Volunteer September 20th to help California Park, the wetlands, and the wildlife there who call it home

Want to help preserve wildlife and their habitat? Then join the US Forest Service and Keep Routt Wild for a day of wetland restoration in California Park, approximately 18 miles north of Hayden on County Road 80 in Routt National Forest. Show up between 9:30 and 10am at the Armstrong Creek area with work gloves, long pants/shirt, sunscreen, lunch, camp chair (optional for lunch), and lots of water/electrolytes. The Forest Service will provide the tools. According to USFS wildlife biologist Missy Dressen, “A day in California Park is like nothing better. I can guarantee beautiful scenery, wildlife, and lots of hard work that bring satisfaction that no one should miss.” Well said, Missy!  The project will end by 3:30pm, giving people plenty of time to make it home for dinner.

California Park is home to Greater sandhill cranes, Greater sage-grouse, Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, boreal toads, Colorado River cutthroat trout, and one of the largest elk calving areas in northwest CO, all dependent on sustainable wetlands. The Armstrong Creek wet meadow restoration project has been using the Zeedyk method of creating rock dams to restore wet meadows. This is a very effective method, described in the Armstrong Creek Wet Meadow Project overview below.

Join us!

Location and project details are here: https://bit.ly/3QsED7U

Our Event Page is here: https://www.keeprouttwild.com/events

Contact us at keeprouttwild@gmail.com and/or 970 819-8435 to confirm your attendance and to answer any other questions.
Some of the wildlife positively impacted by this project:

Keep Routt Wild will be at Steamboat Springs Farmers Market September 17th and 24th.

We’re excited to meet the public at the Steamboat Farmers Market at the intersection of 7th Street and Yampa Street from 9am to 2pm September 17th and 24th. Come by and say “Hi!”We’ll have some educational displays and will be handing out Keep Routt Wild stickers. We’ll also be unveiling our new Keep Routt Wild event tent. If you’re looking for a volunteer opportunity, we have openings for booth representatives.

See you there!

Mad Rabbit Trails Project Update

The Mad Rabbit Trails Project is a US Forest Service proposal to add non-motorized and ATV trails in areas of Routt National Forest near Rabbit Ears Pass.

We’ve been intensely following and reviewing this project since 2019. If it resembles the 2019 proposal, it will represent a serious threat to the wildlife and wild places of Routt County. If it is modified as we’ve suggested, it can be held as a model for the entire Rocky Mountain west for balancing the needs of wildlife with new recreational opportunities. Indeed, how we balance wildlife conservation and recreational development on our public lands may be the defining element of what Routt County looks like in 20 years.

The status of the Mad Rabbit proposal remains the same as we’ve recently reported: The US Forest Service has a draft EA (Environmental Assessment) that is currently being reviewed by the Colorado Division of Natural Resources and Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Once that review is complete, the Forest Service will release a draft EA for a 30-day public comment period.

At that point we will release a special newsletter edition with our analysis of the proposal.

Please don’t feed the bears- or any other wildlife

Bears are currently in their hyperphagia stage, where they may consume up to 20,000 calories a day. Please secure your trash, remove any birdfeeders or other food sources, and lock your car and house doors. Let’s keep our bears wild and alive, and our residents safe.
While bears are particularly problematic, we shouldn’t be feeding any wildlife. We need to keep all our wild critters wild. We’d like to share this poignant cartoon from John Potter recently published in the Mountain Journal to emphasize the point.

Diane Boyd was one of the technical experts brought in by CPW to discuss wolf re-introduction and management strategy with the stakeholder groups. She has extensive experience in this subject, and here she authored a final report which was published by the National Wildlife Federation. It is full of revealing data and facts about the gray wolves and successful reintroduction and management strategies. While wolf reintroduction remains a contentious subject, we found this report informative and well-balanced.
You can read the whole thing here:  https://www.nwf.org/-/media/PDFs/Rocky-Mountain/NWF_Boyd_Wolf_Report_Web-compressed_FINAL.ashx?la=en&hash=B0EB93BEE478F8706AC4BC9B75085C4A24AEBE9B

"I’ll never stop adventuring with Maxwell in the mountains, but I’ll be thinking about the soil and the water and wildlife while we’re out, always with a dog bag in hand to help keep our ecosystem happy."
Very interesting guest article from the Summit Daily: https://www.summitdaily.com/opinion/get-wild-crappy-consequences-of-leaving-pet-poop-behind/

QUOTE OF THE DAY: