Center for Native Ecosystems has recently become an active partner in two coalitions that are working to achieve long-term protection for two outstanding places in Colorado’s canyon country, the Dolores River Basin  and the Greater Dominguez Canyons Landscape  (see also a map of the Greater Dominquez Canyons). These places both have outstanding wilderness values and support a diversity of native plant and animal species.  We will be working with our coalition partners to secure long-term protection for these special places.

On a recent field trip to the Dolores River Basin, I had the opportunity explore a small portion of the spectacular Dolores River Canyon with our coalition partners and BLM staff.  Though I grew up hiking in Colorado’s wild places with my family, this was my first trip to the Dolores River Canyon.  I was awed by the beauty of the river as it flowed past sheer sandstone canyon walls and lovely stands of old growth ponderosa pine.  River otters were reintroduced to Colorado starting in 1976, and there is now a population along the Dolores River.  We were pleased to see a set of river otter tracks during our hike along the river corridor.  The Colorado Natural Heritage Program has documented a wide variety of at-risk species and natural communities in the Dolores River Basin.  The Dolores River Canyon contains a globally imperiled New Mexico privet riparian shrub community that is found only along major rivers in the four corners area.  The canyon walls are home to nesting peregrine falcons and hanging gardens where sensitive plant species such as the kachina daisy grow.  The river is inhabited by at-risk fish species, including the bluehead sucker and roundtail chub.  The San Miguel Basin supports populations of the critically imperiled Gunnison sage grouse.  The Big Gypsum Valley is occupied by the critically imperiled Gypsum valley cat-eye, a newly discovered plant species that is endemic to western Colorado.  These are just a few examples of the variety of at-risk natural communities and species that occur in the Dolores River Basin.  Stay tuned for more information about threats to this special place, and our efforts to protect it. 

The tide is changing.  Despite years of warnings from top scientists, environmentalists and even Al Gore, climate change has just recently become an above-the-fold news item, worthy of stump speeches and policy debates.  Politicians are finally paying attention to environmental activists and giving conservation policy serious consideration.

Just yesterday Center for Native Ecosystems, along with conservation organizations from across the country, petitioned seven Bush Administration Cabinet Secretaries with the intention of creating binding rules that would seriously address the threat of climate change and would implement proactive measures to protect species that are most effected by global warming. The timing of this petition could not have been more auspicious.

Today, the United Nations released a twenty-one-page report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painting a less-than-rosy future for Earth’s climate system regardless of the actions we take in reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions.  In response to the Panel’s conclusion that man-made causes are to blame, the Bush Administration reversed its consistent denial of the effect of carbon emissions, stating on Friday that “human activity is contributing to changes in the Earth’s climate…it is no longer up for debate.”

With the impact of this expert report making headlines around the world, and with the pro-conservation Democrats in both the House and the Senate putting pressure on the White House to address climate change in an important way, the binding rules suggested by Center for Native Ecosystems have a real chance for implementation.  This chance, in the past, would have seemed inconceivable.  The tide really is changing and if the environmental community can successfully advocate for our native critters and plants, it might mean some of the most serious and meaningful policy change since the Endangered Species Act legislation in 1973.