“Frankly, litigation may be the best way forward on this issue,” Ed Ryerson wrote in a letter last week to Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), defending his ex-employer’s ability to regulate water on forest lands.

In his letter, Ryerson, who coordinated the Forest Service’s ski area program from 1992 until his retirement in 2005, excoriated “the ‘bad actors’ in the ski industry who welshed on their agreements with the United States, and obtained water rights, justly belonging to the American people, through fraud and deception. These are the ski areas on who’s behalf NSAA has been lobbying.”

Udall, along with Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo), John Barrasso, (R-Wyo.), James Risch, (R-Idaho), and Rep. Scott Tipton, (R-Colo.), recently asked the Forest Service to suspend a new clause in its permitting process that ski resorts contend is an illegal taking of valuable water rights.

The Forest Service did not act on the advice of the politicians. Federal officials say the National Forest Ski Area Permit Act of 1986 concedes water rights on federal forest lands to the U.S. government. They also cite statutory authority based on the Organic Administrative Act of 1897, and other laws.

But in 2004, high-level meetings between ski industry executives and Bush administration officials resulted in a new policy that awarded permit owners joint ownership of water rights on federal lands.

“The 2004 water rights clause was implemented during my tenure and accordingly, I experienced how the ski industry exploited the lax regulatory environment that characterized the Bush Administration to attempt to effectuate the transfer of valuable water rights, that justly belong to the American people, to private ski areas,” Ryerson wrote in his letter to Udall. “The 2004 water rights clause is the legacy of this effort and should be seen in the context of that administration’s regulatory failures that allowed greed to jeopardize our economy and environment.”

Before the 2004 clause, there was a particularly cantankerous meeting between Ryerson, accompanied by a Department of Agriculture’s Office of General Council (OGC) lawyer, and NSAA.

“They reacted to every concern we voiced with hostility and let us know that they had the support of the Under Secretary’s Office to make the  changes they wanted,” Ryerson wrote of the NSAA officials. “Following this unproductive meeting, all discussions on modifying the clause were conducted between NSAA representatives, the Director of Recreation in the Chief’s office, and the Under Secretary’s staff. Agency permit specialist and water rights experts with OGC were excluded from the meetings that resulted in the development of the 2004 water rights clause.”

When the Forest Service tried to convey water rights under the 2004 joint-ownership policy, officials say agency lawyers learned Colorado’s laws wouldn’t allow it. That led to the 2011 interim directive, which authorizes the Forest Service to begin to wholly reclaim water rights at ski areas through permit actions. The new directive is limited to new permit requests and it is only valid for 18 months.

Ryerson’s letter questions whether any ski areas have intentionally deceived the Forest Service.

“If, in fact, some ski area operators signed their permits under the pretense of agreeing to transfer these water rights to the Government, when their intent was not to do so, they knowingly and willfully deceived the Forest Service and defrauded the United States,” he wrote. “Accordingly, these ski area operators risked criminal penalties under 18 USC 1001, as well as termination of their permits. That they would resort to such reckless behavior clearly illustrates the power of greed.”

Asked for a response, Geraldine Link, the policy director for NSAA, emailed the Colorado Independent to say “the 2011 clause – is retroactive in nature. It resurrects old, invalid and replaced clauses that are no longer in effect. It resurrects them from the past even though at this time the ski area and the water rights could very well be owned by a different entity who was not a party to the permit from 3 decades ago. The 2011 clause also applies to water that originates on private land and other non-USFS lands. Talk about shifting political winds. The ski industry is frustrated with the pendulum swinging back and forth between administrations. It is not good for business.”

Ryerson has a much different perspective but he agrees with NSAA officials on at least one point when they say they are going to sue the Forest Service: Let the dispute play out in court.

“It will be advantageous to the public’s interest to get the Justice Department involved in this matter,” Ryerson wrote in his letter to Udall, on which Bennet was copied. “It will provide them an opportunity to become familiar with the facts of the matter to help them determine if criminal prosecutions should be pursued, and to expedite acquiring title to water rights that justly belong to the American people.”

