Roan Plateau

An Overview of the Roan Plateau

Online Editors — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:21:50 -0400

The Roan Plateau in western Colorado is the “line in the sand” for the Western sportsman who values intact fish and wildlife habitat and a unique sporting opportunity amidst a sea of industrial development. The Roan, which comprises only 1.5 percent of the entire Piceance Basin, rests above significant reserves of natural gas, but also provides refuge for trophy mule deer, elk, grouse, bear, mountain lion and pure strains of Colorado River cutthroat trout.

Unfortunately, against the wishes of sportsmen, surrounding communities, and Colorado’s federal delegation, the Roan was leased for gas drilling in 2008. Trout Unlimited and a host of conservation groups who recognized the value of the Roan for future generations, immediately challenged the leases in court, and that’s where the issue rests today—in the hands of a judge.

One important note: Trout Unlimited and Field & Stream have never opposed drilling for the gas beneath the Roan. Instead, we’ve proposed several ways to drill for the gas using state-of-the-art directional drilling techniques, phased in leasing, drilling and reclamation and plans to protect the Roan’s fragile streams. In these streams swim a unique strain of Colorado River cutthroat trout that has evolved isolated above an impassible waterfall. These fish are pure-strain cutthroats, and their environment is already pretty austere. Drilling for natural gas, particularly in this area, where industry oversight when it comes to safety and environmental protection has been lax, might be the one thing that would wipe out these priceless fisheries.

Working with hunters, anglers and guides and outfitters, Field & Stream and TU will not give up the Roan to wholesale drilling without a fight. With a glut of natural gas on the market today, and with technology available to ensure drilling won’t harm fish and game habitat, we see no need to sacrifice any further.

In addition to its fisheries, the Roan is home to excellent big-game hunting opportunities for deer, elk, bear and lion, as well as grouse and wild turkeys. It truly is a sportsman’s oasis in a sea of industrial activity.

What’s on the Roan?
Fishing assets: Native Colorado River cutthroat trout, brook trout.
Hunting assets: Elk, deer, ruffed grouse, blue grouse, black bear, mountain lion.
Other: The Roan is important for recreation, not only for sportsmen, but for hikers, campers and others. It’s also used by area cattlemen for grazing, and by hunting outfitters and guides as a deer and elk base camp.

Threats: Unnecessary and intrusive natural gas drilling threatens the water quality on the Roan, as well as the big-game habitat atop the plateau.

Colorado Fines Drilling Company for Well Poisoning

Joe_Cermele — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:46:16 -0400

In our recent writing about our trip to Colorado's Roan Plateau, we mentioned the sad case of hunting guide and outfitter Ned Prather, who drank from a well on his own property and was poisoned by benzene from nearby gas drilling operations. Finally, the case has some resolution, and the state of Colorado has levied a record fine against Williams Production RMT Company. The story from the Colorado Independent is well-worth a read, as Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Director David Neslin describes "an unacceptable backlog of enforcement actions for various spills, some of them dating back several years." -- Hal Herring

Exploring the Roan Plateau: Video

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:03:46 -0400

Conservationist blogger Hal Herring and photographer Kevin Cooley spent three days exploring what's at stake in the current rush to develop the energy resources beneath Colorado's unique Roan Plateau -- some of the best big game hunting and trout fishing in the United States. Here's the video recap of what they found.

Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day Three

Online Editors — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:00:35 -0400

The fishing in lower Trapper Creek yesterday was spectacular, and the place made me think hard about what we mean when we say a place is pristine, or remote, or a ‘wilderness.” Trapper is hard to get to, and so not a lot of people are fishing it, which is a good thing, because a man with a can of worms, no ethics and some circle hooks could clear it out in short order. The cliffs keep the cattle and sheep out, so the place looks pretty much like it has since the dawn of Creation – the long tunnels of willows keeping the water shady and cold, protecting the fish from predators. There’s no silt among the brightly colored gravels, no sounds but the rushing of the water through its bed of stone.

The cool air above Trapper swarms with bug hatches- caddis, mayflies, stoneflies, all those creatures of the air and water that are the true mark of healthy water. What must be the sheer weight of all those bugs, the amount of pure protein crawling and flying there, is astonishing, and it is why the cutthroats are so bright and feel so heavy in the hand. The Trapper Creek canyon holds a stillness and vibration of pure life that must be, in this time of diesel fumes, ipods, and endless concrete, among the rarest commodities on earth. Hard to get to. For the fisherman or hunter, these are magic words.

The only regret I had was that, because I couldn’t quit fishing for the cutthroats, we didn’t have time to hike down the creek to see where it fell off the edge of the Roan.

Corey Fisher and the gang told me we’d fish Parachute Creek next, which was a little bit bigger stream, and that we could bash our way through the willow thickets, wade between the sheer cliff faces, and actually reach the place where Parachute tumbled off into space. If we could leave the fishing long enough to start walking.

But the best laid plans also tumble away in spry and foam (and fire) when traveling in the backcountry. We did indeed bust thickets, and we did fish, but I’d not see Parachute Creek on this trip.

Click here for Hal's report on the last day of this trip.

Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day Three

Online Editors — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:35:38 -0400

Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day Two

Online Editors — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:58:57 -0400

We’d seen the Roan Plateau from the air, and we’d seen it from the roads. Marveled at the monster dropoff and big air at Anvil Point, with the swallows dive-bombing around us with a sound like the air itself ripping open. We’d seen the encircling energy development, the giant well pads cut into the ridgelines on the land owned by Encana and other energy companies. As Grand Junction-based real-estate developer (and Trout Unlimited Director) Mac Cunningham put it, “If we did half this much damage in our business, we’d be shut down. The public outrage would be unbelieveable.” But now it was time to go wandering and find some fish to catch, deep in the heart of the area that most Coloradoans- and most Americans who know the Roan- want to see protected.

I’d seen the photos of Corey Fisher and Chris Hunt fishing those shadowed cathedrals of moss and rock and clear water for the genetically-pure strain of cutthroats, but looking out across the Roan, it was hard to imagine that those places existed. It looks like great hunting country- there are blue grouse in the snowberry patches at the edge of the aspens, monster muley tracks in the road dust, elk rubbings on the saplings, but no creeks can be seen. It got even harder to imagine as we drove out a ridgeline road, and the land dried out, the snowberry gave way to sage, and the sage to wiry, low-growing potentilla with its yellow flowers and survive-anywhere desert aspect.

We parked at the end of the ridge and looked down, down, 1000 feet or so, where a distant envelope of deep green willow thickets showed at the floor of the canyon. The opposite side of the canyon wall was sage brush falling away to sheer gray clifflines. Ken Neubecker and Chris Hunt were loading daypacks with water and flies and a little food. Mac Cunningham, a veteran of many long downhill scrambles to fish his favorite part of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, grabbed a fanny pack and set off downhill without fanfare. I followed him, down a path eroded into the red rock, heading for the water they all said was down there somewhere. --Hal Herring

Check out Kevin Cooley's photos from day two of our expedition.

Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day Two

Online Editors — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:46:11 -0400

Exploring Colorado's Roan Plateau: Day One

Online Editors — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:49:18 -0400

I first saw Colorado’s Roan Plateau in the spring of 2004, while researching a story on energy development for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s Bugle magazine. It was late March, already hot in the town of Rifle, and local lion and elk-hunting outfitter Keith Goddard was showing me around. His real focus was up high, above Anvil Point on the mighty sky-island of the Roan itself, where you could still see four feet of snow shining like cake-frosting in the spring sun. Along the flanks of the Plateau, a matrix of new roads had already been built to service new drill pads, and the dust from heavy truck traffic was rising over what had been alfalfa fields and winter range for elk and mule deer herds. “Everybody who hunts and fishes in the US has to look at what is happening here,” Goddard said to me that day, “Because somebody else has set the priorities, and let me tell you, it’s not fish or wildlife. If they follow the current plan for development of the Plateau, I’m out of business.”

I felt sure the Roan Plateau would escape the kind of destruction by energy development that I was witnessing in the big game country of Wyoming, New Mexico, and other parts of Colorado. The place was too unique, and its value for water supplies to an arid land and to the already burdened Colorado River itself was simply too obvious. In 2005, the US Bureau of Land Management, which manages almost 60,000 acres on top of the Roan, received 74,925 comments from the public, 98 percent of them asking that the top of the Roan be protected from drilling and road building. Many of the comments merely requested that the development be slowed until such time as directional drilling technologies were available to access the rich natural gas resources of the Plateau without destroying the other resources there- the native and genetically unique cutthroat trout, the trophy deer and elk hunting opportunities, the solitude, beauty, and wealth of clean water supplies. In 2007, Colorado’s usually-pro-development Governor Ritter advised expanding the areas off-limits to leasing for drilling on the top of the Roan, and having a phased approach to any development of public lands there. The tide seemed to have turned to a more reasoned, balanced approach.

Then in August of 2008, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) leased all of its lands on the top of the Plateau for drilling, amidst a storm of protest and outrage. Private lands all around are already under development, and the roads and the drilling are surrounding the last empty expanses of this wild and beautiful place, where generations of Americans have hunted, fished, grazed cattle and sheep, and looked out over the vast, sun-baked Colorado River valley from the shade of ancient aspens. Trout Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation, among other conservation groups, have filed a lawsuit to keep the BLM from turning loose the bulldozers, the trucks and the drilling mud on the last undeveloped 30,000 acres of the Plateau, a kind of island protecting the headwaters of the creeks that hold the trout and water the lands below. Looking at the rush of development, the well pads and roads in the creek bottoms all around, it seems impossible that anyone could object to leaving this one last piece alone. But so far, the BLM and the companies who leased the public land from them, are not backing up. Some feel that industry is making a stand here- that if the last of the Roan can be developed, then no place in America can be off limits. The courts, perhaps, will decide whether that is true.

I went back to the Roan with Field and Stream, some great photographers from Brooklyn, and some guys from Trout Unlimited who have been fighting for this place for over a decade now. We all wanted to spend some days way up high, wander the rugged canyons that crisscross the plateau and shelter the monster bull elk that have made it famous and catch a few native Colorado cutthroats in the shadowed cathedrals of stone and water. It was not a trip to experience what might soon be lost. It was a trip to see and feel what is still truly worth fighting for. In a world that seems haunted by losses for hunters and fishermen and their children, here was a chance, and a place, to hold on to.

Check out Kevin Cooley's photos from day one of our Roan Plateau exploration.

Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day One

Online Editors — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:41:05 -0400