Spent coffee grounds. Oil-contaminated soil. Wood chips left over after a forest thinning effort.

For the most part, we want those scraps to go away. But for mushrooms, these things are food – and so a partnership begins.

A wild brown mushroom. Fungi of all types are being studied for their potential uses in clean-up and restoration efforts.

There’s a growing contingent of people who swear by the power of ’shrooms, for decomposition of waste and myriad other uses, and one of those people has sprung up in Southwest Colorado.

Katie Holgate, owner of the upstart business Mycological Design, has turned fungi into an obsession. She’s inoculated her vegetable garden with spores, thrown masses of fruiting fungal bodies into her pond as a water-cleaning strategy, and used mushrooms to balance the pH of her naturally alkaline soils. But it’s the work Holgate is doing in the community that has the area perched on the cutting edge of the mushroom movement.

One of her pioneer projects is a partnership with the Durango Coffee Company, to see if mushrooms will grow on finished coffee grounds. That effort got its start when the Durango Compost Company tried to break down the used grounds with worms. Coffee grounds are too hot for the worms, Holgate said – so she endeavored to see if mushrooms would break the grounds down enough to suit the worms.

“What we’ve accomplished is that mushrooms like to grow on coffee grounds,” Holgate said. She added that at full scale, the project will yield Shitake mushrooms to sell to local restaurants interested in cooking with them, so the process becomes self-sustaining.

Holgate is also working with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe’s Red Willow Production Company, which develops gas wells, to grow mushrooms on oil-contaminated soil. The company needs to reduce petroleum hydrocarbon levels in soils near its drilling projects, and Holgate aims to see if mushrooms will help.

And if all goes well with an emerging pilot project in the San Juan National Forest, the hungry little fungi could be enlisted to help break down the waste from the ongoing march of forest restoration work.

Terrain only a mushroom could love

The pilot project in the San Juan is a collaboration between Holgate’s Mycological Design and the Mountain Studies Institute, a Silverton- based not-for-profit mountain research and education center.

Last month, the partnership was awarded $2,000 for a pilot project to use mushrooms to speed up the decomposition time for reseeding in a 6,000-acre plot near the Junction Creek Campground. The area was thinned by hydromowing, whereby a machine is used to chip woody fuel, understory brush and sometimes dying trees. A lot of the chipped material was burned. But on the site where the mushrooms are slated to go, more than a foot of wood chips blanket the ground.

“The concern with that is if there was another fire, those wood chips are fuel,” Holgate said. “The wood chips are small enough that it’s not appropriate to burn them. We’re going to see if we can seed the area and get vegetation to grow. Once we do that, it will be a moist enough environment to where a ground fire wouldn’t happen.”

The mushrooms will be used both to break down the wood chips, and to create a microhabitat that retains moisture to encourage seed germination.

The project will actually cost $10,000, Holgate said, but the initial dollars – from the federal Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, or “Payments to States” – will be used as seed money to seek additional funding.

’Shrooms on a mission

The idea to use mushrooms in restoration isn’t new, but it’s not exactly established, either. One of the pioneers is Paul Stamets, a longtime mycologist in Oregon. He’s written six books on the subject and strongly encourages the discovery and conservation of mushrooms in old-growth forests throughout the Pacific Northwest.

He’s taken his mushroom advocacy to online video forums and national media outlets to push for the use of ’shrooms in a variety of contexts – in permaculture, farmwaste mediation, oil-spill cleanup and the rehabilitation of old logging roads. He also points out that mushrooms, some of them yet to be discovered, are sources and potential sources of novel antimicrobial agents.

A recent study by the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisc., pointed out the need for surveying fungi in fire-prone areas and harnessing their decomposition abilities to reduce fire hazards. But aside from Stamets, Holgate, and the occasional study like that one, not many people have caught mushroom fever – and there’s scant precedent for using fungi in the arid Southwest.

