An Unexpected Slot Canyon, Trail Art, and a Threat

It's better in the winter — this is early December

I was over in Fremont County, south of Cañon City, in an area where I used to wander some twenty years ago. Back then, a hike meant following deer trails, arroyos, or an occasional two-track road.

Now there is a trail network. That's a good thing, mostly.

Stumps + rusty iron = trail art

Winter is the time to be out in this country. The sun is bright, there is only a little ice in the shady spots, and the "piñon gnats" of summer — those little bugs that fly into your eyes, nose, and ears — are absent. So are rattlesnakes.

Layers of shale.

 I found this little slot canyon that I had not known about.

Tint the photo pink and say that you were in Utah.

Other people knew about it though, as their old graffiti attested.

1901 ??

I learned that some people believe there are dinosaur tracks in the canyon. I have seen tracks in places like the famous trackway out in the Purgatory Canyon. To me, the various dimples in the rocks looked more the result of erosion.

I don't think these are tracks from a prehistoric beach.

But there is always something. These trails are on BLM land, and a Canadian mining firm, Zephyr Minerals Ltd., wants to core drill part of the area and maybe mine it — or sell it to some outfit that would. So instead of year-around recreational area, there would be a big hole in the ground, maybe a cyanide-leaching pad or some crap like that.

There is a potential for polluting Grape Creek, which brings down the DeWeese-Dye Ditch & Reservoir Company's water from the Wet Mountain Valley to serve hundred of shareholders large and small on the south edge of Cañon City.

So another battle to be fought.

Just Don't Put It in Salt Lake City

Senator Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) wants to move the Bureau of Land Management national headquarters out of Washington, D.C., to somewhere in the West and has introduced legislation to that effect. Rep. Paul Tipton (R-Cortez), whose 3rd District includes some of southern Colorado and most of the Western Slope, has a similar measure in the House.

This makes sense in a way: most of the land managed by the BLM is west of the Mississippi or in Alaska. Modern communication techniques make centralization of federal functions in D.C. less crucial.

When I heard this proposal, I figured that Denver was the hypothetical location. But the Grand Junction Sentinel  is blowing the local horn (as a newspaper should):  "But the Republican from Colorado told The Daily Sentinel in an interview that he still thinks Grand Junction is well positioned to compete for the office if legislation he introduced this week becomes law."

He is not specifying Grand Junction, however, but you can expect that he is pulling for a Colorado location. Still, there a political realities:

Gardner has gotten what he called a “great group” of Senate bill sponsors from a number of Western states, with the sponsorship list growing. But he acknowledged that those senators may have an interest in seeing the headquarters moved to their home states. And he’s previously noted that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, of Montana, might want to see it moved there.

So if the measure passes, “this will be a bit of a — I think I’ve said it before — a bit of a Western food fight (to land the office). But I think Colorado comes up pretty good in this,” he said.

The BLM's Colorado state office is already located in Lakewood,  at a satellite location of the Denver Federal Center (an office complex that grew up post-World War Two on land that had held  a military munitions factory).

Speaking as a former BLM contractor and someone with an interest in public lands, I am all for moving the national office. Just don't put it in Utah. After the anti-public lands performance by Utah's governor and congressional delegation — so stinking disgraceful  that it has driven the outdoor industry's annual trade show out of SLC —that state frankly does not deserve it.

Could We Have a Natural Control for Horrible Cheatgrass?

A cheatgrass monoculture (Bureau of Land Management).

If it were possible, I would nominate these scientists for a prize.

Now, some 65 years after famed naturalist Aldo Leopold summed up the general consensus in the battle against cheatgrass as hopeless, there might be hope.

"We're in a better position to fight back than we have ever been," said Susan Meyer, a U.S. Forest Service research ecologist working with fungus at the Shrub Sciences Laboratory in Provo, Utah.

 Why is cheatgrass a Bad Thing?

• It comes up early in the spring. At that point it is soft and green. It looks good to eat, hence the "cheat" part.

• But very soon it sets its seeds in horrible, prickly awns that hurt grazing animals' mouths, puncture people's shoes and socks, catch in other animals' coats, and spread wherever they are  carried. 

In addition to being a wildfire threat and an ecological problem, cheatgrass can harm animals. Its stiff, spiny seedheads, called awns, can work their way into the ears, eyes or mouths of everything from cats to cattle.

