Install the app
How to install the app on iOS

Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.

Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.

  • Don't miss out on all the fun! Register on our forums to post and have added features! Membership levels include a FREE membership tier.

IMPORTANT!! Hidden Gems Awareness information.

You've got to be kidding me. Not that surprised. Aron will do many things for publicity. But, it is one more figure widely known in public that will sway many people and votes out of sympathy alone. It is not going to go away. We need to keep SCREAMING and he needs to go for a hike.
 
Hidden Gems Wilderness.. GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!

Here is a email that the White River Alliance is sending out tonight from our President (mtnxr on snowest).

______________________________________________________________

Dear members and supporters,

The White River Forest Alliance is pleased to announce that the Mesa County Commissioners have adopted and signed a resolution opposing the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign. The resolution, MCM 2009-175, was adopted and signed on Monday the 28th of September 2009. There are 17,000 to 20,000 acres of the Hidden Gems wilderness proposal located in within the borders of Mesa County. For the full resolution please see the attached file to this email.

What does resolution MCM 2009-175 really mean?

What this resolution really means is that the Mesa County Commissioners do not support the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign or any legislation it might lead to.

What does this mean to all of us?

First off, this is a huge victory for us. If we can get more counties to take similar stances it will help our cause greatly.

Here are just a few things you can do to help with that.

Please contact County Commissioners in Eagle, Delta, Gunnison, Pitkin and Summit Counties and tell them your personal stories and reasons why you are opposed to the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign. Your personal stories are very important. If you want, you can include something like you were impressed to hear that Mesa County took a strong stand with a resolution opposing the HG proposal.

Wilderness Workshop or the Hidden Gems people are going to these counties saying there is no opposition to their proposal or that they are working with the stakeholders etc... We must continue to make our voices heard.

What we need people to do now is to continue creating awareness and education within the public, help get people more informed. Please do your best to understand the proposal and how it affects you and Western Colorado in general.

In Garfield County, Commissioners Martin and Sampson have come out against the Hidden Gems Wilderness but Commissioners Houpt remains neutral at this time. Please continue to let her know how you feel.

Please read and share this information with others. Pass it on to all you know.

Once again, thank you for your time and support, you have no idea how much good you all are doing.

Tony Fisher
President
White River Forest Alliance
 
Last edited:
Hidden Gems

I just wanted to say Thank You to all of you who are sending emails, letters, phone calls etc. You are doing a great job! Your actions have created results and if we all keep up the efforts I think we will continue to make progress. Thanks Farmer and Live2ride for all your efforts! We have a good thing going lets just keep up the pace!
 
Updated Delta County Commissioner Information

Hello Folks,

It has been bought to our attention that the contact info for the Delta County Commissioners was not accurate. That one is totally my fault, I had the wrong email addresses. After a quick call to the Delta county we do now have the accurate email addresses. If any one gets time please email the Delta County Commissioners and tell them about the Hidden Gems Wilderness proposal. We hope there is a chance we could also receive similar support from Delta County as we did from Mesa County. Once again thank all of you for your support.
Sincerely,
Sean Martin

DELTA COUNTY INFO
Commissioner McCracken
jmccracken@deltacounty.com
Commissioner Hovde
bhovde@deltacounty.com
Commissioner Lund
olund@deltacounty.com
 
Good work Tony, Sean, Bob and everyone else. Things are coming along. I like the changes to the website. We will need to schedule Avon sometime soon.
 
List of HGW supporters........

This list of Hidden Gems and Wilderness Workshop supports was sent to me. Please look it over and if you have contact with any of these people, please let them know how we disagree with the philosophy of these organizations and the damage they are creating.

Also, if nothing else, DON"T SUPPORT these business' and organizations who support HG and WW.
*****************


Below is a list of local and regional organizations that fund and endorse
the Wilderness Workshop and the Hidden Gems Wilderness Proposal. The list
was compiled from the websites of the Wilderness Workshop and the Hidden
Gems Wilderness Campaign. (some organizations were intentionally left out,
as they are organizations that we are not likely to sway, or have an agenda
that we compete against.