Hollis Hassenstein is an employee at Native Roots Garden Center in Durango, where Holgate sells a few ready-made, $20 mushroom kits, including spores and supplies for growing mushrooms in home gardens. She says very few people are interested in growing mushrooms at home, because so few people know they can.

“I think it’s a minority,” she said. “I think it’s kind of a niche group.”

Holgate would love to see that change.

Growing from scratch

Mycological Design got its start last year, and is in every sense a cottage enterprise that arose from Holgate’s efforts on her own land.

“We live on high plains, in sagebrush country. It’s super dry,” she said. “We’re doing a lot of revegetation, planting a lot of shrubs and trees. All the shrubs I’ve planted, I put a ton of wood chips down and inoculate them with mushrooms. “

She said the mushrooms help neutralize the naturally alkaline soils, and she’s noticed a positive response among the inoculated bushes. Her garden showed a similar reaction.

“I’ve also been using it to plant my tomatoes, and my tomatoes did better than everything else,” she said. “They got huge and I have so many tomatoes I can’t even believe it.”

She says the root-associated fungus, called mycorrhizae, with which she inoculates her shrubs and tomatoes works to buffer the roots against environmental stress and aids in the absorption of nutrients from the soil. She usually either adds spores to the root ball as she plants, or mixes them with wood chips she then spreads like mulch.

She said people can purchase kits like hers to get started – but it can be even simpler than that.

“For my Shitake mushrooms, I cloned mushrooms from the grocery store,” she said. “In the fall, I collect oyster mushrooms.” Any mushroom can be grown from its spores, or cloned from its fruiting body in a petri dish, she said.

Holgate said future mushroom aficionados are welcome to call her to learn more about using mushrooms in any of these contexts; her number is 970-769-8682. She doesn’t have a web site yet. But don’t look for a lot of fungal activity out of her home laboratory any time soon; the mushroom season is winding down for this year.

“Right now I’m kind of phasing out for winter,” she said. “It all starts up again in April.”

After months of furor and fury over a proposed travel-management plan for the Boggy-Glade area of the San Juan National Forest, agency officials have made changes designed to respond to public concerns and appease critics.

However, the controversy seems far from over, and reaction to the new proposal has been mixed.

Citizens protest proposed road closures and other Forest Service actions at a march in February. Photo by David Grant Long

The biggest change in the new “preferred alternative” for the Boggy-Glade travel plan is a proposal to allow hunters to use ATVs off-road to retrieve big-game carcasses. Previously, the agency had sought to end motorized game retrieval to keep the Dolores Ranger District in line with policies being adopted by the Forest Service nationwide and regionally.

However, curtailing game retrieval proved to be one of the most contentious ideas in the draft travel plan. Many locals said it would be hard on people who couldn’t pack out their game on foot and that it would prompt out-of-state hunters to quit coming to the area.

The agency’s willingness to abandon that policy seemed to please the Montezuma County commissioners when they heard about it from officials who came to the board’s Oct. 17 meeting. Commissioners Steve Chappell and Gerald Koppenhafer appeared happy with the changes. (Larrie Rule was absent because of knee surgery.)

“I really think this shows a positive step by the Forest Service to coordinate and cooperate with local governments and communities and decide what is best for the area,” said Chappell.

Acting Dolores District Ranger Mark Lambert, BLM resource specialist Tom Rice, and NEPA coordinator Deborah Kill said they had taken many of the suggestions sent them by the Montezuma County commission in a July 18 letter.

For instance, the commissioners had suggested allowing motorized game retrieval in the parts of the Boggy-Glade area designated as “F” areas in the old plan, meaning they were open to cross-country motorized use. Though cross-country motorized travel on national forests is ending, Dolores District officials took the suggestion to allow it for the sole purpose of game retrieval during hunting season (mid-August through mid-November) in those specific areas.

Big-game retrieval using ATVs no more than 50 inches in width would be allowed up to one mile from designated motorized routes in authorized portions of the Boggy area. Hunters would have to carry a validated carcass tag.