Photo: Flickr/Nashoba Valley Ski Area

Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, announced the second annual Climate B.S. of the Year Awards on Huffington Post and Forbes blogs Thursday to make examples of bad climate science that was produced, cited, or used in 2011 to try to influence or confuse the public.

Scores of conservative lawmakers and Fox News personalities amplified their pro-greenhouse-gas mantra last year, even as extreme weather, record-breaking temperatures and billion-dollar catastrophesdominated the planet.

First place went to all of the Republican candidates running for president, none of whom sided with the science accepted by 97-98 percent of all climate scientists and every national academy of sciences in the world. Second place went to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation “because of its regular misrepresentation of climate science and anti-climate science reporting among the different Murdoch outlets in the UK, the U.S., and Australia,” the Pacific Institute announced.

Third place went to Roy Spencer and William Braswell “for a debunked research paper on climate sensitivity, and John Christy, for an astounding piece of misleading testimony at a Congressional climate change hearing,” Gleick wrote.

Billionaire badboy brothers Charles and David Koch, who own Colorado property and bankroll lawmakers like Cory Gardner and Scott Tipton, slide into the fourth spot of the bad-science list. The Pacific Institute makes note of the Koch brothers’ well-funded network of anti-climate science groups and highlights a quote from the president of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-supported super-PAC.

“If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political. We’ve made great headway,” Americans for Prosperity’s Tim Phillips “brags outright,” Pacific Institute reports.

For a detailed report on how the Koch brothers influence environmental politics, click here.

Colorado’s conservative congressional delegation has helped the cause. Gardner, Tipton, Doug Lamborn and Mike Coffman have all taken the No Climate Tax Pledge and repeatedly voted to weaken protections for land, air and water. Calling out Gardner specifically, one report found Congress averaged more than one anti-environmental vote for every day it was in session.

Fifth place went to anti-climate-science blogger Anthony Watts, “who said he would accept the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature … even if it proved him wrong.” The Koch brothers actually funded the study but it backfired and, like many studies before it, confirmed the Earth’s surface is warming and doing so at an accelerating rate. In the end, Watts attacked the study.

The Pacific Institute’s runners-up for its 2011 Climate B.S. of the Year Awards were Harrison Schmitt and the Heartland Institute for ‘Arcticgate’ (documented errors in denying disappearance of Arctic sea ice); Rush Limbaugh for his consistent falsehoods about climate science; and Steve McIntyre for his smear of climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University.”

A recently published study (PDF), to be disseminated to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, reports that barriers built to keep out illegal immigrants are blocking black bears in Arizona from their relatives in Mexico. Border fences are choking off bear migration corridors that are already under stress from urban encroachment, according to the study authored by the Department of Agriculture’s Todd C. Atwood and Julie K. Young, and other biologists.

“While black bears are not a species of concern in [the] U.S., they are in Mexico, which represents the southern extent of their historic and current range,” the study reads, noting that border bears “may be particularly vulnerable to further loss of habitat due to urbanization and border security activities.”

The study focused on Arizona’s desert Sky Island mountain ranges, which are also home to mountain lions and jaguars and encompass one of the nation’s most biologically diverse regions.

Its findings come as the State of Arizona is soliciting private donations to build a wall in an attempt to secure the remaining 82 miles of the state’s 388-mile border with Mexico that isn’t fenced.

A mishmash of barriers currently cover about one-third of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border with nearly half of them in Arizona and the rest equally split between California, New Mexico and Texas.

The U.S. Border Patrol first began erecting barriers in 1990 to deter illegal entries and drug smuggling in San Diego and, in 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which bestowed what is now the Department of Homeland Security broad authority to construct fencing. Then in 2005, Congress passed the REAL ID Act, authorizing Homeland Security to waive all legal requirements to expedite the construction of border barriers. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 directed Homeland Security to build 850 more miles of border fencing, though that requirement was later modified to authorize fencing along not fewer than 700 miles.

Republican congressmen and women from Colorado have historically voted for federal fence-building while Democrats such as Mark Udall and Diana DeGette have opposed it and questioned the effectiveness of barriers, their cost, environmental impacts and diplomatic ramifications.

Border security doesn’t come cheap. The Government Accountability Office estimates (pdf) the federal government doled out between $400,000 to $4.8 million for every mile of border fencing it constructed and that another $6.5 billion is needed for its maintenance over the next 20 years.

