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The U.S. Army currently occupies a 238,000-acre area south of La Junta,
called the Piñon Canyon Military Maneuver Site. Although the Army uses
live ammunition on the site, they have made an effort to be a good
conservation partner by purchasing conservation easements from willing
sellers to protect native grasslands and rare native plants, and to buffer
the site from the encroachment of development. Most of the conservation
easements have been with local ranchers who continue to own and graze
their land. To date, the Army has conserved nearly 10,000 acres, with
another 8,000 on the way. A long section of the Purgatoire River flows
through the site—juniper-studded bluffs rising above the plains. It is
bordered by centennial cattle ranches and the Timpas (northern) unit of
Comanche National Grassland.
Between La Junta and Kim,
Highway-109 skirts around the Timpas unit of the Comanche and the Army's
land. Signs stating “THIS LAND NOT FOR SALE TO THE ARMY” stand in front of
every ranch on the rolling route, passing the turnoff for Vogel and
Picketwire Canyons, and across the chocolate Purgatoire River, while
gaining elevation to juniper savannah.
The signs protest the
Army's plan to “acquire” an additional 418,000 acres adjacent to the
existing land. They claim the acreage is needed to fire long-range weapons
and train new troops. When the Army “acquired” land in 1983, they used
eminent domain and promised to never shoot live ammo and never increase
the size of the maneuver site. Live ammunition is currently used on the
site, and now the Army wants more land—promises broken. Rumors abound that
the Army really wants 2.5 million acres, essentially all of southeast
Colorado, including the Comanche National Grassland.
This is canyon and cattle
country, a land so sparsely populated that parts could qualify as
wilderness. Southeast Colorado is defined by extremes—the snowstorms in
the winter of 2006-2007 were some of the worst in recorded history, when
back-to-back blizzards covered the plains under four feet of snow.
Thousands of cattle died. The drought years of 2002 and 2003 brought 3.5
inches of rain total to the area. It is also a fragile landscape at the
heart of the '30s dust bowl. Sound grazing practices and good land
management prevented the topsoil from blowing away during the recent
drought.
The Comanche is separated
into two units, north and south, the Timpas and Corrizo, respectively.
Managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the canyons house important
archeological sites, pictographs and petroglyphs, and in Picketwire
Canyon, the most important dinosaur track site in North America. Native
wildlife includes the threatened lesser prairie chicken, large prairie dog
ecosystems and associated species, nesting shortgrass prairie songbirds,
pronghorn, even roadrunners. Relatively speaking, the area is as important
to the shortgrass prairie as Rocky Mountain National Park is to the
mountains.
In a Rocky Mountain News
article, local rancher Kevin Karney said, “There's ranchers out there who
you could offer any amount of money, and they'll say no.” The unified
ranching community has led the way for a complete rejection of the
expansion. With no support for the expansion from Colorado legislators, an
amendment to a defense appropriations bill denying the Army of money
needed to acquire additional Piñon Canyon land was overwhelmingly adopted
in Congress. It appears that the Comanche and surrounding private lands
have been saved from the indignation of land seizure for now.
The southeast ranchers
will certainly keep a watchful eye on the Army's political maneuvers—we've
learned that public land bordering government land is never completely
safe. |