Wilderness <http://www.wildernessworkshop.org/support.html?page=213>
Workshop Supporters

Hidden Gems <http://www.whiteriverwild.org/p-about-us-8.html> Wilderness
Campaign Supporters



I urge you to talk to these entities and encourage them that funding such an
organization is a bad economic proposal for them. Together we can make our
support know and reduce funding for the proposal. Everybody has a tie to at
least one, if not more of these organizations. They are our neighbors and
friends. We need to let them know that we do not approve of where they are
putting their money and their voice.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------

100 Club <http://www.the100club.org/home.html>

Alpine Bank <https://www.alpinebank.com/>

Aspen Board of Realtors <http://www.aspenrealtors.com/>

Aspen Skiing <http://www.aspensnowmass.com/> Company - See Below -
$91,500 funded

Avalanche <http://www.redstonestables.com/> Outfitters

Beaver Creek <http://www.vailhorses.com/> Stables

Bill Dvorak <http://dvorakexpeditions.com/> Kayak and Rafting Expeditions

Bristlecone Mountain <http://www.bristleconemountainsports.com/> Sports

EcoFlight <http://www.ecoflight.info/>

Elliott Yeary Gallery <http://www.elliottyeary.com/>

Environment <http://www.environmentcolorado.org/> Colorado

Fly <http://www.flyfishingoutfitters.net> Fishing Outfitters

Gore Range <http://www.gorerangeoutfitters.com> Outfitters

Harry Teague Architects <http://www.harryteaguearchitects.com/>

Hobbs & Murphy CPAs

Mason <http://www.masonmorse.com/> & Morse Real Estate

Morris <http://www.aspenskihomes.com/> & Fyrwald / Southeby's Real Estate

Pack <http://www.packstringoutfitters.com/> String Ranch Outfitters

Raymond James Financial <http://www.raymondjames.com/> Services

Reese Henry <http://www.reesehenry.com/> & Co.

Stirling Homes <http://www.stirlinghomesinc.com/>

Sweet Sunny South

Timberline <http://www.timberlinetours.com/> Tours

Trout Unlimited
<http://www.tu.org/site/c.kkLRJ7MSKtH/b.3022897/k.BF82/Home.htm>

Ute Mountaineer <http://www.utemountaineer.com/>

Wild Sage Interiors <http://www.wildsageinteriors.com/>

Words Pictures Colours <http://www.wordspicturescolours.com/> Design

ZG Tec <http://www.zgtec.com/>



<http://www.environmentcolorado.org/>


<http://www.sweetsunnysouth.com>










Aspen Ski Company Contributions to Wilderness Workshop and the Hidden Gems
Wilderness Campaign

<http://www.aspensnowmass.com/environment/programs/foundation_grants.cfm>
http://www.aspensnowmass.com/environment/programs/foundation_grants.cfm

Organization/Project
Amount Funded

April 1998

Aspen Wilderness Workshop Biological Inventory $2,000

March 1999

Aspen Wilderness Workshop Wilderness Monitoring Project $2,500

Aspen Wilderness Workshop Recreation Impact Study $5,000

March 2000

Aspen Wilderness Workshop Summer 2000 Roadless Area Inventory $3,000

April 2002

Aspen Wilderness Workshop Mountain Watchdog Program $6,000

December 2002

Aspen Wilderness Workshop Forest Watchdog Program $5,000

Fall 2003

Aspen Wilderness Workshop conservation efforts $4,000

Fall 2004

Wilderness Workshop Ops Support $6,000

Fall 2005

Wilderness Workshop Forest Watchdog $8,000

Fall 2006

Wilderness Workshop - Forest Watchdog Program $10,000.00

Spring 2007

Wilderness Workshop/Colorado Mountain Club: White River Wilderness Campaign
$10,000.00

Fall 2007

EcoFlight - Support of Wilderness Workshop Hidden Gems White River Project
$2,000.00

Wilderness Workshop - Forest Watchdog Program $8,000.00

Spring 2008

Wilderness Workshop and Colorado Mountain Club - Hidden Gems Wilderness
Campaign $10,000.00

TOTAL $90,161.44

_____

Fall 2008

Wilderness Workshop - Forest Watchdog Program $5,000.00

Spring 2009

Wilderness Workshop, Colorado Mountain Club and Colorado Environmental
Coalition - Support of Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign $5,000.00

TOTAL = $91500

16 Projects Funded Through Spring 2009
 
Still a few hours to comment folks. October, 3rd is today! At the least zip off an email that you oppose any changes to the Colorado Roadless Petition as it stands now. Coloradoans already weighed in on the current petition to the tune of 40,000 comments and numerous public meetings. These last minute tactics of the extremist special interest groups to change that petition and circumvent the wishes that Coloradoans have already expressed are dispicable. The people have spoken, let the petition stand as it was written! Send comment to Roadless.Comments@state.co.us

Thank You!
 
wahoo, envirocrazies.......take that.......

A light at the end of the tunnel.............maybe......but very encouraging., tho..

http://www.aspentimes.com/apps/pbcs...LY/910029983/1077&ParentProfile=1058&_ic=true

The new top official in the White River National Forest says he won't get bogged down in the same old clashes that have hijacked the attention of public land managers for decades.

