Welcome to the November 2024 Keep Routt Wild Newsletter!

Hello, Keep Routt Wild followers!

Articles for this month’s newsletter are:

·       Yampa Valley Gives is now open

·       Mad Rabbit Trails Update

·       Routt County Cattlemen oppose funding Mad Rabbit

·       Proposition 127, banning feline hunting, fails at ballot box

·       What we’ve been reading and watching

·       Quote of the Day

To find out more about Keep Routt Wild, go to our website, or follow our nearly daily postings on Facebook.

Yampa Valley Gives is now open

Yampa Valley Gives brings the excitement and generosity of Colorado Gives Day to the Yampa Valley to benefit local nonprofit organizations such as Keep Routt Wild. This year, Colorado Gives Day is December 10th. You don’t have to wait! Now through December 10, the Colorado Gives Day incentive fund will increase the value of every donation made. You can give now through December 10 to Keep Routt Wild at https://www.coloradogives.org/organization/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. Our mission is to promote policies and practices 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 do this through education, engagement, and practicing conservation through informed science.

We have no paid staff, so every dollar gifted goes directly to our mission. We deliver enormous conservation value per dollar donated. Our Board of Directors are all volunteers with deep knowledge of the Routt County landscape, wildlife science, and environmental law. Read about them here.

We recommend donating via Yampa Valley Gives to multiply your donation as noted above. You can also donate directly to Keep Routt Wild via credit card, check or stock here.

Mad Rabbit Trails Project Update

There are two Mad Rabbit Trails Project meetings at the Steamboat Springs City Council in the next three weeks. On November 19, US Forest Service District Ranger for Routt National Forest, Michael Woodbridge, will present the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) results for Mad Rabbit. On December 3, the City Council will decide whether to fund Mad Rabbit or trails within the city limits using Referendum 2A funds.

We doubt that the EA (Environmental Assessment) will be completed by the November 19th meeting, though it may be complete by December 3. We previously reported that Mad Rabbit NEPA is expected to be approved soon, pending completion of an Adaptive Management Plan jointly developed by the Forest Service and CPW (Colorado Parks and Wildlife). The Adaptive Management Plan draft calls for building out Mad Rabbit in three phases, with gated checkpoints before proceeding to the next phase. It is unclear where the ongoing funding of the monitoring needed for the Adaptive Management Plan is coming from, as 2A funds are prohibited from being used for maintenance, monitoring, or enforcement. When Mad Rabbit gets final sign-off, we should all be able to view the modified documentation set on the project website here.

Steamboat City Council will decide at the December 3 meeting whether $1.6M of 2A funds goes towards mountain bike trails in Mad Rabbit or towards trails within the city limits, such as expanding the Core Trail network. There is $2.2M total in the 2A funds. The 2A Trails Committee has recommended funding Mad Rabbit trails with $1.6M of 2A funds. This includes three trails never authorized by the voters in 2013. Those three trails alone would cost the taxpayers more than $470,000. We’ve documented this issue in a slide set that shows maps of the trails here.

We have raised serious wildlife and environmental issues with the project, as discussed in previous newsletters. We’ve also highlighted that Referendum 2A, the source of city funds for Mad Rabbit, passed in 2013 due to support for expanding the Core Trail. The Referendum was explicitly promoted by promising that the Core Trail would be expanded. A Steamboat Pilot Referendum 2A editorial at the time stated, “Imagine the Yampa River Core Trail extending upstream all the way to Haymaker — 2A provides the funds the community needs to leverage outside grants and make that dream a reality.” This is what the voters were led to believe would occur. Nonetheless, funding has been prioritized for mountain biking trails instead to attract tourists.

It gets worse. We previously highlighted the proposal that the City fund three Mad Rabbit trails that were never approved by the voters when Referendum 2A passed. These three trails alone cost the taxpayers over $470,000. The 2A Trails committee is using a novel legal argument where they can simply declare a trail never approved by the voters as a “functional equivalent” to one that was approved to circumvent the will of the voters. If they do this, how can the voters ever trust the City again in a future referendum? The City Council would be wise to reject this request that would only tarnish the credibility of the City Council for future referendums.

Finally, we previously noted that the Forest Service says they will find funding elsewhere even if the City declines to fund Mad Rabbit. So, if the Forest Service can fund Mad Rabbit regardless of what the City does, why should we fund it? It is equivalent to a $1.6M gift from the City to the Forest Service. Does the City have so many excess funds that it can just throw $1.6M at a project that doesn’t require it? This doesn’t match with what the City is now claiming as an emerging budget shortfall.

You can make a difference! You can write to the City Council asking them to fund the Core Trail and associated network instead of Mad Rabbit at citycouncil@steamboatsprings.net

You would not only be defending wildlife and wild places, but you’d also be helping to build a Steamboat Springs for the future.

Routt County Cattlemen’s Association asks Steamboat Springs City Council NOT to fund Mad Rabbit.