The practice would be allowed for five years, after which time it would be re-evaluated to see whether it was causing resource damage, the officials said.

In proposing this, the Dolores Public Lands Office is “going against the consistency recommendations of Region 2,” Lambert told the board. Region 2 encompasses national forests and grasslands in Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.

“Allowing game retrieval does not follow consistency,” Kill echoed. “We’re making a case that the combined factors in Boggy- Glade make it a place where we would like to deviate from that consistent message from the regional office.”

“I think it’s real good and appropriate to take this action,” Chappell said. “I know it’s putting you out on a limb, but I think the hunters and outfitters in this area depend a lot on that game. I think this is what the public wants, to keep the traditions of their hunting and game retrieval.”

James Dietrich, county federal-lands coordinator, told the Free Press that members of the Montezuma County Public Lands Coordination Commission had likewise seemed receptive to the changes when told about them recently.

“I didn’t hear any negative comments,” he said. “A lot of them were saying, ‘This is good — they’ve really coordinated with us and responded to our concerns’.”

Boiling point

An earlier version of the travel plan for the popular Boggy Draw-Glade area northwest of the town of Dolores was adopted in 2010. It drew widespread criticism from local residents as well as the Montezuma and Dolores County commissioners. The plan proposed closing 62 miles of public roads – mostly two-track dirt roads and user- created routes. It would have created 63 miles of new ATV roads as well. However, the proposed closures and the end of crosscountry motorized travel prompted outrage.

The plan was appealed by seven parties and was overturned by San Juan National Forest Supervisor Mark Stiles. Ironically, however, the appeal that was upheld was based mainly on the fact that road densities in the new plan were too high, exceeding thresholds established in the forest’s recently revised draft Resource Management Plan.

The controversy boiled for months, prompting a protest march in February of this year in which approximately 100 people walked a quarter-mile to the Dolores Public Lands Office carrying signs calling for more road access.

Other protesters parked trucks covered in anti- Forest Service signs at key intersections in Cortez and Dolores off and on for weeks.

Tensions bubbled over when a local resident loudly confronted one such protester in Cortez, swearing at him during the angry exchange. He was cited for disturbing the peace, but was acquitted by a municipal judge on free-speech grounds.

The Montezuma and Dolores County commissioners appointed publiclands coordination commissions to look into road issues. Some of the most vociferous critics of the Forest Service accused the Montezuma County commissioners of being timid for trying to work things out with the agency.

Montezuma County Sheriff Dennis Spruell, sympathetic to the critics, said more than once that he might have to cite or arrest Forest Service officials if they tried to close roads in a manner he considered contrary to state or county law.

Publicity over the fracas attracted the attention of the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors domestic terrorism; the center published a report that labeled the situation “a part of the second wave of the anti-government ‘Patriot’ movement that roiled America and spawned much violence in the 1990s.”

More roads; a new trail

After the Boggy travel plan was overturned, the Dolores Public Lands Office took a new round of public comment and developed a revised environmental assessment, which was released on Oct. 24.

In addition to the policy regarding game retrieval, changes in the new preferred alternative included:

• Twenty more miles of motorized routes would be provided, for a total of 379 miles of open roads.

• The overall management plan for the San Juan National Forest would be amended to increase the permitted road density from 1 mile to 1.2 miles per square mile.

• As a boon to hikers and bikers, a new non-motorized trail would be created between Dolores and House Creek.

• The agency would consider using lessdrastic methods of decommissioning old roads. In the past, the agency had bulldozed closed roads and built enormous berms across them, making them hard to navigate even by foot, something that Sheriff Spruell said had prompted his outrage over the policies.

“We have created a decision tree of things the implementers can consider as they decide what method would be the best for decommissioning,” Kill told the county commissioners. “Keeping all those tools in the toolbox but making efforts not to use the heaviest type of work unless absolutely necessary.”

