes six scenic gems in the Arkansas River Canyonlands: from Beaver Creek near Colorado Springs on the east to Browns Canyon near Salida on the west. The reasons for designating the CWA’s Wilderness areas are numerous:

• A majority of Coloradans prefer to permanently protect our public lands; 90% of Coloradans believe that the outdoor industry is critical to our state.

• CWA garnered support from more than 350 businesses and organizations statewide. DeGette has received over 14,000 supporting letters from Colorado residents.

Map of the 2019 Colorado Wilderness Act lands. Rocky Mountain Wild, April 28, 2020.

Map: Alison Gallensky

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Moving Toward Approval: The Colorado Wilderness ActContinued from page 8

Will BLM Restore Public Input and Wilderness Back into Royal Gorge Plan?Continued from page 4

• Colorado’s public lands are major economic drivers for the outdoor recreation industry, generating $28 billion annually and 229,000 jobs.

• Wilderness provides a diverse range of landscapes for nature and backcountry recreationists. Reintroduced in May, 2019, the CWA moved rapidly to House passage in January. Now part of the larger Protecting America’s Wilderness Act, the bill is primed for a vote in the Senate. Your “vote” in favor of the Colorado Wilderness Act is needed now. Just call or email your Senators in support of the bill. a

US Senator Michael Bennet(303) 455-7600; https://www.bennet.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact

US Senator Cory Gardner(202) 224-5941; https://www.gardner.senate.gov/contact-cory/email-cory

In 2017, the BLM unveiled their Preliminary Alternatives for the ECRMP. Their balanced approach alternative, alternative D, which has gone on to become their preferred alternative, was a great balance of recreation, conservation, and other uses. This alternative only had 24,100 acres of LWC, however it had other wildlife and conservation protections. Additionally, the BLM hosted another public input period at this time and once again support for LWCs received the second most amount of public comments across all categories.

We awaited the ECRMP Draft in 2018, particularly after seeing a sneak peak that the BLM shared with their now defunct Resource Advisory Council (RAC). This plan that was shared with the RAC, and before it was sent to BLM National for approval, had 63,800 acres of LWC in the preferred alternative, and a total of 278,400 acres of conservation protections! It was amazing and rewarding to see the BLM RGFO incorporate local input into this plan.

However, this once promising plan went off the rails last year when the BLM finally released the ECRMP Draft, which looked unrecognizable, just a husk of the publicly informed plan we saw a year prior. Instituting the Trump administration’s energy first policy, BLM National not only completely ignored local public input, but the local cooperators and agency expertise, stripping out most of the proposed protections in the plan’s preferred alternative. Trump’s BLM wanted to have them more accessible for oil and gas and other mineral developments, despite these lands having low to no oil and gas development potential.

Proposed management for LWCs went down to just 1,300 acres, less than 1% of the 190,000+ acres that the BLM identified in the region. And total conservation designations were slashed to only 47,300 acres, a far cry from the 278,400 acres that BLM RGFO sent to BLM National for approval in 2018. Unfortunately this plan is all too similar to other recently released BLM plans across the west, where local experts and stakeholders are being cut out of the decision making processes.

Last year’s ECRMP Draft and 90-day public comment period gave us one last big opportunity to submit input on this plan and lobby for the previous LWCs and other designations to be included back into the plan’s preferred alternative. Thanks to everybody that submitted comments again, the BLM will reveal their summary report of these comments once the proposed plan is released.

The proposed ECRMP and final Environmental Impact Statement is due out soon, with the BLM speculating May 2020. Wild Connections, other organizations, and locally elected officials have sent in comments to the BLM to suspend the release of the proposed plan due to the unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 health crisis in Colorado. With brazen disregard, the BLM has moved forward with other plans at this time despite locally voiced concerns, so we do expect the RGFO plan to be released soon.

The proposed ECRMP will come with a 30-day public review and protest period (for those who have previously commented on this plan) and a governor’s consistency review process.

We are heavily invested in BLM’s ECRMP, and the wild landscape that it impacts, and will fight for LWCs and other conservation designations in and beyond this plan. We greatly appreciate your support and actions as well to protect our BLM managed wilderness quality public lands.

Stay up to date on this far-reaching management plan at wildconnections.org as we will have updated analyses and actions for members of the public to take for this final stage in BLM’s ECRMP once it is released. a

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Average Citizen Goes Wild: My Decades with Wild ConnectionsContinued from page 1

Ridge and the view from the top of the butte, Pikes Peak presiding over a rugged green vastness (most of it incinerated in 2002’s Hayman Fire).

I loved the opportunity to combine hiking with a larger purpose and deeper discovery of the forest. Fascinated by “citizen science,” I gained knowledge from Jean’s tutorials on water quality, biodiversity, and wildlife corridors that I could immediately apply to my next task, leading a mapping expedition along the South Platte’s Wildcat Canyon with a team of university interns. What I remember most was Wildcat’s phenomenal geology—the massive granite formations lining both sides of the river, the wild vibe of its untrammeled reaches, the impossibly steep, forgotten “roads” linking the canyon to official forest routes above. At Northrup Gulch, the overgrown jeep trail was so steep I could barely sidestep downhill. At a last crest before the plunge to the river, a 1950s pickup rusted away, abandoned to the insane incline.

Other memories persist—munching wild raspberries while mapping Turkey Creek, learning GPS to explore Reinecker Ridge and Red Hill, and discovering a colony of self-proclaimed “mountain men” (actually on the run from alimony) while mapping along Starvation Creek, near Salida. In the hills around Deckers, I learned stillness in pursuit of the Pawnee montane skipper; up Hall Valley, we observed toxic mining goop seep into a stream’s source. I edited Landscapes, sections of our comprehensive Wild Connections Conservation Plan, then did epic editorial battle with Professor Tod Bacigalupi’s work on ecosystem services. Then a new emphasis evolved—restoration. We obliterated illegal roadways in Trout Creek, Geneva Creek, and Green Mountain.

After Jean recruited me, a mere English teacher, for Wild Connections’ board, I served as the “average citizen,” a know-nothing among seasoned naturalist and activist members. In more than ten years of meetings, I listened to proposals and technical policy matters way over my head. I learned a lot, but I’m not sure I contributed much, just holding fast to my simple perspective that every inch of wilderness must be preserved because of its intrinsic worth—every tree and tweety bird inherently more valuable than another paved road, tract house or outlet mall. Period. a

Massive rock outcrops of Precambrian granite tower over the South Platte River far below.Photo: Misi Ballard

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DONATE ONLINE

Go to our secure web page hosted by Colorado Gives

2020 marks Wild Connections’ 25th anniversary. We are grateful to our many volunteers, partners, and donors for their support over the past quarter-century. In these times of national and economic hardship, threats to our wildlands have not ceased. Wild Connections will continue to help people like you to learn about and take action to protect our pub-lic lands. We continue to plan future hikes, events, and restoration projects in support of our long-term vision of a network of protected and connected wildlands in central Colorado, from the mountains to the plains.

Do you share this vision? One thing you can do at present is to contribute to Wild Connections. We need your financial help now more than ever to address the conservation challenges facing us today, and to do so in light of the unprecedented COVID-19 public emergency. If you have given to Wild Connections in the past, please consider continuing or increas-ing your donation. If you have not yet given, will you send your first gift today? A gift of any size can make a difference.

Sincerely,

Jim Lockhart, President

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2168 Pheasant PlColorado Springs CO 80909

Wild Connections is on Social Media

(Bottom left) Grill

Canyon and (Bottom right)

the Blanca Mountains.

Photos: (bottom left)

EcoFlight 2019 & (bottom right) Michael Dwyer.