Colorado Gives Day is this Tuesday, December 10th, but you can donate already at: https://www.coloradogives.org/organization/Keep-Routt-Wild

Every donation now through Tuesday will be uplifted by the Colorado Gives Day incentive fund, so your donation goes even further.

We respectfully ask that you consider donating to Keep Routt Wild. For those unfamiliar with Keep Routt Wild, we are a community organization dedicated to preserving wildlife and wild places in Routt County. We do this for the benefit of conserving the Yampa Valley for future generations of outdoor enthusiasts by balancing opportunities for recreational development with the habitat needs of wildlife.

We deliver one of the best bang per donated buck you will find in the conservation space. We have no paid staff, so every dollar goes directly to our mission. Our Board of Directors are all talented volunteers with deep knowledge of the Routt County landscape and an unwavering commitment to conservation. Together with volunteers we execute our mission through education, engagement, and practicing conservation through informed science.

Furthermore, we get results. Whether it was advocacy for the City of Steamboat Springs bear ordinances, or engagement with the Mad Rabbit Trails Project, we have made Routt County a better place than it would have been without our efforts. We suggest you view the video in the next article to see how Mad Rabbit has been transformed due to our engagement.

Our influence extends beyond Routt County. Our analysis techniques, based on best available science, have been adopted by others including the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership when examining the statewide impact of recreational trails on wildlife, and led to this front page Denver Post article.

For all these reasons we ask that you consider a donation to Keep Routt Wild so we can continue our mission of preserving wildlife and wild places in Routt County for future generations.

You can donate now through December 10th for Colorado Gives Day here.

If you wish to donate directly via check, stock, or online, please go here.

Thank you for your consideration.

Video shows a time lapse of Mad Rabbit Trails Project since KRW’s engagement.

The video above (click the image) was created by a summer intern, Sloane Speer. Sloane graduated from Steamboat Springs High School this past June and worked for us as an intern over the summer before heading off to college.

Sloane took each iteration of Mad Rabbit since 2018 and put disturbance bands on each trail and road depending on the principal recreation activity, based on best available science related to elk behavior as an indicator species. These are the mean distances elk stay away from active trails and roads based on Forest Service studies. She precisely aligned the maps between years, the trails within each map, and the disturbance distances around each trail. Then she created a time lapse of the entire project. We uploaded the video onto YouTube with only minor editing. If you have any doubts about the younger generation, you haven’t met Sloane. We wish her the best as she goes to college.

What the video shows is how much less impactful Mad Rabbit is due to Keep Routt Wild’s engagement to date. It is tons better than the original plan that crisscrossed sensitive habitat and threatened to compromise swaths of undisturbed wild lands. Even some of the small connector trails eliminated in 2022 had outsized impacts.

The Mad Rabbit project is a great case study of Keep Routt Wild’s mission to preserve wildlife and wild places. Often, when a mountain climber scales a mountain, we only see the daunting peak in front of us. Sometimes we need to pause, turn around, and see how far we have climbed. This video does this. Routt County is a better place not only due to Keep Routt Wild, but also due to all of you who have engaged and donated over the years.

Thank you.

Mad Rabbit Trails Project Update

The Steamboat Springs City Council approved Mad Rabbit funding 5-2 this past Tuesday, December 3.

While we are disappointed in this result, we recognize that once the Mad Rabbit NEPA is approved, any party can fund it. We are more disappointed that increased funding for city trails was declined.

“The steady stream of residents testifying before the Steamboat Springs City Council late Tuesday night all spoke of their appreciation for trails. But there was friction over where those trails should be built and whether publicly funded recreation should be designed for locals or visitors,” wrote Jason Blevins in the above Colorado Sun article.

“It’s a contentious narrative playing out across the Western Slope as residents of busy mountain towns push elected leaders to focus more on the local quality of life and less on the visitor experience. That’s a bold move in communities built by tourist dollars. And it’s a sign of the changing tides in tourism-based economies.”

We recommend reading the whole thing.

So, what is the status of Mad Rabbit?

Mad Rabbit has still not received final approval from the Forest Service, though we expect it soon. As we previously reported, Forest Service Supervisor Russ Bacon issued 15 instructions to District Ranger Michael Woodbridge a year ago that need to be completed before Mad Rabbit is approved. Most consequential of those instructions was development of an adaptive management plan. “I instruct the Responsible Official to ensure an adaptive management plan is collaboratively developed by the Forest Service and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources prior to Forest Service approval to start construction and implementation, that would address objectors concerns related to unauthorized off-trail use, violations of seasonal closures and recreation setting in addition to impacts on wildlife or habitat, including developing a potential phased approach to trail construction based on this adaptive management plan.”

A draft of that plan has been completed and can be read here. The agreement on this plan led to Colorado DNR and CPW retracting their objection to the project.

The adaptive management plan calls for building Mad Rabbit in three phases, with gated checkpoints before proceeding to the next checkpoint. In theory, a well-resourced adaptive management plan can keep a project within the bounds of no significant impact. Our input to the Forest Service and CPW was to make sure there is adequate funding year after year to perform the monitoring needed to assure the project proceeds incrementally within those bounds. With the Forest Service facing serious budget constraints which has led to eliminating non-fire related seasonal workers nationwide, it is not clear where the necessary resourcing is coming from. 2A funds cannot be used for this purpose.

Keep Routt Wild can help. Making the adaptive management plan successful is something proponents and skeptics of Mad Rabbit should both agree on. Most urgently needed is the establishment of pre-Mad Rabbit construction baselines, which requires monitoring equipment and manpower. Between our own resources, some promising grant opportunities, and an extensive volunteer network, we believe we could help bring the necessary resources to bear to kick off this program. All of this would be under the direction of the Forest Service and CPW. We’re sharpening our pencils on the particulars to make this offer to the Forest Service and should do so soon. Making the adaptive management plan successful is a key element to preserving wildlife and wild places in the project area, and making it wildly successful would set a model for the entire Rocky Mountain west.

Stay tuned.

What we’ve been reading and watching

(Click on any title to read the article.)

Plans for Stagecoach Mountain Ranch submitted to Routt County — without planned golf course

Perhaps most significantly, developers say the plan submitted Wednesday no longer includes a golf course along the shores of Stagecoach Reservoir, nor the homes that would have flanked its links.”

Routt County has been awarded a $2M Energy/Mineral Impact Assistance Fund Grant

“Routt County has received a $2M grant to help with Phase 1 of the local Routt County Solar Array and Energy Storage System Project. The site location will be 15 acres at the Hayden Wastewater Treatment Plant. Work begins in fourth quarter of this year. The site for Phase 2 hasn’t yet been identified.”

Joint Budget Committee considers delaying wolf reintroduction in Colorado to save money

“The analysis also suggested that the committee look at a 50% cut in the compensation paid to ranchers who lose livestock to wolves, from $350,000 to $175,000, as well as in general fund dollars.”

Sarvis Creek Wilderness expansion bill headed to U.S. Senate floor

“The legislation, introduced by Sen. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Michael Bennet, would add 6,817 acres to the wilderness that was excluded from federal forest area’s 1993 creation due a previously proposed plan to develop a ski area.”

Rocky reintroduction: First 11 months of Colorado wolf recovery plagued with problems

“Eleven months after Colorado reintroduced wolves, the nearly $5 million and counting voter-approved plan has been marred with concerns about political pressure from the governor's office and a lack of transparency and adherence to the state's recovery plan by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.”

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