The comment period ends Nov. 23, after which time the agency will decide whether to adopt its preferred alternative and will issue a final decision.

‘Poorly thought out’

But if the county commissioners found the Forest Service’s concessions a welcome development, not everyone agreed. Jimbo Buickerood of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, a local environmental non-profit, called the agency’s new preferred alternative “an incredible surprise” and said the reversal on motorized game retrieval was “poorly thought out.”

First, he said, the policy ignores guidance from Forest Service leadership.

In 2005, the Forest Service adopted a nationwide travel-management rule that requires individual forests to specifically identify which roads and trails are open to motor-vehicle use. Travel off those designated routes was to be banned.

The 2005 rule did allow forests to name corridors where “the limited use of motor vehicles within a specified distance of certain designated routes” could be allowed for vehicle-assisted dispersed camping or big-game retrieval. But in 2006, then-Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth issued a directive saying that, “Such designations represent site-specific decisions associated with specific roads and trails or road or trail segments, rather than a blanket exception to the rule” and that such designations “will be applied sparingly to avoid undermining the purposes of the rule and to promote consistency in implementation.”

And in April 2007, Region 2 sent out a letter to forest supervisors that said, “Over time, the long term goal for the Rocky Mountain Region’s forests. . . will be to strive towards designating individual spur routes or dispersed camping sites” rather than having broad areas with exceptions to the ban on cross-country motorized use.

Buickerood said this makes it clear that off-route motorized travel is to be allowed only in very narrow circumstances.

“The Forest Service is moving to a protocol where everything is closed [to motorized travel] except where marked open. This is a complete reversal of that. There will be dozens of square miles that will be open without being posted. This is very confusing to the public.”

If motorized travel is allowed one mile from all the roads in the Boggy-Glade area, almost the entire landscape would be open to ATVs, he said. (According to Lambert, two-thirds of the landscape would be open.)

“There are very, very few areas , just a few square miles across the whole landscape, that are not reachable by one road or other,” Buickerood said.

He said making sure that only hunters are going off-road will be very difficult.

“I’m already hearing from other Forest Service employees in other parts of the forests that they cannot believe this decision that the Dolores District is rolling out.

“The reality is that the forest has difficulty right now enforcing regulations regarding off-road travel and this will only exacerbate the problem.”

He also said the change “flies in the face of the recommendations of the agencies’ own biologists” regarding the harmful effects of motorized use on wildlife habitat.

“Why they would choose to do something that would be non-consistent with the other forests in the region, that is both confusing to the public and contrary to the management protocol and damaging to wildlife and watersheds – I can’t imagine,” Buickerood said.

He said the claim that motorized game retrieval is needed to maintain hunting traditions is absurd, since generations of hunters harvested animals without vehicles.

“I’ve talked to a number of people, including leaders of the older generation of Montezuma County, who say, ‘My dad told me when he took me hunting as a child not to ever shoot an animal where you can’t get it back to the road or back to the horse.’

“The reality is, hunters for decades retrieved their game without any motorized use. Game retrieval by vehicle is not a traditional activity – it’s only a couple decades old.“

Help with enforcement

At their meeting with the county commissioners Oct. 17, forest officials called on the county to help them educate the public and enforce the regulations.

“We are going to heavily rely on help through education and patrolling and some enforcement,” Lambert told the board. “Based on past experience, we know there are some compliance issues. . . . We are looking at this on a trial basis and we want to review it again in five years.”

Kill said the officials would like to continue meeting with the commissioners or with the Public Lands Coordination Commission to talk about education, flyers, and monitoring.

Rice said each year the Dolores Public Lands Office contributes a limited amount of funding to the sheriff ’s office for help with patrolling, “so this is an opportunity for them to help.”

“I think they will take that on,” Chappell said.