• Because it dries out early in the summer, it carries fire easily.

The keys to cheatgrass spread are its short life cycle and prolific seed production. Because cheatgrass stands dry out by mid-June, fires are more likely to occur earlier in the season. These mid-summer fires are tough on native forbs and grasses.

Cheatgrass seeds drop prior to fires and will germinate with fall precipitation. This gives rise to dense, continuous stands that make additional fire ignition and spread more likely. Fire return intervals have gone from between 60–110 years in sagebrush-dominated systems to less than 5 years under cheatgrass dominance. With every reoccurring fire, cheatgrass becomes more dominant and expands its range further. 

• It has damged the West by reducing feed for both wildlife (elk, deer, pronghorn antelope) and domestic animals:  

“Cheatgrass has probably created the greatest ecological change in the western United States of anything we’ve ever done,” said Steve Monsen, a retired Forest Service botanist in Utah who conducts research for the agency.

It can be grazed when young and green, but unlike native perennial grasses, it does not "cure" on the stem for winter consumption.

On my own little patch of Colorado, I watched cheatgrass move from roadsides, seemingly leap over healthier pastures, and appear in groves of pines trees.

So what Is the new development?

There are pesticides that work against cheatgrass, but the invasion is too big to spray it all. Susan Mayer and others are looking at bacteria instead:

Meyer and Ann Kennedy, a scientist in Washington state working with bacteria, are drawing attention from top land managers and policy makers — and research money — after showing that the seemingly invincible cheatgrass might have an Achilles' heel. 

"We've found several organisms that are really good at colonizing the root of the seed, and reducing the elongation of that root," said Kennedy, who works at Washington State University. "Then that cheatgrass is less competitive the next spring."

This will all cost a whole lot of money. But isn't the West worth it?

The Conspiracy to Take Away Public Lands

John Gale from Backcountry Hunters and Anglers speaks to a rally
at the Colorado State Capitol in February 2015 (Durango Herald).

There is a threat to public lands in the West, and the mainstream media are largely igoring it. Even HighCountry News is ignoring it, but then HCN more and more  focused on California — that must be where the big donors are).

Unlike the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion of the mid-1980s, this is stealthier.

State legislatures in places like Colorado and Montana are seeing bills introduced urging that public lands administered by the federal government — Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, maybe even National Parks Service — be turned over for the states for management.

Doing so would be “more efficient,” “closer to the people,” whatever. The states, of course, would not be able to take care of them.

Can you imagine Colorado footing the bill for a bad forest fire season? Even my state representative, Jim Wilson, R-Salida, who strikes anti-Washington poses (“Personally, I would like to see the Feds out of the picture”) admits it:

If the Federal government were to give the land to the state of Colorado, how would we be able to afford the management costs?  I doubt that the Federal government would give back to the Colorado all the public tax dollars that are spent annually on those lands.  Not to mention the PILT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) dollars that are used by Colorado counties to fund essential services as well as education.  And, to sell and/or develop the land to afford to manage the land is like eating your seed corn...not a sustainable practice!

But this stealth movement keeps puttering along.

You can imagine the scenarios if a state with a lot of public land, such as Utah, got ahold of it. Everything would be wide open — even more than now—to leasing for drilling and mining. Wildlife, water quality, etc., would not be be merely in the back seat; they would be clinging to the rear bumper of the development-mobile.

Since the state always is short of money (roads! schools! Medicaid!) the pressure would be on to start selling. The buyers would line up:

(a) energy companies
(b) mining companies
(c) rich people wanting huge ranches (doubling as private hunting grounds
(d) other land developers

So who is bankrolling this movement. My bet is (a).

There has been some media coverage, but it is isolated. No one is connecting Montana with Colorado, for example.

Some sample headlines:

Colorado Wildlife Federation's "Public Lands Update":

Throughout the 2015 legislative session of the Colorado General Assembly, CWF defended public lands managed by the US Forest Service and BLM from two bad bills: Senate Bills 15-039 (an attempt to confer concurrent state jurisdiction over federal lands) and 15-232 (to study how the state could manage these lands). Both bills were rejected. Colorado, as well as other western states where similar bills have been proposed, does not have the financial resources or personnel to take over management of a huge additional 23-million acre portfolio of public lands that are managed by BLM and US Forest Service. The likely outcome from such transfers would be sales of some of these irreplaceable lands to private interests.