Scott Fitzwilliams said the battles over logging versus preservation of old growth forests, cattle grazing versus wetlands protection, and motorized vehicle access versus Wilderness — debates that defined the transformation of the Old West into the New West — are essentially settled.

The U.S. Forest Service spent 50 years after World War II helping industry extract products from the national forests, but the agency has completed a switch to a “restorative management philosophy,” said Fitzwilliams, who took over as White River National Forest Supervisor on Sept. 1. It's now ingrained in the agency to repair the damage from 50 years of road building rather than assist more large-scale extraction of natural resources.

“That doesn't mean we're not going to have cows, oil and gas, and logging here and there,” he said. “But the influence (of restorative management) is there, the emphasis is there, the leadership is aligned in there.”

He cited an example from the Willamette National Forest in Eugene, Ore., where he was deputy forest supervisor before taking the position with the White River.

Fitzwilliams said some entities wanted to continue fighting over old-growth logging. The Forest Service had to convince people that the battle was over and the agency had moved on to other issues. The only logging allowed was thinning to enhance old-growth characteristics.

The agency invited conservationists to move past the issue, Fitzwilliams said, and help it with something more productive, like improvements to a salmon stream.



Get past the bickering
In the White River National Forest, he sees some of the same old battles being fought. For example, conservationists are making a big effort in the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign to add 400,000 acres of specially protected lands in Colorado. The majority of those lands, but not all of them, are on the White River. Fitzwilliams would like to redirect that effort into on-the-ground projects, like watershed restoration.

“Making everything Wilderness, or 400,000 acres of Wilderness, I just don't think that's a priority right now,”he said. “The forest is in pretty darn good shape.
 
Last edited:
“To me, the conservation challenge of the next century is not should we make it Wilderness or not, or should we lease it (for natural gas development) or not, or should this little area be open to ATVs,” he said. “The battle is how are we going to collaboratively grow and prosper.”

He wants the White River staff and the people in the communities surrounded by the national forest to set their sights on bigger issues, like the health of the national forest and the private lands it borders.



The issues on his plate
The Forest Service and its partners — local governments, businesses and residents — have to figure out an adaptive management plan for the next century as the problems presented by climate change grow more severe, he said.

Forget the debate over the causes of climate change, Fitzwilliams said. If the scientific models on the effects of climate change are accurate “or even half accurate,” then the national forests face serious ecological threats. Scientists predict more severe weather events for the Rocky Mountain region: longer droughts, warmer temperatures, shorter periods of snowfall sandwiched between dry autumns and springs.

Weather is directly linked to forest health. Drought early this decade stressed lodgepole pines and made them more vulnerable to bark beetles. The insects have feasted on millions of forested acres throughout the West.

The Vail area and Summit County have been hit harder by the epidemic than the Roaring Fork Valley, but the entire White River National Forest will be affected, Fitzwilliams said.

His biggest concern under the broad umbrella of forest health is watershed degradation. Most of the water used by Coloradans for both drinking and irrigation originates high up in the mountains, often in national forests. If more people understood the connection between forest lands and domestic water supply, Fitzwilliams believes, then they would be motivated, even inspired, to protect forest health.

Watersheds are expected to run into greater problems as the wrath of the beetles spreads. Dead trees are susceptible to fire, and a wildfire at the head of a watershed can strip the land of vegetation so it won't hold water as well. Runoff through such areas can degrade water quality.

Another major challenge to forest health is to find a way to use beetle-killed trees before they go up in flames, Fitzwilliams said. He wants the White River National Forest to put that so-called biomass to good use, possibly as fuel, possibly as carbon injected into farmers' fields or for purposes yet to be discovered.


Wahoo, wood pellets for heating instead of the wildfire of the century!!
 
Thanks to everyone who is writing letters. I wrote eight this weekend and hopefully two will show up in local papers. Please let people know that it affects hunting, fishing, mountain biking, camping, the disabled, groups with small children and older adults, etc. Many people are alarmed when they find that the proposal is against any logging of beetle killed trees. In my letters to elected officials I stated the other sports I partcipate in on National Forest land, so they don't think it's just a motorized issue.
I have also sent letters to the businesses that support Hidden Gems and have let them know that I will no longer support or recommend their business. That kind of statement hits pretty hard when they are already suffering from the economy. I noticed one company has taken their name off the list. If I banked with Alpine Bank, I would have switched banks. Let's get some information about it to the Rocky Mountain Snowmobile Show this weekend. We can beat this thing! Mike Duffy
 
some vendication..........

How's this for good news on a Monday morning!!!

http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20091005/NEWS/910059989/1077&ParentProfile=1058

yahoo!!

