In Part Five on Friday, we took a quick glance at the political divisions here in Archuleta County — a county that has tended to vote “Republican” for many years. Just because someone is registered Republican, however, doesn’t necessarily mean they are in complete agreement with every other registered Republican. But it can sometimes seem that way.
To Whom It May Concern:
The Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners is opposed to H.R. 803, the “Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act”. This bill would lock-up nearly 1.5 million acres with new wilderness designations. We agree with Congressman Doug Lamborn’s statements that the American people deserve to access our nation’s public lands — not be locked out of them and that a wilderness designation does not guarantee the protection of these lands.
We support Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s amendments to the bill and ask that the House allow local government to make the right decisions for their communities, especially when it comes to managing our beautiful outdoors.
Please feel free to contact us if you want to discuss this matter further. Thank you for your consideration.
Signed,
Alvin Schaaf
Chair, Archuleta Board of County Commissioners
That’s the text of a short letter approved by the Archuleta BOCC on March 2, 2021, addressed to… well, I don’t know who it was addressed to.
But I can understand why our three Republican commissioners might want to reference a comment made by one of Colorado’s Republican Congressmen, Doug Lamborn… noting that “the American people deserve to access or nation’s public lands… not be locked out of them…”
…except that Rep. Lamborn doesn’t appear to have this made this statement. The statement was actually made by a different Republican Congressman, Dan Newhouse, who represents voters in Washington State.
Public lands are definitely a key element of any conceptual map of Pagosa Springs. On a physical map, public lands make up about 49% of Archuleta County with nearly all of that acreage belonging to the San Juan Natural Forest — a forest nominally ‘owned’ by all the citizens of the United States.
421,497 acres of the San Juan National Forest is here represented in green. An appropriate color.
The San Juan National Forest extends beyond Archuleta County, to encompass a total of 1.9 million acres, of which about 500,000 acres are included in the Weminuche Wilderness — “locked up”, as Congressman Newhouse might say.
Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert apparently believes that local governments should make decisions about public lands owned by the entire US population, and we can understand why she might feel that way, when we consider that counties blessed with vast expanses of undeveloped wilderness, and forest, and grassland, tend to be ‘rural’… meaning that they are often governed by Republican commissioners sympathetic to Rep. Boebert’s agenda. (As indeed we find here in Archuleta County.)
Sometimes, we find a line drawn in the sand, when the opposing political party has brought forward a particular bill.
HR 803 — “Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act” — includes public land protections proposed by two Colorado Democrats, Rep. Diane DeGette and Rep. Joe Neguse, bundled with protections for public lands in California, Arizona and Washington. The bill passed in the House of Representatives by a 217-200 vote, mostly along party lines. Its success in the US Senate is uncertain.
If approved by the Senate and signed by President Biden, HR 803 would permanently protect more than one million acres across Colorado — about half the acreage currently included in the San Juan National Forest.
As of 2016, there are 803 designated wilderness areas included in the National Wilderness Preservation System, totaling about 111 million acres — about 4.5% of the area of the United States — with about 80% of the protected lands located in Alaska, California, Arizona, Idaho, and Washington.
Wilderness areas exist in every US state except Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, and Rhode Island.
Although our current BOCC has now officially expressed their opposition to HR 803 and to the general idea of permanently ‘locking up’ federal forests and grasslands, I cannot recall any past BOCC complaining about the existence of the 1.9-million-acre San Juan National Forest, or the 500,000-acre Weminuche Wilderness.
One could even make the argument (if one were so inclined) that the vast swaths of locked-up federal lands surrounding the town of Pagosa Springs are almost single-handedly responsible for generating a vibrant tourism economy for Archuleta County — and thus, indirectly, for the salaries paid to our Republican commissioners and the rest of the County’s employees.
…And, for that matter, paying the cost of the locked-up inmates in the County’s new $15 million detention center.
If we visit Pagosa’s official tourism website, visitpagosasprings.com, we might conclude that recreation makes up 99% of what attracts visitors to this mountain community. Here, you have a choice of skiing and snowboarding, dog sledding, soaking in geothermal water, visiting waterfalls, rafting in the river… not to mention hiking, hunting, fishing, mountain biking, birding…
This is not a community full of cultural attractions, especially during a pandemic. No one is likely to come to Pagosa to catch a national performing act — except maybe during the three-day Four Corners Folk Festival. We don’t have a world-class museum, nor any famous art galleries. No amusement park, no zoo, no professional sports teams, no botanical gardens. Our shopping excitement consists of a rather modest Walmart and a dozen second-hand stores. (We call them “antique stores”.) We do have a professional theatre company, but it’s been shut down for the past year.
Basically, Pagosa’s tourism attraction is “recreation”, and an awful lot of it consists of “do-it-yourself recreation” out in the locked-up wilderness.
Why an elected government board would bad-mouth the preservation of public lands that provide prime recreation destinations, can be difficult to understand.
But then, much of what passes for thoughtful government decision-making leaves me feeling confused. Perhaps, you as well?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.