 "[MontanaGovernor Steve] Bullock Vetoes Federal Land Task Force Bill”

"A careful reading of the bill … reveals that the transfer of public lands is still very much in the sights of the task force,” Bullock’s veto letter says. “My position on this issue is crystal clear: I do not support any effort that jeopardizes or calls into question the future of our public lands heritage.”

If you backpack, hike, hunt, fish, look for mineral specimens, collect mushrooms, take photos, or do anything else on public lands, imagine losing that access. You would be no better off than a Texan.

Brown's Canyon, Political Theatre, and the Changing Face of Conservation Rhetoric

I spent the afternoon in Salida at what was essentially a 500-person pep rally for the proposed Brown's Canyon National Monument in Chaffee County.

With me was fellow Backcountry Hunters  & Anglers member Paul Vertrees.

Like a few others, this "monument" would not involve the National Park Service but be managed by the agencies currently involved: the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW).

There are two stories here. One is political theatre and process, and one is about changes in conservation rhetoric.

1. Wilderness protection and national monument designation proposals for this stretch of the Arkansas River, where it runs through mostly public land away from any highways and railroads, have been floating around since the 1980s, at least.

Last year, as I blogged, Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.) introduced a new bill to make this wilderness study area into a national monument that would still allow grazing, hunting, fishing etc.

Then came the 2014 elections. Udall, much to his surprise (I am guessing), lost his seat. Given Congress's preoccupations, his bill's chances don't look good, despite support from most of the Colorado delegation.

Hence Plan B: Have the president designate the national monument under the Teddy Roosevelt-era Antiquities Act. Such designation would be legal, constitutional, and has been upheld by the courts.

To make the case for that, Udall roped in our other senator, Michael Bennett, plus the chief of the U.S. Forest Service and the assistant directors of the BLM and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.

They sat at a long table while listening to hours of testimony from local governments (the towns of Salida and Buena Vista, plus Chaffee and Saguache counties), business owners, conservationists, rafters, hunters, etc., 99.5 percent of whom said executive designation would be a Good Thing. Which brings me to . . . .

2. Last year I briefly mentioned the new "veterans for wilderness" movement, as shown in this Wilderness Society article, "Veterans want to protect the public lands that help them heal." We heard testimony from, for example, the Veterans Expeditions group, which takes vets rafting and camping in the canyon.

This year they were jointed by T-shirted members and former members of a group called (if I have it right) Hispanic Access Foundation, which takes kids from metro Denver on outdoor trips, including rafting Brown's Canyon.

They spoke of seeing starry skies for the first time in their lives, of being out of the city for the first time in their lives, and some hope was expressed by adults that some of these kids might seek careers in natural-resources management.

Who could argue with that? Well, possibly the staffer from Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs), who claimed that an executive proclamation would be a "top-down" action foisted on an unknowing population.

Let's see, I attended my first public hearing on this matter in Buena Vista when Senator Ken Salazar hosted it, and he left office in 2009 . . . and that was just one of several.

I hope that what he heard from local government and business types, in particular, might persuade him otherwise, but you never know.

Meantime, we await the judgment of our performance from the critics who matter.

Smokey is 70, How Old is Lassie?

A week ago we stopped in at "the lodge," the first time in years.

Despite the merely average food (heavy on burgers and burritos) and watery coffee, it hits an emotional place for both M. and me.

Creaky, uneven wooden floors, knotty-pine paneling — for her it echoes similar establishments in the Vermont of her childhood, for me it is the same, only with memories of the Black Hills or little Colorado mountain resorts like Platoro or some place up in the Poudre River canyon.

Near our booth in the dining room was this shrine to Smokey Bear, demigod of the forest. He — as a hand-drawn bear — turns 70 this weekend.

Some facts from the AP story:

WHAT'S IN A NAME: Most people know the finger-pointing fire-safety fanatic as Smokey THE Bear, but in fact there is no "the" in the original name. In 1952, Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote a song [link to video] in his honor and added a "the" between "Smokey" and "Bear" to keep the rhythm flowing.

THE "REAL" SMOKEY: Smokey Bear's nascent ad campaign got a boost in 1950 when a real bear cub that had been rescued from a New Mexico wildfire was nursed back to health and sent to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., as the living Smokey [1950–1976].

