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| High Country Citizens' Alliance 716 Elk Ave PO Box 1066 Crested Butte, CO 81224 Tel: 970-349-7104 Fax: 970-349-0164 |
MOUNTAINS TO MESAS | |
All of us on Colorado's Western Slope are blessed to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Our mountains, mesas, and wide open vistas are precious gifts which we have a responsibility to care for and protect.
Our uses have already had cumulative effects upon our wildlife, our water, and our own ability to find solitude. Without protection, heightened levels of gas drilling, mining, logging, and intensive recreation will spoil hundreds of thousands of acres of untouched forest areas that currently provide clean air, pure water for domestic use and irrigation, and important wildlife habitat. These are our remaining roadless areas, more than a million acres of them. Cochetopa Hills, September 2005 Mountaints to Mesas is a plan that protects the heart of our forests, while allowing existing multiple uses to continue. The plan preserves our remaining roadless areas by recommending them as Wilderness. With new Forest Planning regulations now in effect, this is the only land management precription that really protects the land. The M2m plan supports wildlife habitat, allows animal migration, improves water quality, maintains opportunities for solitude, and reduces the threats to our extremely valuable and increasingly fragile environment. The M2m plan safeguards the wild places, and the wide-open spaces that are a part of each of us who lives and makes a living here in western Colorado. Let's protect what's important to our future as users, and stewards, of these great public lands. | |
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High Points of the M2m Plan | |
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The M2m plan:
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About M2m | |
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Mountains to Mesas is a collaborative effort by four local conservation organizations (High Country Citizens’ Alliance, Sheep Mountain Alliance, Western Slope Environmental Resource Council and Western Colorado Congress) and one regional organization (Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project) to prepare a conservation biology-oriented management plan for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forest (GMUG) that will serve as a unified vision for conservationists while providing the Forest Service with the latest scientific and economic data, information that's critical for inclusion in the upcoming Forest Plan Revision. The Forest Plan is a master document revised only once every fifteen years and it guides virtually all other management decisions throughout the forest.
The Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project’s Wildlands Network Vision has been an ideal starting point for our analysis. The Vision provides an overarching conservation strategy that identifies a range of conservation values and concerns pertinent to the GMUG, while illustrating how local management decisions could affect sensitive areas beyond the forest boundary. This allows the Mountains to Mesas group to highlight the broad ranging effects of various recreational and industrial uses, and to document the importance of conservation measures to the larger eco-region. HCCA and Mountains to Mesas hope this will prompt the Forest Service to more thoroughly consider environmental impacts while revising the forest plan. Click Here for more on Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project’s Wildlands Network Vision Dan Morse at 970-349-7104 or dan@hccaonline.org--Upper Gunnison Basin Joan May at 970-728-3729 or sma@rmi.net--San Juan/Uncompahgre/Sneffels Mark Schofield 970-256-7650 or mark@wccongress.org--Uncompahgre Plateau/Grand Mesa | |
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