ASPEN — The U.S. Forest Service doesn't believe all the lands targeted for Wilderness in the Hidden Gems campaign actually qualify for the special protection, according to the top local official in the agency.

White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams said the agency is sticking to a finding it made in 2002 that 82,000 acres of the White River should qualify as Wilderness. Environmentalists are pushing for protection of a significantly larger amount of land in the Hidden Gems Wilderness campaign. They say their assessment of backcountry lands show an additional 325,000 acres qualify as Wilderness in the White River National Forest, and 400,000 acres overall when Bureau of Land Management parcels are added.

Conservationists are butting heads with user groups like mountain bikers and off-road vehicle enthusiasts about the proposal, but the Forest Service had stayed out of the fray.

“We've been relatively quiet about it. It's not our proposal,” said Fitzwilliams, who took the forest supervisor post a month ago.

He said he has studied the Hidden Gems proposal carefully along with other issues facing the White River. He wants the Forest Service, conservation groups and various forest user groups to concentrate on collaborative projects rather than fight about Wilderness. Convincing Congress to protect that much additional land could take years.

“We need to shift. I think it's a little small, short-sighted anyway, to say the biggest issue we have is we need to make more Wilderness,” Fitzwilliams said. “I don't think that's the biggest issue in the Roaring Fork Valley.

“We could make [all forest lands] Wilderness and the issues are still right here, the ones that are really going to monumentally change the characteristics and natural resources of the valley — like [bark beetles] and the huge fuel build-up, development of private land and conservation of open spaces.”



Disagreement over Wilderness qualification
When the White River National Forest staff updated a management plan in 2002 it recommended creation of two new Wilderness areas totaling 62,000 acres and additions totaling 20,000 acres to existing Wilderness areas.

Fitzwilliams said the agency's process is designed to provide a “thorough vetting” of issues — such as the qualification of land and potential conflicts.

Wilderness advocates agree that the 82,000 acres targeted by the Forest Service should be protected, but they claim the agency missed other lands that have Wilderness characteristics and provide excellent wildlife habitat. Those additional lands are generally lower in elevation than existing Wilderness.

“We'll have to agree to disagree on the acres beyond the 82,000,” said Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of Wilderness Workshop, the Carbondale-based organization heading the Hidden Gems campaign.

He said the Forest Service assessment of Wilderness lands was “politicized” by former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, a Republican who represented most of western Colorado earlier this decade. He believes there was pressure to limit protection of roadless lands because those are areas where oil and gas companies want to lease.

Shoemaker acknowledged that the Forest Service and environmentalists can look at the same pieces of ground and reach different conclusions about their worthiness for Wilderness.

“There's some bias in the agency against Wilderness,” he said. “Unabashedly we're looking for places to apply the Wilderness Act.”

Fitzwilliams said he shares Shoemaker's passion for Wilderness lands. However, he feels the designation should be used sparingly, when lands clearly qualify. Overextending the designation diminishes the special quality of Wilderness, he said.

About 750,000 acres of the 2.3 million-acre White River National Forest are currently designated Wilderness.
 
Last edited:
That's really good news. It's great to hear that the FS doesn't agree with Hidden Gems and believes that there are other pressing issues out there. Sloan is a hypocrite. He first says that we are where we are because a Republican representative avoided making more wilderness. Isn't he is doing the exact opposite with his Democrat representatives now? And who is he to say that the FS doesn't know their business?
 
We will be at the CSA booth in Denver this weekend handing out stuff, so please stop by and say hi!!

On another note, we have found that a few donors (Alpine Bank) to the Hidden Gems really did not either get the full story in the beginning, or did not understand the entirety of the proposal. So don't judge them yet.......we are working on that one!!
 
Last edited:
O-kay, if we are not to judge Alpine Bank, just ask Mr. Young to get his name removed from the HG support list and ask for his $$ back.

Once he receives his $$, we can then work them over to send it our direction. For the GOOD OF THE PEOPLE!

;)

Quinton
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

christopher
Avalanche SURVIVAL Story
Replies
3
Views
3K
christopher
christopher
milehighassassin
Another Wilderness bill is being proposed, VOICE YOUR OPINION!!
Replies
13
Views
3K
psychoneurosis
psychoneurosis
PJ-Hunter
Hidden Gems! It's back with a new name, same idiot proposing it.
Replies
8
Views
961
Gmiller
Gmiller
94fordguy
Forest Service to Decommission damaged roads on Chinook Pass!
Replies
13
Views
5K
Ridersride
Ridersride
C
SAWS News: Frontier Airlines Partners With The Wilderness Society
2
Replies
20
Views
5K
paulharris
P
Premium Features
Join Now Free!



Back
Top