THE VOICE: Actor Sam Elliott, known for playing the bowling alley-narrator in The Big Lebowski and supporting roles in movies like Up in the Air and Mask, has served as the latest voice for Smokey. Both share the same "birthday." Elliott, the son of a Fish and Wildlife official, also turns 70 on Saturday.

But what about Lassie?

The same photo as at the lodge.

There next to Smokey's left paw was a photo of Lassie the television collie dog. I wondered about that.

It turns out that after the 1940s movies and the 1950s television series where Lassie (played by various related male dogs) lived on a farm and helped Timmie out of difficulties,
she was handed over for the 1964–1970 seasons to U.S. Forest Service employee "Corey Stuart," a plot change that resulted in "a steady decline in ratings."

I looked on YouTube and found some of those episodes — dubbed in German. In the one I sampled, Lassie and Stuart (who is wearing a hard hat although there is not a tree in sight) are riding in a pickup in what looks to be the Mojave Desert.

Maybe he should have been Corey Stuart of the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM never had a proper mascot.

Why I Would Not Man the Barricades for Cliven Bundy

The stand-off over Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's refusal to pay public-lands grazing fees has energized a lot of people who are starting to think that the federal government is oppressive.

Maybe so. You can count on federal law-enforcement to be clumsy and oppressive, and idea of a "First Amendment Zone" is ludicrous. The entire country is a "First Amendment Zone."

But still. This is an ongoing story that the anti-federal zealots have just recently discovered, but I think they picked the wrong poster boy.

Consider the timeline. It goes back for decades.

In my opinion, here we have a patriarchal Mormon who thinks that God gave the land to him to abuse however he chooses. Range management? Heck no! Habitat protection? Heck no! Paying the Animal Unit Month fees? Heck no!

Besides, this particular anti-federal government narrative just won't get traction, as compared to, say, NSA spying on your emails. Two reasons:

1. It involves agriculture, and 97 percent of the people in this country feel no emotional connection to agriculture.

2. It involves Nevada. What is Nevada to most Americans? Las Vegas and Area 51? They probably do not even know that there are ranches in Nevada, aside from those non-agricultural establishments with "ranch" as part of their name.

The Bureau of Land Management should have removed his cattle long ago for non-payment, but they have been politically cowed (pun intended) by people like Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). As a former BLM contractor, I have seen how sensitive to the political winds that agency can be.

UPDATE: "Sorting Fact from Fiction on Chinese Solar in Nevada." Or, "Look at the map, people."

Wildfire Investigations and the Rumor Mill

Two weeks ago I was emailing back and forth with a reporter friend about the still-undisclosed cause of the Royal Gorge Fire last June in Frémont County.

It seems that the feds still have not said anything—she got the usual "bureaucratic syrup" (full of empty calories) from a Bureau of Land Management spokesman: "The cause of the fire is still an active and on-going investigation."

So does that mean that it is a criminal investigation? And if so, why not say so?

The conventional wisdom is that the 2013 Waldo Canyon Fire was started by an escaped campfire, but no one has been fingered for setting it. (Hard to catch them, I realize.) That same summer there was a string of small arson-caused wildfires in nearby Teller County as well.

And last summer's big Black Forest Fire started at a private home—but how?

No wonder rumors are flying, or as the Colorado Springs Gazette recently headined, "Languishing Colorado wildfire investigations feed rumor mill."

All they can say for Black Forest is,

No obvious accelerant were uncovered in the evidence collect from the place where the Black Forest fire started, just one of multiple clues that have pushed investigators to lean toward a conclusion that fire was accidentally started.

Instead we see a lot of coverage of the Black Forest fire chief and the El Paso County sheriff having a pissing contest in the news media.

Government "public information" at its finest . . .

Burned Area Revegetation, Six Months Later

May 2013

Last May I used this photo of Fisher playing in a little seasonal spring to illustrate a post about the Bureau of Land Management's aerial seeding of a burned area near home.

The black ground is burned by the fire. The wood chips are mulch dropped by helicopter along with a mixture of grass seed.

September 2013

Here is Fisher again at the same spring (Camera Trap Spring). The mullein (upper left) would have arrived on its own, as did some of the other plants, but it looks like the grass mixture took hold, thanks to the late-summer rains.

We were spared the massive rains that hit northern Colorado, so there has not been an erosion problem, and now with any luck, there won't be.

Not shown: the Gambel oak is ankle to knee-high up there already. It needs no encouragement.

Getting out of Horses — and Horse Products

It was several years ago that I heard of livestock auctions asking horse-sellers to pay a fee up front, because the horses themselves brought so little money in the sale ring.

Now, via Coyote Gulch blog, some thoughts on what the rising price of hay is doing to the world of pleasure horses. (Well, there are not many working horses these days, are there?)

“With prices going up, I see people getting out of having horses,” [Colorado rancher Kent] Whitmer said. “It’s a luxury — that’s the first thing to go before a car payment or mortgage for most people.”

It is probably no coincidence that I recently found myself offered the chance to take an email survey on dog-care products sponsored by the makers of Absorbine lineaments. The whole premise of the various sample advertisements shown was something like "a respected name in horse-care products now has stuff for your dog."

All I could think was, "Yes, and which market is growing and which market is static or shrinking?"

Let's now even go into the wild horse mess. Did you know that there are more of them standing around in BLM corrals than there are running wild? 

The mustang-cultists will do anything except actually take the critters home with them, all 49,000-plus, because then they might have to feed them $9/bale hay.

Yet they will go to court to keep slaughterhouses from opening.

Utah Target-Maker Tries to Educate Some Shooters

BLM graphic.

Can you say "cover your ass," boys and girls? Yes, I thought you could.

Action Targets, a Utah-based company, has put out a news release on "10 Ways to Prevent Wildfires While Targetshooting This Summer."

It is all sound advice, such as "don't shoot tracers in dry vegetation" and "don't shoot that old sofa that someone dumped up the gulch because it might smolder and catch fire." And "no Tannerite."

And it just might have something to do with the situation summarized last March at Wildfire Today:

According to Utah State Forester Dick Buehler, of the 1,528 fires in the state in 2012, 33 were caused by target shooting which cost over $16 million to suppress. In October, 2012 when we wrote about the increasing number of fires started by target shooters using exploding targets, we found 10 fires started by these devices in Utah over a 5-month period last year. One of them burned over 5,500 acres.

The BLM has some similar advice. I like the tarp idea.

The outdoor shooting range that I use has a no-tracers rule, and this is why.

Up at Fort Carson, however, they still seem to start at least one fire a year with tracers and/or pyrotechnics of some variety.

Spring Comes to the Burn

On May 16, M. and I re-visited the burned ridge behind our house for the first time since November. It burned last October 23, part of an extremely fast-moving fire that destroyed 15 homes and various outbuildings in the space of about thirty minutes, reaching a total extent of 2,500 acres

.

Here is the area that we re-visited as it looked at 6:40 p.m., October 23, 2013.

Fisher, our Chesapeake Bay retriever, came too. On the ground behind him you can see scattered clumps of shredded bark, mixed with grass seed and dropped from a helicopter on April 13-14, 2013.

Fisher, not bothered by dirt and ash.

This particular area is public land (Bureau of Land Management), although most of what burned was private.

Attaching a sling-load of mulch and grass seed to a helicopter—April 2013 (Pueblo Chieftain).

Concerned about the possibility of ash and dirt washing down into streams, the BLM paid for re-seeding of its portion, which is mostly along a higher ridge.

Mulch had fallen into the little spring. Fisher decided to clear it out.

The first thing that we always do is visit a little seasonal spring that we call Camera Trap Spring. It is the place where a sow black bear attacked a camera, where Fisher narrowly avoided a rattlesnake last year, and where I have gotten pictures of a variety of wildlife.

Then we went to see if the seeding had had good results.

Grass coming up through the mulch.

This was one of the better-looking patches. And I should add that mulch was used only on the steeper slopes. Other areas received a grass-seed mix with no mulch. Since the seeding a month ago, snow and rain equivalent to 2–3 inches of precipitation has fallen, luckily without serious erosion.Whether this counts as acceptable results in re-seeding, I do not know, although I am attempting to check on that. Some other areas do not look as good.

Dandelion and deer droppings (to left of central rock, top of clear spot).

Here, for instance, is a dandelion and some other plants growing, plus evidence of deer passing through the burn. Some of the new grass had been nibbled too. There were no tracks at the spring, however—if there had been, Fisher probably obliterated them!

