A huge shout-out to our friends at Western Resource Advocates, Trout Unlimited, High Country Citizens Alliance, and a bunch of others for winning a critical lawsuit protecting water in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  Center for Native Ecosystems wasn’t involved, but our Board of Directors President, Bart Miller of WRA (along with TU legal eagle Drew Peternell) led the stellar legal team.

The ruling blocks the federal government from giving away the Black Canyon’s long-standing reserved water right to Front Range developers, meaning the water will stay in the Black Canyon where it belongs.  This is good for endangered fish, it’s good for game fish, it’s good for the Gunnison River, and it’s good for the many people on Colorado’s Western Slope who don’t much care for the Front Range grabbing their water.  The ruling also established an important precedent about the government’s responsibility to protect the water in National Parks around the country. 

We’ve got a special fondness for the Black Canyon because it’s so spectacular, but we are also fond of it because it sits in the middle of the Gunnison Basin, a region that Center for Native Ecosystems is working to protect.  Our campaign to protect and recover the Gunnison sage grouse is the centerpiece.

The story got good press in a bunch of papers including the Montrose Daily Press and the Rocky Mountain News, and Coyote Gulch blogged about it yesterday.

Kudos to Bart, Drew, and the rest of the folks that made it happen.