However, Buickerood told the Free Press he is skeptical about how well the policy could be enforced. “In his public statements Sheriff Spruell has indicated that he might very well not enforce Forest Service road closures, so one has to ask, ‘Why would the Sheriff now step forward to help the Forest Service to enforce illegal motorized game retrieval?’ It seems very unlikely that the Forest Service can count on the sheriff ’s assistance should they decide to sanction motorized game retrieval.”

Spruell could not be reached for comment, but Undersheriff Robin Cronk said the sheriff ’s office would not be enforcing things such as violations of rules about motorized use.

“That’s probably not going to happen,” Cronk said. “That’s their job, not ours. When it comes to Forest Service and BLM and DOW [Division of Wildlife] laws, we won’t be enforcing those and stepping on their toes and doing their job.”

The sheriff ’s office does help with forest patrols to look for violations of state and county laws, such as drunk driving, he said. Not the norm

In an interview with the Free Press, Lambert said the means of enforcement and education are still developing. Agency officials have met with the Montezuma County Public Lands Coordination Commission and the Dolores County commissioners to brainstorm ideas.

“We need that help,” he said. “It’s not like we’re saying, ‘If you don’t help we’re not going to do it.’ It’s more, ‘If we don’t get your help we don’t think it’s going to work’.” Lamber said, however, he would welcome any help that might be offered through either the Montezuma or Dolores County sheriff ’s office.

“But if it doesn’t make sense for some reason, we don’t want to foist that on them. We’re just going to put it on the table as something to look into.”

Lambert said he doesn’t know how many forests nationwide allow motorized game retrieval, but within Region 2, there is one that does – the Rio Grande National Forest in south-central Colorado.

The Kaibab National Forest in Arizona (not in Region 2) also allows game retrieval up to a mile off designated routes, and Lambert said he believes it is being contemplated in some other forests in Arizona and New Mexico.

Lambert has only been acting district ranger since Sept. 26. However, he said he was involved in developing the Boggy plan through his previous position with the San Juan Public Lands Center in Durango and worked closely with the previous acting Dolores District ranger, Connie Clementson.

The plan “was discussed quite a bit over the past several months by the ID [interdisciplinary] team and at various different levels,” he said. “It’s certainly something that we’ve talked about on a forest level and [Forest Supervisor] Mark Stiles is aware of it and is in support of this office in going forward with this.”

Dave Dyer, forest planner with the Rio Grande National Forest, said that forest has not finished a complete overhaul of its travel plan because of budget constraints. Until it does, motorized game retrieval will remain in place there.

“We are currently not looking at abandoning our motorized game retrieval. It will probably be in place until the plan revision or a full-scale travel plan,” Dyer said.

“We very much have a motorized community that wants to use the forest, as well as the other side – the quiet-use folks, who don’t want motorized – so we’re dealing with that on a case-by-case basis until budgets improve.”

Big-game retrieval is allowed in most places where there are authorized motorized travelways, Dyer said. Game retrieval is permitted up to 300 yards off the motorized routes during hunting season, only in the afternoon. (The Dolores District did not set time-of-day restrictions.) Motorized retrieval is the exception rather than the rule nationwide, Dyer said.

“There’s not a lot of forests anywhere in the country that authorize it,” he said

A question of liberty

Bud Garner, who was emcee of the local chapter of the 9-12 Project and Tea Party until he quit recently to run for county commissioner in 2012, has been one of the most vocal critics of the Forest Service.

He called big-game retrieval a “minor issue” and told the Free Press he has larger concerns with Forest Service policy.

“My big issue, as you well know, is liberty, and I see no liberty in the federal government disobeying the Constitution.” He maintains the federal government is not authorized by the Constitution to own vast tracts of public land, and the existence of national forests is thus unconstitutional.

“They should not even exist – the organization, I mean – the Forest Service.

“We’re not going to solve the constitutional problem over a little kerfuffle over big-game retrieval. The problems still exist.”