Golden banner with 500 ml bottle.

This looks like golden banner (Thermopsis divaricarpa), a member of the pea family. Self-seeded, I assume.

And of course the burnt Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), which could probably survive atom bombs, is sprouting from its roots. As the CSU Extension office says, "Fire readily kills the above-ground portions of oak brush. However, intense sprouting follows almost immediately and usually causes the stands to become even denser."

Birds seen: some crows, two woodpeckers (probably hairies—did not have a good look), and to our surprise, two Western tanagers (migrants).

Cañon City Dinosaur Area Expands

Dal DeWeese — land developer, big game hunter, buddy of Teddy Roosevelt — helps to excavate a Diplodocus longus skeleton in Garden Park Fossil Area in 1902. I never heard that DeWeese was that big on dinos, so maybe this was a staged photo — look at how he is dressed. (Photo from BLM.)

People at the Bureau of Land Management office in Cañon City are happy about an official decision to expand the National Natural Landmark status of the famous fossil beds on BLM land north of town, the Garden Park Fossil Area.

The internationally renowned area boasts rich deposits of late Jurassic-period fossils. In the 1880s, fifteen species of dinosaurs, nine of which were new to the field of paleontology, were recovered from the area, making it one of the oldest and richest fossil sites in the country.

More history and old photos are linked here.  Go visit now, before the weather gets too hot.

Up the Line to Death

Years ago, I read Norman Maclean'sYoung Men and Fire (1992), which is an old man's book. He was in his eighties when he wrote it, and it is full of observations of how, for instance, some days the universe is just against you, no matter how strong and determined you may be. I copied out a few passages. (Where is that notebook?)

I remember Dad, the district ranger, indoctrinating some seasonal firefighters (no S190 class then—much more informal), telling them never to run uphill from a fire, that men died doing that. He must have been talking about Mann Gulch, still relatively fresh in the Forest Service's institutional memory, but it never came together in my mind until I read Young Men and Fire.

(I did not know until today that Canadian songwriter James Keelaghan had composed a song about it, "Cold Missouri Waters.")

More recently, having heard so much about them, I started on some of the books by John Maclean, Norman's son, beginning with the Colorado one, Fire on the Mountain (1999), since I had at least seen the location.

It's about the 1994 South Canyon (a/k/a Storm King) Fire near Glenwood Springs, where 14 firefighters died for a patch of scrub oak and PJ, thanks to various sorts of miscommunications, bad judgment, and hubris. A true tragedy as my eighth-grade English teacher defined it—when people do what they think is the right thing and bad stuff happens anyway.

John Maclean himself writes elsewhere of drama where "the sense of inevitable disaster builds until it overpowers the participants, who are swept along on a pathway to destruction. The audience watches with compassion and horror, aware of what's coming and as powerless as the actors to stop it."

The book audience is also muttering, "Get in your truck and go look at it, you idiot," and so on, but the end point is still the same.

I let a little time go by, went back to the library, and checked out The Thirtymile Fire (2007). I read a few pages and sat it down — I just was not ready to deal with another hand crew, full of confidence, setting off to fight a "minor fire" that would finish some of them.

But now I have started it, watching with compassion and horror.

Lines like this in The Thirtymile File remind me of Maclean senior: "For the Hagemeyers, the day would bring one missed portent after another, which added up to one huge miscalculation: that the natural world they counted on for spiritual solace cared in turn for them."

Eventually, I will get to the new one, The Esperanza Fire : Arson, Murder and the Agony of Engine 57. In due time. Meanwhile (because it is set in southern California?), a movie version is in the works.

↬ Wildfire Today

Yes, there is a literary allusion in my title. I wonder if Norman Maclean owned that book; he might well have.

Blog Stew with your Fishing Buddy

• Alfred Packerov? Cannibalism suspected in Siberian survival story.

• Is she a "horse hater" or a "realist"? A Colorado member of the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board wants to talk about the 46,000 wild horses vegetating in corrals and the $60 million the government spend annually on wild horse management. One problem is that people are not lining up to adopt them. Private "sanctuaries" are overwhelmed with unwanted horses.

• New Mexico dog rescuer accused of crossing the line into theft and abuse.

Torrance County sheriff's officials say they have had a flood of new calls since news of Swenerton's arrest broke. One woman, approached at a hamburger stand, seemed startled to hear of the case.

