Welcome to the April 2021 Keep Routt Wild Newsletter!

In this newsletter we will give you breaking news on the city of Steamboat’s funding of the Mad Rabbit trail system and share some interesting articles regarding conservation in Colorado. 

As a reminder, Keep Routt Wild is 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 the opportunities for recreational development with the habitat needs of wildlife.

To find out more about Keep Routt Wild, go to our website, or follow our nearly daily postings on Facebook. There we play dual roles, as a celebrant of local wildlife and as a conservation watchdog.

Mad Rabbit: Scandal at City Hall

We’ve uncovered some shenanigans at Steamboat Springs city hall.

We discovered, contrary to the will of the voters, the 2A Trails Committee has voted that nine Mad Rabbit trails never included in the 2013 trails proposal are eligible for funding from the city.

As a reminder, the 2013 2A ballot referendum authorized funding of trails in and around the city in accordance with the Steamboat Trail Alliance (STA) proposal. That proposal was an enumerated list of 46 trails and amenities that could be funded from the accommodation tax. Most popular of the proposal was extending the Core Trail.  A city-wide transportation survey taken before the election noted that expanding the urban trail system got strong to moderate support from 92% of local citizens. This unquestionably drove the success of the ballot proposal which won with 71% of the vote.

However, the Core Trail was never funded. Instead, a “2A Trails Committee” was formed that prioritized mountain bike trails in the forest. We disagree with this prioritization, but as long as the specific trails were listed in the STA proposal, this represented a policy issue, not a legal issue. That changed with our discovery that the 2A Trails Committee voted that some Mad Rabbit trails not included in the STA proposal were also eligible for funding.

Funding trails not in accordance with the STA proposal violates both the letter and the spirit of Referendum 2A. We are now in the bizarre situation that worthy projects in the STA proposal, such as extending the Core Trail, are not being funded while projects never included in the proposal are.

Due to our discovery, there will be an agenda item on the May 18 Steamboat Springs City Council to review what is happening with the 2A Trails Committee. That’s a good step forward, but not enough. Neither the 2A Trails Committee nor the City Council has the power to override the will of the voters. The US Forest Service appears going ahead with the Mad Rabbit EA (Environmental Assessment) on a May timeline. It is imperative that this issue be clarified before they do so.

So, how did the 2A Trails Committee feel comfortable making this change? They did so by defining the nine Mad Rabbit trails as being equivalent to other trails in the STA proposal. For example, the STA proposal never included trails around the Meadows Campground or Dumont Lake. Yet, the 2A Committee declared these multi-use trails as functionally equivalent to a hiking-only trail miles away near the Ferndale area. This is not to judge whether these trails may be worthy projects; they simply cannot be funded from the city accommodations tax because they were never included in the STA proposal.

In the minutes from the meeting, one 2A committee member remarked, “If we stretch these alignments, do people start questioning what we’re doing with the other trails?”

We’ll answer that question: Yes.

We developed a detailed white paper, including maps, that showed how brazen the declarations of equivalence were. The white paper links to all the supporting evidence, from the wording of the ballot proposal to the minutes of the 2A Trails Committee. Ironically, even the US Forest Service declared these nine trails as not being part of the STA proposal when they released the most recent Mad Rabbit proposal in July 2019. However, we’re sure the Forest Service would be happy to receive funding for these trails if the city insists.

We are simply appalled at this attempt to thwart the will of the voters. This is why we joined 30 other local organizations and individuals to ask the City Council to intervene. The signers represent a broad coalition of Routt County citizens, including two former county commissioners. You normally don’t see petitions that include the Sierra Club and cattle ranchers as signatories, but this issue has united Routt County in opposition. We’ve asked that the city immediately clarify to the Forest service that these nine trails cannot be funded from 2A funds.

You can make your voice heard by writing the Steamboat Springs City Council, email address below. Feel free to copy USFS District Ranger Michael Woodbridge and CPW Area Wildlife Manager Kris Middledorf in your message. Your voice really can make a difference.

City Council: citycouncil@steamboatsprings.net

USFS District Ranger: michael.woodbridge@usda.gov

USFS Recreation Specialist: brendan.kelly@usda.gov

CPW Area Wildlife Manager: kris.middledorf@state.co.us

Links for the above issue

Citizen letter to Steamboat Springs City Council

White Paper: 2A Steamboat Trails Alliance proposal and Mad Rabbit

Full Size Map and Table

Below is the preliminary proposed map of Mad Rabbit from July 2019, along with a USFS table specifying which trails are included within STA. The red 🚫 symbol near the trail number denotes the nine trails not in the STA proposal but currently chosen by the 2A Trails Committee to be eligible for funding:

Consider a Donation to Keep Routt Wild 

The issue above is just one example of the hard-hitting investigative work being performed by Keep Routt Wild. We are fighting tirelessly to protect wildlife and wild places in Routt County. We’ve retained the law firm of Kaplan Kirsch Rockwell to represent us to ensure that our public agencies and public officials follow the law. We have no paid staff, but envision significant legal costs going forward to guarantee compliance. Simply put, we deliver extraordinary value for your conservation dollar. Please consider a tax-deductible donation to Keep Routt Wild so we can protect the Yampa Valley for future generations.

Click here to donate to Keep Routt Wild

What we’ve been reading and watching

The Bears are back: Keeping them out of trash is crucial to keeping them alive. In this Pilot article, Steamboat District Wildlife Manager Kyle Bond said they have started to get calls about people seeing bears, bears getting into trash and even bears denning in some pretty awkward places. Some bears will den up under decks or in drainage culverts, which can lead to them waking up in someone’s backyard. Taking precautions, like locking up trash and other potential food sources from bears, is important at preventing them from becoming habitually reliant on these sources for food. Let’s keep our bears wild and alive, and our residents safe.

CPW Video: Emblems of the West is a new film on studying human recreation effects on elk in Colorado. It has wonderful footage about these critters and the CPW biologists studying them. Keep Routt Wild has been on the forefront in raising this issue, and we are strong supporters of CPW’s science-based approach on assessing the impacts. We highly recommend this short film.

John Potter Cartoons We’re big fans of the Mountain Journal, a journalistic watchdog for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. They, like us, are believers in using the best available science to protect our wild ecosystems. They’ve recently added weekly cartoons from John Potter. Potter is an artist, and you can see some of his work here. However, we were smitten by Potter’s recent cartoon spoofing the claims by outdoor recreationists and federal agencies that wildlands are essentially worthless unless filled by crowds of recreational tourists. We’ve seen this argument locally, but we suscept that our local wildlife begs to differ.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“Democracy dies in darkness” 

-Washington Post

If you would like to support Keep Routt Wild and its efforts to save Routt County’s wildlife and wild spaces, please donate at the link below.

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