Garner also points to state statutes concerning highways that say that “all roads of the public domain, whether agricultural or mineral” are public highways and that anyone other than municipal or county officials who tries to close them is guilty of a misdemeanor.

“They’re not obeying state law,” he said of the Forest Service. “I think they are trying to portray themselves as having come around, but they still have an attitude, and it’s institutional – it’s not this individual or that – that the federal government is the end-all and be-all of everything.”

However, Garner added, “If big-game retrieval is your issue, it looks like the Forest Service did make some movement on that.”

Another opportunity

Lambert emphasized that the new gameretrieval policy is only for the Boggy-Glade area. “It doesn’t mean we will be proposing it for other places. It doesn’t mean that we won’t, either, but it is an issue that we looked at specifically for this area, considering the issues on the ground and bringing into account support from the counties in helping us implement this.

“We want to talk with the public and the counties and other constituencies on how we monitor the use to see if it’s working or not. If we’re seeing rampant abuse and non-compliance, that will fit into future decisions on whether to continue this or not.”

Lambert said the office is looking forward to hearing comments on the new proposal. “We have made some significant changes since the last one and we want constructive feedback on what we’re now proposing.”

Is the Four Corners ready for war games? The U.S. Air Force is targeting the area, saying the rugged mountains and steep valleys of Southwest Colorado and northern New Mexico are essential for low-altitude, nighttime training missions that keep American pilots sharp.

But locals fear crashes, deafening jet noise, frightened wildlife and livestock, and the disruption of the peace of rural life.

“I’d like to have a button in this room you could push that simulates exactly the sound of a C-130 flying overhead at 300 feet off the ground. My guess is that it’s not pleasant,” stated Andrew Gulliford, a Fort Lewis College professor, at a Oct 11 public hearing on the proposal in Durango.

“The proposed map for these trainings includes the Weminuche Wilderness. San Juan wilderness offers three things: silence, solitude and darkness. There are too many people and resources at risk with this proposal.”

Under the proposal, 688 missions per year, or three every night, would depart from Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico at dusk, with each sortie lasting five hours. Approximately 10 percent of the training missions would be flown between 300 and 500 feet above ground, 40 percent between 500 feet and 999 feet above ground and 50 percent between 1,000 feet and 3,000 feet altitude. They would fly over a vaguely hourglass-shaped area in northern New Mexico going north and west into Southwest Colorado over cities including Cortez, Mancos and Dolores.

The proposal was revised and the fly zone was made smaller after an earlier version was floated in 2010 and drew considerable comment.

The Air Force held 17 public hearings on the new proposal throughout the affected area. Durango’s gathering offered nearly unanimous resistance to the proposal, with only one citizen out of 45 showing support during a show of hands.

“I represent 50,000 people in La Plata County and I have not heard one comment in favor of this project,” said Wally White, a La Plata County commissioner.

The exception at the hearing was Zane Wood, who spoke on the importance of the U.S. military training missions.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war, the enemy may be in this room and those that stand between us and the enemy need training,” testified Wood. “Regardless if you are woken up or your horse is scared, the military must train or the enemy will be at our door, kill our children and attack our women. We must sacrifice and I don’t care if you lose sleep. Unless you are willing to stand between us and the enemy, then you should support the military training, so I hope this goes through. I’m all for it.”

Citing a need for “less sterile,” more challenging mountain terrain to train pilots, Cannon AFB hopes to expand its low-altitude, night-time training boundary to include 18 counties in Southwest Colorado and 14 counties in northern New Mexico, including land in the Navajo Nation.

Under the revised plan, outlined as a proposed action in an environmental assessment, training missions would be only for the C-130J transport plane and the CV22 Osprey (a dual-propeller helicopter/plane hybrid). No one area would be flown over twice in one night, and the aircraft would not fly lights-out, to increase visibility for other planes.