Atwood, Young and the other biologists urge government officials and policymakers to identify opportunities to maintain and restore suitable wildlife habitat to protect borderland migrations.

“Currently, in the western U.S., there is opportunity to integrate connectivity conservation with land-planning. For example, land-use planners in the Tucson metropolitan area have developed a regional conservation plan with a specific focus on maintaining wildlife linkages and increasing the permeability of transportation corridors. The information we present here, if incorporated into land-use planning, may aid in ameliorating the adverse effects of inevitable urbanization and border security activities. If connectivity can be maintained, there is greater likelihood of the longterm persistence of species such as black bears, mountain lions, and jaguars along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

White-nose syndrome was first linked to a bat cave near Albany, N.Y., in 2006 and it has since spread to 16 states and four Canadian provinces. The fungus that causes the disease has been found on asymptomatic bats in another three states. The little brown bat, as well as the northern long-eared bat and the eastern small-footed bat, are all potential candidates for federal endangered-species listings, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently reviewing their bleak outlook.

Other species of North American bats are endangered as a result of human habitat disturbance. Bats, which eat enough insects to save the U.S. agricultural industry between $3 billion and $53 billion a year, are also flying up against industrial-scale wind turbines that crush their thumb-sized bodies.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will be directed to earmark the money from the 2012 endangered species recovery fund to research and manage the deadly outbreak of white-nose syndrome.

Concern for North America’s bats is growing as the fungal disease that breeds in the nocturnal animals’ faces and wings continues to spread.

“The high number of bat deaths and range of species being affected far exceeds the rate and magnitude of any previously known natural or human-caused mortality event in bats, and possibly in any other mammals,” said Paul Cryan, a U.S. Geological Survey research scientist in Fort Collins and one of the authors of an analysis published in the journal Science last spring about bats’ economic contribution to the farming industry.

“It is obviously beneficial that insectivorous bats are patrolling the skies at night above our fields and forests. These bats deserve help,” Cryan said.

Scientists warn of more economic losses in the ag industry because of “the double-whammy effect” of bat deaths caused by white-nose syndrome and from wind turbines and other human encroachment.

“Because the agricultural value of bats in the Northeast is small compared with other parts of the country, such losses could be even more substantial in the extensive agricultural regions in the Midwest and the Great Plains, where wind-energy development is booming and the fungus responsible for white-nose syndrome was recently detected,” said Thomas Kunz, a distinguished biology professor at Boston University who studies bat behavior and ecology.

There are 18 species of bats in Colorado and at least two other types found in nearby parts of Utah and Oklahoma that may be here too. White-nose syndrome is not known to have reached Colorado.

The National Park Service has closed caves in the Pocono Mountains in the eastern United States and, out west, federal and state agencies partially closed some caves and abandoned mines on public lands in New Mexico in response to the spread of white-nose syndrome. Others, such as Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Mammoth Cave National Park, are enacting processes to screen visitors to prevent the transmission of the fungus that can develop into white-nose syndrome.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife is asking the public to report the sighting of any active or dead bats this winter. Last year, the agency, along with Orient Land Trust, established a 350-acre conservation easement including a defunct iron ore mine to protect 250,000 Mexican free-tailed bats.

Under a law that President Bush signed in 2007, the Department of Energy on Jan. 1, 2012, was supposed to begin enforcing a ban on the incandescent bulbs that Thomas Edison perfected 132 years ago.

But the House and Senate’s massive spending bill to yet again avert a federal government shutdown includes a rider that will prevent the lightbulb rules from taking effect until at least October. Proponents of the lightbulb legislation promote it as an easy and logical way to improve the nation’s energy efficiency, but, to others, the law smacks of textbook government overreach.

Aficionados of the pear-shaped lights are stocking up on them at Home Depot — which reports lightbulb sales are up 10 to 20 percent over a year ago — and elsewhere before they fade away.

In Texas, the legislature passed a bill permitting the manufacture and sale of the traditional bulbs within its borders even though there is not a single lightbulb factory in the state.

