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| COHVCO Files Lawsuit to Re-Open Molas Pass Area to Snowmobilers | | Tuesday, October 1, 2002 | COHVCO Files Lawsuit to Re-Open Molas Pass Area to Snowmobilers
by D. Andrew Wight, COHVCO Staff Attorney
Molas Pass is a stretch of U.S. Highway 550, which runs southwest out of Silverton, Colorado and turns south towards Durango. The land surrounding the highway is administered in part by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), out of the San Juan Field Office, and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), out of the Columbine Ranger District of the San Juan National Forest (SJNF). Because of its easy accessibility and high altitude, the Molas Pass area has been a very popular area for snowmobiling and other types of winter recreation for many years. The Silverton Snowmobile Club (SSC) has groomed many miles of snowmobile trails in the Molas Pass area, pursuant to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) and yearly operating agreements with the USFS and BLM, every winter since 1994.
A couple of bad snow years in the late 1990s caused an influx of non-motorized users into Molas Pass from lower elevation areas with no snow. A single letter to the editor of the Durango Herald from an out-of-state visitor, complaining about snowmobiles, set the ball in motion and the federal agencies set about to shut us out of Molas Pass. Since snowmobile use is perfectly legal and encouraged in the area, the agencies had to devise a way to kick out the motorized users.
On June 4, 2001, Acting District Ranger/Field Office Manager Tracy Beck of the Columbine Ranger District of the San Juan National Forest issued a Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant Impact which restricts the use of snowmobiles and grooming of trails on Molas Pass. The rationale for the decision is that snowmobiles may affect the \"potential habitat\" of the Canada lynx (a species that has not been sited in the area in decades), and that \"user conflict\" between motorized and non-motorized users is occurring (in other words, a few elitist non-motorized users whined and complained because they encountered legal motorized recreationists). The SSC, dependent for its very existence on snowmobiling on Molas Pass, approached COHVCO and requested its assistance in filing an appeal of the decision.
On July 20, 2001, the COHVCO legal staff filed appeals of the Molas Pass decision with the Forest Service and BLM in the names of the SSC, the Colorado Snowmobile Association (CSA) and COHVCO itself. The appeals stated that the Molas Pass Decision must be reversed because it violates several federal environmental statutes. Most significantly, the appeal states that federal statutes do not allow agencies to make wholesale changes to land-use policy based on speculation about an endangered animal that may or may not actually use Molas Pass as habitat, or upon changes in the weather.
Of course, the Forest Service decided to affirm its own decision, and therefore threw out the COHVCO appeal in September of 2001. In the mean time, the appeal to the BLM is wending its way through the Byzantine and endless administrative appeals process at the Department of the Interior. We could all grow old and die waiting for a decision from the DOI, so COHVCO went ahead and filed its case in federal court in Denver in February of 2002.
Immediately, the so-called \"environmentalists\" sought to intervene in COHVCO\'s lawsuit. Do you think that the federal government needs help from local special-interest groups to defend the actions of its agencies? Well, COHVCO thinks not, and we\'re trying to keep these groups out of our case. So far, we\'ve been successful in keeping them out, but a final ruling on their attempt to enter the case is pending. The real reason that they want in, by the way, is to prevent the government from settling the case with COHVCO. These groups would like to see the motorized community shut out entirely from the public lands, so any time the government restricts us, for whatever half-baked reason, the \"environmental\" organizations rise up to defend the government (it\'s a little ironic, don\'t you think?).
In the mean time, the case has been assigned to a new (Bush-appointed) judge on the federal bench: Robert E. Blackburn of Lakewood, Colorado. It\'s good news for OHV interests when one of our cases goes to a Republican-appointed judge, of course. COHVCO is optimistic that Judge Blackburn will look at the facts of the case and realize what COHVCO has been saying all along: there is no need to restrict snowmobiles on Molas Pass, because the Canada lynx does not live there, and a few loud and whiney non-motorized users should not be able to shut us out of our public lands because a couple of bad snow years caused them to invade an area we\'ve used responsibly for years. |
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