We were pleasantly surprised to find a letter from the Routt County Cattlemen’s Association (RCCA) to the Steamboat Springs City Council asking that the City NOT fund Mad Rabbit trails, but to redirect those funds to other projects. Kyle Monger, RCCA President, penned the letter and makes several interesting points. We recreate the letter in its entirety below.

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To: Steamboat Springs City Council

From: Kyle Monger

Subject: Mad Rabbit

Dear Steamboat Springs City Council,
The Routt County Cattlemen’s Association is comprised of over 39 families across Routt County. Routt County ranchers take seriously our mission to feed a growing population, and be beneficial stewards of our lands and environment. It is with this in mind that we write you to request that the City of Steamboat Springs not fund the Mad Rabbit Trails Project in Routt National Forest.

We have serious concerns about the impacts presented by Mad Rabbit onto the ranching community. In particular, the increased recreational activity within the project area will push wildlife, specifically elk, out of the national forest and onto nearby private land and ranches, resulting in negative economic impact and potential conflict. This is already an issue for many Colorado ranchers, and the project’s incremental loss of 3900 acres of effective habitat will only make this issue worse.
Furthermore, we are facing the introduction of a new apex predator, the gray wolf. Pushing elk, the gray wolf’s principal prey, off of public lands and onto private ranches will only make livestock depredation more likely and common. This poses an existential threat to many ranchers.

We are very concerned about the continued degradation of the rural public lands by recreationalists.  How many bike/hiking trails are needed into the wild public habitat? The recreationalists were provided Emerald Mountain in a sweeping land exchange in the 2000’s, and ran through that immediately. Now they need more, and expect that we are to say yes to Mad Rabbit. What’s next???
Routt County surveys, which are dominated by residents from Steamboat Springs, have continuously rated preserving the rural character of Routt County as a top priority. Indeed, the Routt County Master Plan guiding principles begin with “Protect our open spaces, forests, rivers, lakes, and wildlife” and “Conserve and preserve our rural, western, agricultural heritage.” Ranching is central to both principles.

Ranching is not an easy profession, but generations of Routt County ranchers are proud to carry on the tradition despite many challenges. We ask you not to make it even more difficult in these challenging times. Our objections to funding Mad Rabbit are in addition to the well documented wildlife impacts the project poses, and the considerable controversy within Steamboat Springs of where to direct 2A Trails funds.

For the reasons above, we respectfully ask you to redirect 2A funds to projects other than Mad Rabbit.  Say NO to Mad Rabbit!!!
Sincerely, 
Kyle Monger
President
Routt County Cattlemen’s Association

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 Well said!

Proposition 127, banning feline hunting, fails at ballot box

Courtesy image from Steamboat Pilot above shows six counties (in green) that voted in favor of Proposition 127 among the 58 Colorado counties (in red) that voted against the proposition

We were pleased to see the voters of Colorado reject Proposition 127, which banned the hunting of mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx (hunting lynx is already prohibited). By rejecting Proposition 127, the electorate wisely voted in favor of science-based wildlife management to be executed by the experts in CPW (Colorado Parks and Wildlife).

Only six out of Colorado’s 64 counties voted in favor of Proposition 127. At the time of this newsletter’s publication, the proposition was failing by nearly 10 percentage points. Thank you to all who voted against this flawed proposal. Read more here.

What we’ve been reading and watching

(Click on any title to read the article)

Where are you most likely to hit an animal while driving in northwest Colorado?

"From July to September, in the northwest region, U.S. 40 — which, in this region, runs from the Utah border near Dinosaur and traverses to the border of Grand and Clear Creek counties — accounted for 21% of the carcasses reported, I-70 for 18% and Highway 82 for 8%. Over half of the reports during these three months on U.S. 40 occurred between the Routt-Moffat county line and Milner."  

Bear conflicts are up in Moffat County and statewide, but down in Routt County

Hey Routt County! Bear conflicts are DOWN here, while they are UP in neighboring Moffat and Rio Blanco Counties, and even statewide. Impossible to say for sure, but this is probably due to our increased bear awareness and just good local bear practices. Keep up the good work. It makes a difference!

How much has Colorado’s wolf reintroduction cost?

"One of the key challenges with Colorado’s wolf reintroduction is that the people who voted in support of reintroduction will experience few of the costs, Hoag said. Urban voters — who primarily ushered in the reintroduction — will not lose livestock or consider the impacts of coexisting with the apex predator."

Alcohol consumption abundant in the natural world, study finds

News you can use: “Many animals seem to have impressive alcohol tolerance. Despite the “prodigious ethanol consumption” of pen-tailed treeshrews, the scientists found no evidence that the animals became intoxicated, but concede it was “unclear how an inebriated treeshrew would behave”."

National Park Service: "This is the ideal marmot body. It's what peak performance looks like."

Photo:

Quote of the Day

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