The expanded fly-over range would be used for flight practice by the 27th Special Operations Wing based at Cannon AFB. Crews would be practicing low-altitude, inflight refueling between two aircraft, lowaltitude formation operations, simulated

drops, and the use of night-vision goggles. “Air-crew survivability in combat requires the constant exercise of perishable flying and crew coordination skills in challenging environments that closely simulate the conditions and terrain of actual combat,” the report states.

Air drops or parachuting would not occur, the Osprey would not perform hovermode maneuvers, nor would landings occur at local airports. Planes would return to Cannon or Melrose AFB following their overnight sorties.

The reasoning for the expanded Colorado range, according to Air Force Col. Larry Munz, is that “we need to be prepared by flying over larger areas never seen before, and our pilots need the experience of flying low in challenging terrain at higher altitudes where the air is thinner.” He added that “there is no indication of significant impact.”

Military preparedness is not all about war, said Col. Munz, but is for humanitarian purposes as well.

“We respond to humanitarian disasters, and we need the practice to be able to effectively drop off supplies in earthquakes and tsunamis zones like Haiti and Japan.”

During a meeting break, C-130 pilot Major Jeremiah McClendon explained that the mountainous Colorado area is preferred because “following modified contour routes is the most difficult thing we do. We fly low altitude not because it is fun, but because we don’t want to get shot, so we fly under the radar.”

Wanting further study

What concerns critics of the plan is the very large area that would be open to unannounced flight training at very low altitude, 300 to 500 feet above ground. Typically Cannon AFB uses set military training routes (MTRs) around eastern Colorado and southern New Mexico that stay the same, and are generally less invasive and more predictable for populations below.

The proposed changes to a larger area with specific routes unknown to the public warrant examination under a more-rigorous process and the issuance of an environmental impact statement, according to opponents. They say research is needed to identify no-fly zones such as cattle and sheep operations, wilderness areas, mountain communities, tourist areas, avalanche zones near people and roadways, cultural sites and wildlife habitats- such as those of the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, mule deer and elk, which are known to experience increased stress due to low-flying aircraft.

“An EA is a low-ball, quick and easy way to do this,” said Gulliford, an environmen tal studies professor at FLC. “This study is a joke, patched together from dated studies from other areas. The citizens said no before and are saying no again because the impacts are extraordinary. An EIS is needed that addresses concerns by county and community, not just one map” showing a new training area.

Because the Air Force declared a finding of “no significant impact” in its environmental assessment, a more comprehensive environmental impact statement is not required under federal environmental law.

Stephanie Strine, Cannon AFB publicaffairs officer, said concerns are being listened to and that the flight plan and boundary were adjusted based on comments and concerns heard during previous community meetings in 2010.

“The map when we started was bigger than now,” Strine said. “Based on community feedback, it is smaller, so comments last time affected the boundary.”

For example, American Indian lands in the Taos, N.M., area were avoided to protect cultural sites and communities. Southeast Colorado was removed from the proposed flying range due to public concern as well as areas near Aspen where there is sensitive mule-deer habitat. Strine interprets a larger, low-altitude training zone as less invasive than the traditional, more predictable military training routes.

“It is a less-concentrated impact when training is conducted in a larger area,” she said.

‘We can’t see them’

The unknown routes of the proposed low-altitude training area are a safety concern for commercial and private pilots. Military aircraft don’t necessarily communicate their positions and flight plans with civilian or commercial planes, according to a local pilot.

With advanced, long-range radar systems, the C-130 and Osprey can monitor other planes far in advance and adjust course. But civilian and commercial aircraft don’t necessarily have that capability.

“They can see us, but we can’t always see them, so communication is key,” said Joe Gemperline, a general aviation pilot in the Durango area. “It is quite a shock factor when you come over a ridge and see a C-130 climbing toward the same pass.”

Gemperline said a separate, dedicated radio frequency is needed to warn commercial and general aviation pilots of military flight activity in the area.

Michael Lavey, a Navy veteran from Cortez, testified that the scope of the proposed flying range seemed too broad.