"My dog is missing. A lot of dogs are missing," Melissa Crozier said. She said her dog, Simba, recently disappeared from inside her home, behind an unlocked door. "I came home and he was gone. I have no idea how he could have gotten out" unless someone opened the door.

Blog Stew with Ingredients that You Don't Want to Know About

• Off-topic but fascinating. Sewer-diving in Mexico City (with video). Sewer-cleaning the "fatbergs"  in London (with video). More sewer history.  The good old days of scavenging in sewers.

• The Humane Society of the United States is sued for racketeering and other issues.

District judge Emmet G. Sullivan did dismiss allegations of mail and wire fraud, but he did so only because Feld didn't have standing to file this charge. His ruling all but set the stage for a class-action RICO lawsuit against HSUS for misrepresenting itself in its fundraising campaigns across the nation. This lawsuit easily could bankrupt HSUS, put it out of business and send some of its top executives to prison.

Funny, isn't it, that you have to go to a blogger to hear about this.

• Ze artiste Christo has pushed back the construction of "Over the River" yet again. Tourism-industry types are dismayed, try to find silver lining.

I understand the argument that asks how pristine is a canyon with a highway(US 50) and a railroad in it already. But I do think that the Bureau of Land Management should have restricted OTR to the stretch between Texas Creek and Parkdale, because if there are highway blockages — and there will be — one could detour around on Colorado highways 96 and 69.

Upstream of Texas Creek, there are no detours, except very long, twisty, gravel roads through the mountains such as Fremont County Road 2 or an even longer highway detour up to Hartsel and Antero Junction.

It doesn't take much to close US 50 now: a little roadside fire, a car going into the river, a truck hitting a bridge abutment — I have seen all of these.

• Oh yes, and this: tracking coyotes with GPS collars in urban Chicago.

Presidential Politics and Brown's Canyon on the Arkansas

I read various articles on politics saying that Colorado is "in play" for the 2012 presidential election, like some extra effort will be made for our nine electoral votes, which went for Obama in 2008 but which might be pried loose by Gov. Romney this November.

That connects with a long-standing effort to create a national monument on the Arkansas River in Chaffee County: the Brown's Canyon National Monument—or whatever it would be called. (Unlike the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, my keyboard has a working apostrophe.)

This is the one reach of the river that flows through roadless public lands (BLM and Forest Service on both sides). It's a wildly popular (i.e., often crowded) rafting/kayaking piece of water. About 20,000 acres would be designated.

And at least some outfitters that I have talked to would love to be able to advertise a trip through a designated monument/wilderness area.

Colorado Senator Mark Udall has been conducting hearings in the area and making supportive noises. Ken Salazar did too, when he was senator. This issue has a history.

The monument would still be administered by the Forest Service and BLM somehow, I am told, not by the National Park Service.

There has been opposition from the drive-everywhere motorized-recreationists, but with whitewater rafting a big economic contributor to Chaffee County, the pro-monument people can point to economic benefits.

But Congressman Doug Lamborn, in whose district the proposed monument lies, is not on board with this or any other new national monument or wilderness area. He is more in the "Drill, baby, drill" camp.

So Congressional approval is unlikely. But the president has the power to create a monument under the Antiquities Act of 1906. President Clinton used that power toward the end of his final term. So did President Bush in 2006.

In Clinton's case, creating monuments in Utah did not win him mass approval there, but it played well elsewhere.  

Likewise, President Obama has already used that power.

At the White House, I am sure that they see "environmentalists" as one undifferentiated mass, more likely to vote Democratic. They have already tried to keep that mass of voters on their side with the no-but-yes dance over the Keystone Pipeline—thus alienating workers who might build it. (So much for the Democrats as the workingman's party.)

Since Colorado is "in play" (and the Keystone Pipeline would not run through this state), how about another high-visibility monument designation to make Colorado environmentalists feel good about the current incumbent, who is lagging in some polls?

Environmental Law Students Sue to Stop 'Over the River'

As the Fremont County commissioners began public hearings yesterday on the industrial-art project "Over the River," law students at the University of Denver's Environmental Law Clinic filed suit against it on behalf of the opposition group, Rags Over the Arkansas River, says the ABA Journal:

Christo plans to stretch fabric over the Arkansas River for two weeks in August 2014, an effort that critics who've dubbed themselves "ROAR," or Rags Over The Arkansas River, maintain is as risky as mineral development.