Over the summer, a bill to repeal the energy-efficiency standards died in the House. Reps. Diana DeGette, Jared Polis and Ed Perlmutter, all Colorado Democrats, opposed it. Reps. Scott Tipton, Doug Lamborn, Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman, all Colorado Republicans, favored it.

Now there is a reprieve for the incandescent bulbs, but it may be too little, too late.

Even if Republicans are successful in further pushing back the efficiency standards that the incandescent bulbs don’t meet, the industry is already moving forward with a focus on compact fluorescent, halogen and light-emitting diode versions. With many of the world’s other leading nations also phasing out the old energy-guzzling bulbs, companies are investing in newer technologies.

Democrats, along with lightbulb manufacturers such as General Electric Co. and environmentalists, are urging for new rules to take effect sooner than later, citing energy and cost savings.

“If America is to have a rational energy policy, we need to make progress in efficiency,” Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a prepared statement. “Blocking funds to enforce minimum standards works against our nation getting the full benefits of energy efficiency.”

“Colorado is the first ‘purple’ state where we’ve found a plurality of voters in support of gay marriage,” said Public Policy Polling director Tom Jensen. “47% of voters think it should be legal to only 43% who believe it should be illegal. For the most part PPP’s state by state gay marriage polling has only found deep blue states in favor of it.”

When you expand the discussion to civil unions, 76 percent of voters support some form of legal recognition for gay couples to only 23 percent who think there shouldn’t be any at all. Even among Republicans, 60 percent support either gay marriage or civil unions, the poll revealed.

Previous polling in Colorado has also shown support for marriage equality.

Colorado’s legislature debated a civil unions bill earlier this year, and while there was evidence the bill would have passed if allowed to come to a full vote in the GOP-controlled House, the bill was assigned to a committee dominated by conservative Republicans and never made it to the floor for a vote.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (Flickr Creative Commons/Jeffrey Beall)

According to a poll released Thursday by Public Policy Polling, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is the second most popular governor in the country. Also, according to the poll, if an election were held today, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mark Udall would cruise to victory.

Hickenlooper trails only Mississippi’s Haley Barbour of those governors polled by PPP this year — 53 percent of voters approve of him, compared with 23 percent who disapprove.

Democrats are pretty much unanimous in their support for Hickenlooper’s work (73 percent/10 percent), and independents are very positive, as well (53 percent/20 percent), said PPP’s Tom Jensen in an email. What really sets Hickenlooper apart from most of his colleagues across the country is that even with Republicans he comes pretty close to breaking even, with 31 percent of them approving of him compared with 39 percent who disapprove. “It’s been a very successful first year for Hickenlooper in the court of public opinion,” Jensen said.

Udall also has solid approval numbers, with 41 percent of voters approving of him, compared with 31 percent who disapprove. Udall was first elected in 2008 and will be up for reelection in 2014.

With no Senate race on the ballot in Colorado next year,  PPP took a very early look at how Udall would fare at this point against a pair of potential 2014 opponents. He leads Congressman Mike Coffman by 14 points (48 percent/34 percent), and 2010 primary runner-up Jane Norton by 17 points (50 percent/33 percent).

Michael Bennet has a 38 percent approval rating, with 33 percent of voters disapproving. As with Udall, 29 percent have no opinion about Bennet’s job performance.

Shortly after filing the petition, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin signed on as well. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper apparently has no plans to sign the petition, but Colorado will file its own request to reclassify marijuana.

Currently, marijuana is listed as Schedule I by the Drug Enforcement Administration alongside heroin and LSD, which means that the federal government considers marijuana to have no accepted medical use.

“This is a good first step, in that it shows that politicians are catching up with the scientific consensus, which is that marijuana has medical value,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “If it succeeds, federal law will finally acknowledge that fact. Rescheduling marijuana, however, will not change the federal penalties for possessing, cultivating, or distributing medical marijuana,” he said in a prepared statement. “That is the change we really need. These governors should be insisting that the federal government allow them to run their medical marijuana operations the ways they see fit, which should include selling medical marijuana through state-licensed dispensaries.”