“It seems excessive, too many sorties, and the altitudes they are talking about are too low,” he said. “I moved to Southwest Colorado for the peace and quiet and I worry that this will jeopardize that. It sounds like their minds are already made up.”

The proposal states that heavily traveled civil aviation corridors, airports and landing strips would be avoided.

Ranchers face burden

Cannon AFB has set up a claims office for livestock losses from low-flying military aircraft. Public-relations officer Strine said the program will adjust flights to avoid sheep and cattle operations during calving, branding and herding when the animals are particularly vulnerable to stress and stampede. But that ranchers must contact the base with the specific locations and times to avoid that area.

“We fly in rural areas and avoid settlements, but there are times when we don’t see a community until it is too late. If that happens and a horse runs into a fence, then contact us and we will take it into account and stop flying over that house,” she said.

The number to call for ranching concerns and claims is 575-784-4131.

Ranchers don’t have time to think about military aircraft when they are gathering their herds, responded Carol Miller of the Peaceful Skies Coalition, a group fighting the proposal.

“We want to know where and when they are going to fly,” she said. “The Air Force has plenty of mountains on their bases in New Mexico, Nevada and California. Now they want Southwest Colorado mountains so they can militarize the entire U.S.”

Dan Randolph, executive director of the non-profit San Juan Citizens Alliance, said the flyovers are an unfair intrusion for local ranchers.

“It is a huge burden to the ranching community to call Cannon regarding livestock issues,” Randolph said. “There needs to be a better method, identified in an EIS, for that system. A lot of these rural areas do not have phone service.”

Ned Harper of Dolores cited a Diné College study of the impacts of low-flying military planes on sheep-herding activity on the Navajo Nation.

“People were terrified, sheep ran in every direction, horses ran in every direction, hotdog pilots fly lower than allowed,” he said. “Bringing the military here is too invasive.”

Mike Olson, a former Navy pilot, agreed that the location was wrong.

“We used to fly fast and low in similar mountains and this is not the right place; it is quiet here, a very important and special place,” he said. “Go to Nevada and California where they are set up with ground-based radar to pick you up, go to places with resources already in place to get the training, we don’t need more areas for training.”

Pristine mountains

Regarding noise, the Air Force’s studies report that overall operations would not exceed noise standards identified by the EPA as a threat to public health and welfare. Single- exposure noise levels generated by the C-130 and CV-22 Osprey could be as high as 98 decibels and 90 decibels respectively.

The study calculates that persons sleeping in a residence outside the avoidance areas could be awakened once per year by lowflying aircraft, or once per two years if the windows are closed.

The potential for crashes or refueling accidents also was a worry for meeting attendants. “To pick an area like this to practice refueling is irresponsible – it puts our headwaters at risk if gasoline is spilled,” said Miller of the Peaceful Skies Coalition. “This plan is trying to create a giant military training route.”

Added Judy Harris, “If there is a crash, what system is set up in our community to deal with it?”

Flying such low missions could also affect future wilderness designations, which specifically prohibit the noise and pollution of motorized intrusions.

“Establishment of low-level flight paths could preclude areas from protection,” said Randolph, of the San Juan Citizens Alliance “People here are already impacted by federal energy actions; this military fly zone would add to the cumulative impacts. There has been no discussion of hunting and fishing impacts either.”

According to the Air Force’s EA, “Threatened and endangered or candidate species locations and critical habitats identified by management agencies would be avoided by a minimum of 1,000 feet altitude.”

The pristine, wild nature of the San Juan Mountains should be protected, said others.

“A previous speaker said we have to sacrifice, but if we continue to sacrifice the cougars, bears, elk and solitude of our wilderness areas, what will we have when it is done?” said outdoor enthusiast Amy McClintock. “Let us not say, ‘Be damned!’ to the tourists who come here for the solace and the wildlife. I request that the proposal be withdrawn.”