The installation would cover some 5.9 miles of the river and require the drilling of more than 9,000 bore holes, some 35 feet deep, in a critically sensitive wildlife area, according to a suit filed by the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law(PDF).

The suit against the Bureau of Land Management maintains Christo's project "requires the use of equipment commonly used in mining and road building, such as hydraulic drill masts mounted on Cat 320-330 long-reach excavators, Cat M313D—M322D wheeled excavators, boom truck cranes, grouters, air compressors, water tanks, grout mixers, support trailers, steel rock anchors, and anchor frames."

So ROAR has roared. Their website links to more news stories.

The BLM, which approved the project, says that it was "thoroughly analyzed."

BLM Lets Christo Have His Way

As I said two years ago, the fix was in. The Bureau of Land Management sees no reason why ze gran artiste known modestly as Christo should not drape the canyon of the Arkansas River in plastic.

That would improve it, you see. In the words of one breathless High Art fan-girl, "It is thrilling that the BLM has embraced the idea of bringing plastic art into the natural landscape" (statement by Aspen museum director Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson).

The preferred alternative identified in the BLM's final environmental impact statement largely matches the vision of the Bulgarian-born Christo and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude. They wanted to suspend 5.9 miles of silvery panels in eight sections above a 42-mile stretch of the river that mostly involves federal land.

What may be worst is that the BLM has agreed to let his construction crews block part of the  already narrow and twisting highway, which could add hours to the travel time of anyone who just wants to go from Point A to Point B.

Part of the canyon—from Parkdale to Texas Creek—could be bypassed via a longer, twistier drive on two state highways, Colorado 96 and 69. But the "preferred alternative" stupidly would let Christo's crews tie up the highway between Texas Creek and Salida, where there is no alternative highway route without going hundreds of miles out of the way—no consolation to the people who actually, y'know, live there.

All so that Christo can make a pile of money. Actually, since he makes his money from the sketches and other "conceptual" stuff, he could stop now and come out ahead. From an artistic standpoint, since he makes artworks "that go away," why not take the next step and make artworks that never existed?

After Interstate 70, which is quite a bit further north, U.S. Highway 50 is the next-busiest east-west route across Colorado. Sure, Christo has promised delays of no more than 15 minutes per work site, but there are a bunch of work sites. They are just the little people, mice nibbling around the ankles of Christo's grand artistic vision.

These rolling road-closures would last for two years during the project's construction and for months during its removal.

All the tourist-industry people licking their chops over the anticipated brief flush of visitors had better get used to some lean times first.

Sociology professor-turned-Cañon City fly shop owner Bill Edrington speaks for many:

"I'm afraid we are going to lose a lot of fisherman support on this river, and many of us here have worked all our lives to build this river into something special, and this project will destroy that work," said Bill Edrington, owner of Cañon City's Royal Gorge Anglers. "We have a law firm standing by waiting to file an injunction."

The battle now heads to the courts and the local jurisdictions, including Fremont and Chaffee counties, which must issue construction permits.

Drag it out. Time is on your side. Christo "is an artist and has courage," but he does not look too healthy.

'Mustang Mythology'

Conservation writer Ted Williams takes on the "feral-horse lobby" in Audubon magazine.

A feral horse is a far greater threat to native ecosystems than a cow. When grass between shrubs is gone cows move on; horses stomp the shrubs into the dirt to get the last blade. What’s more, when cattle deplete forage they’re moved to new allotments, and they’re taken off the range in winter. But horses pound vegetation all year. And because horses live on range incapable of consistently sustaining them they sometimes starve and, in the process, cause the starvation of such sensitive desert creatures as sage grouse, bighorn sheep, Gila monsters, pronghorns, and desert tortoises. Not only will horses beat springs and seeps into mud holes, they’ll stand over them, running off wild ungulates, people, and even sage grouse.

The feral-horse lobby dismisses these facts as fiction concocted by the BLM on behalf of the cattle industry.

Some follow-up here on his blog.

Like many Colorado journalists, I once wrote my obligatory news feature on the program in which state prison inmates in Cañon City work with wild horses to make them adoptable.

But there are thousands more horses than there are people who want them. And slaughtering them has been made almost impossible. So they end up in corrals.

Yet the mythology persists.