Mesa and Montrose Counties just unveiled their NCA proposal. Submit your comment!
Recently, Mesa and Montrose counties put forward a national conservation area proposal to conserve 29,806 acres of public lands in the Dolores River Canyon Country. While Sheep Mountain Alliance is glad to see the counties come together to find a path towards protecting the Dolores Canyons, this particular proposal wholly fails to protect the landscape’s most important places and values.
The counties’ plan would conserve just 7.6% of the public lands included in the more comprehensive national monument proposal, leaving the remaining 92.4%, including numerous areas of high cultural and environmental value, unprotected and open to new mining and industrial development.
We think Coloradans deserve meaningful solutions for stewarding the irreplaceable values of the Dolores Canyons: rich ecosystems that sustain iconic big game populations and threatened species, cultural sites that tie local Tribes to their ancestral homelands, historic places that tell the story of our state’s mining history, and abundant recreational opportunities for us all to get outside.
We need your help! Tell Mesa and Montrose counties that their plan just won’t cut it.
The counties have launched a public comment process to hear from residents interested in the future of the Dolores Canyons. Please take a few minutes today to let the county commissioners know that you support the Dolores Canyons National Monument and urge them to consider comprehensive conservation protections for these extraordinary and irreplaceable public lands.
There’s a sample comment below. Or, if you prefer to draft your own comment, please feel free to pull from this list of important places and values excluded from the counties’ proposal.
SAMPLE COMMENT:
Mesa and Montrose counties’ proposed Dolores Canyon National Conservation Area does not adequately conserve the values at stake in the northern stretches of the Dolores River Canyon Country.
In specific, the proposal fails to protect important big game habitat and cold water fisheries in Unaweep Canyon, Roc Creek, Sinbad Ridge, on the slopes of the Uncompahgre Plateau and in core wildlands including Sewemup Mesa, The Palisade, and Dolores River Canyon Wilderness Study Areas.
The proposal fails to protect important habitat for rare and threatened species. These critical areas include the three aforementioned wilderness study areas, as well as Unaweep Canyon, which contains a colony of the threatened silverspot butterfly.
The proposal fails to protect significant historical sites that tell the story of our mining history, including Tenderfoot, Flat Top, Calamity, Outlaw and Blue Mesas.
The proposal fails to protect countless Indigenous cultural sites in the Dolores’ tributary canyons.
I want to ensure that Mesa and Montrose county community members can continue to enjoy, steward, and benefit from the Dolores River Canyon Country long into the future—whether that’s through hunting and angling, hiking, camping, off-roading, climbing, or ranching. Under the NCA proposal—which leaves the vast majority of public lands in the Dolores River Canyon Country open to new mining and industrial development—that future is uncertain. That’s why I support the more comprehensive Dolores Canyons National Monument proposal.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide input. I believe you, like me, care deeply about the Dolores River Canyon Country and urge you to consider the impacts of leaving it unprotected.