Rhode Island passed a law mandating the creation of three compassion centers throughout the state prior to Chaffee’s term, but Chaffee failed to implement the law, citing fears of federal enforcement against compassion center operators. Similar legislation was passed in Washington earlier this year, but significant portions of the bill were vetoed by Gregoire, including a plan to legally establish medical marijuana distribution centers. Both governors pointed to a series of threatening letters sent by U.S. attorneys suggesting that medical marijuana dispensaries could be targeted.

Hickenlooper’s spokesperson told Fox News that the governors had a valid point in pushing the petition.

“The governors in Washington and Rhode Island raise a valid conflict that needs to be resolved,” said Eric Brown, Hickenlooper’s spokesperson. “Colorado law requires we make a similar ask of the federal government by Jan. 1. We will do that. We will also continue to consult with other governors on this issue and with Colorado’s attorney general before deciding whether anything else will be done.”

Brown told The Colorado Independent that Hickenlooper would not sign the petition but that Colorado law requires the Colorado Department of Revenue to make the same request of the feds by no later than January 2012, and Brown said that will be done.

Mark Couch, spokesperson for the Department of Revenue, said the letter is currently in the draft phase and will be sent as required by law.

The pertinent section of HB 10-1284 is below:

(g) IN RECOGNITION OF THE POTENTIAL MEDICINAL VALUE OF
MEDICAL MARIJUANA, MAKE A REQUEST BY JANUARY 1, 2012, TO THE
FEDERAL DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION TO CONSIDER
RESCHEDULING, FOR PHARMACEUTICAL PURPOSES, MEDICAL MARIJUANA
FROM A SCHEDULE I CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE TO A SCHEDULE II
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE.

On the campaign trail, Hickenlooper said he supports medical marijuana but is opposed to broader legalization.

From the Fox story:

The DEA has rejected prior petitions seeking to reclassify marijuana, but Gregoire noted that this is the first petition signed by governors.

Gregoire also said the science on the issue has changed. The American Medical Association reversed its position two years ago and now supports investigation and clinical research of cannabis for medicinal use.

Gregoire said she was on a phone call in August with other governors in medical marijuana states and said that there was a “huge volume” of interest.

Asked why no other governors have signed onto the initial petition, Gregoire said she and Chafee wanted to take the lead on the initiative.

“I have every expectation that you will see other governors join us,” she said.

From an editorial in The Seattle Times:

Anything that moves the medical marijuana issue along and advances public understanding of its therapeutic value is a plus. There was high hope that the Obama administration would reclassify marijuana and provide safe access to qualifying patients across the country. At the very least, the expectation was that the administration would leave 16 medical-marijuana states, including Washington, alone. Instead, the federal government has been a stubborn, unhelpful player.

Gregoire wins points for sticking her neck out. She and Chafee are the first governors to take this step. But she should have done so sooner. Reclassifying would be a big first step, but the federal process could take years. Still, medical marijuana advocates are impressed with the enormous amount of time and effort put into the exhaustive petition.

An editorial at Bakersfield.com, urged California Governor Jerry Brown to join in the petition as a way to increase public safety.

The governors want marijuana reclassified to Schedule II, which is the classification for cocaine, morphine and opiates, which have “some accepted medical use and may be prescribed, administered or dispensed for medical use.”

As we in California well know, conflicting state and federal views on marijuana have created a marketplace for medical marijuana that is void of legitimate regulation and patient safety protections.

A reclassification of the drug could potentially lead to marijuana being dispensed by pharmacies, which would be safer than, and preferable to, the hodgepodge system of dispensaries, doctor “recommendations,” patient cards and uneven enforcement that has resulted in illicit, back-door distribution to recreational users and unnecessary difficulties for legitimate medical users.

As recently as July, the DEA decided against reclassifying marijuana, but the decision was primarily based on old studies. A number of medical associations and organizations support the reclassification, including the American Medical Association, which reversed its position because current law limits clinical research.

scotkersgaard@gmail.com

Gingrich, however, is the latest in a revolving list of candidates who have floated to the top of the party’s primary contest as an alternative to effective frontrunner Mitt Romney. PPP recently reported Gingrich leading Romney among Colorado Republicans 37-18, partly due to the fact that Gingrich is drawing the lion’s share of Herman Cain supporters left in the lurch when their man dropped out of the race in the wake of horrifically managed spiraling sex scandals.

That Newt is leading here is an obvious problem for the state GOP. Unaffiliated voters make up roughly a third of the Colorado electorate and Obama is polling way out in front of Gingrich in that demographic. PPP surveyed roughly 800 voters this week in Colorado and found Obama leading among independents by a 56 to 32 point spread.

PPP reported a plus/minus 3.5 percent margin of error in the week’s survey. Director Tom Jensen seemed to be having fun writing up the polling results.

Our new Colorado poll is more evidence that the Newt surge could be disastrous for GOP hopes of beating Barack Obama next year….

As weak as Obama is in Colorado, if the Republicans nominate Newt Gingrich it doesn’t look like it matters. Obama leads Gingrich 50-42 in the state, including a whooping 56-32 advantage with independents. Gingrich is a reviled figure with only 32 percent of voters seeing him favorably to 55 percent with a negative opinion, including a 25/59 spread with independents…

The GOP’s move toward supporting Gingrich is seriously endangering its chances of winning in the fall.

Jensen writes that Romney is running roughly neck and neck with Obama and that, if Republican primary voters can hold their noses and vote to nominate him as their general election candidate, Colorado could “go back into the swing state category.”

“Or it could be another easy Obama win as it was in 2008.”

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

The letter (PDF) , signed by Texas A&M professor Douglass Shaw, urges the president to invest in the nation’s public lands infrastructure and establish new wilderness, parks and monuments that can create jobs and jump-start the businesses around them.

“The rivers, lakes, canyons, and mountains found on public lands serve as a unique and compelling backdrop that has helped to transform the western economy from a dependence on resource extractive industries to growth from in-migration, tourism, and modern economy sectors such as finance, engineering, software development, insurance, and health care,” the letter says. “Increasingly, entrepreneurs are basing their business location decisions on the quality of life in an area. Businesses are recruiting talented employees by promoting access to beautiful, nearby public lands.”

The economists’ message was also delivered to leaders in Congress, who are largely locked in partisan gridlock over issues dealing with the environment with few exceptions, such as the expansion of a wilderness area in San Diego County that shares bipartisan support led by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and the recent passage of the U.S. Ski Area Recreational Opportunity Enhancement Act, which Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) championed for many years.

The Obama administration appears to have gotten the economists’ memo before it was even written, given that U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued a report three weeks earlier calling for the declaration of 18 new wilderness and conservation area in nine Western states. Salazar’s report says they all have “significant local support” and, in Colorado, they include expanded land protections in the McKenna Peak Wilderness Study Area of the San Juan Mountains, the Castle Peak Wilderness Study Area, the Browns Canyon Wilderness Study Area and the Bull Gulch Wilderness Study Area.

To get conservative members of Congress, such as U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.), on board will take some convincing. Tipton so far hasn’t tipped his hand on whether he supports the San Juan Mountains Wilderness Act or drilling in Thompson Divide, but he has been enthusiastic in rolling back wilderness protections for other public lands, and previously blasted Salazar’s controversial Wild Lands policy.

The same can be said of Colorado’s other conservative congressmen — Doug Lamborn, Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman — who, like Tipton, have been rebuked for their environmental records.

Three Nobel Laureates and 10 residents of Colorado are among the scores of economists and academics who signed the public lands letter with the hope of getting U.S. policy-makers’ attention.

“Here in Colorado, our public lands fuel local economies,” said Zeke Hersh, owner of Blue River Anglers in Frisco. “It is only common sense that our elected officials in Congress and the White House protect these places with adequate investment and protections for the clean air, water, wildlife habitat, and open space that lures tourists and small business entrepreneurs to communities like Frisco.”

“Public lands are the identity for our community and thus our businesses,” added Roger Marolt, owner of Marolt LLP, in Aspen. “ They help define who we are and are what attracts vibrant employees, exciting new companies, visitors and consumers to the West. The preservation of federal lands is vital to our economic growth and ensuring existing businesses like mine thrive.”

A recent study commissioned by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (pdf) reports that outdoor recreation supports $289 billion in annual retail sales and services and more than 6.5 million jobs.

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.