Field & Stream As Corey Fisher wrote to me yesterday after we talked about the trip and this story: “When you spend enough time in a place like the Roan, it becomes a part of you. When somebody says that they are going to drill it - of course you’re concerned about the trout streams and the elk meadows - but a piece of you is going to be lost as well. There are a lot of hunters and anglers who the Roan is a part of and if it gets ruined, there will be a bunch of people who lose a piece of themselves.”
Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day Three
Field & Stream 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 what they found on day three.
http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/finding-deer-hunt/2010/07/exploring-roan-plateau-day-three
Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day Two
Field & Stream Hiking down into lower Trapper Creek. Ken Neubecker in the lead, Chris Hunt, Mac Cunningham, and me bringing up the tail. We’ll be in the cool trees soon, and you can see across to the dry, sun-baked aspect of the canyon, sage and cinquefoil and short grass. That side of the canyon is like a different world from where we’ll be fishing, but it’s really only a few hundred yards away. Shade, aspect, water, elevation, terrain - they change everything, and nowhere is this more clear than on the Roan, where all of these vastly different worlds are so close together. There is perhaps no place in Colorado that holds so much diversity, or where so much unique habitat remains unprotected.
Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day Two
Field & Stream 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 what they found on day two.
http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/finding-deer-hunt/2010/07/exploring-roan-plateau-day-two
An Overview of the Roan Plateau
Field & Stream 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 one percent of the entire Piceance Basin Gas Field, 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.
http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/finding-deer-hunt/2010/07/overview-roan-plateau
Exploring Colorado's Roan Plateau: Day One
Field & Stream
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. http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/finding-deer-hunt/2010/07/exploring-colorados-roan-plateau-day-one
Exploring the Roan Plateau: Day One
Field & Stream
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. http://www.fieldandstream.com/photos/gallery/fishing/trout-fishing/where-fish-trout/2010/07/exploring-roan-plateau-day-one
Group pours years into protecting, reviving Roan Plateau creek
By Dave Buchanan
Grand Junction Sentinel
Nearly two decades after the local Trout Unlimited chapter unofficially adopted Trapper Creek, a small stream burbling from the sandstone layers atop the Roan Plateau, the changes are noticeable. Where once cattle trod through decadent sagebrush and the deepest hole was a smelly mud wallow, lush grasses and clear runs mark a stream that more than once has come back from the brink of disappearance.
http://www.gjsentinel.com/outdoors/articles/group_pours_years_into_protect/
Group calls Upper Colorado River ‘endangered'
Julie SutorSummit County Correspondent Post Independent
SUMMIT COUNTY, Colorado — New water diversions could sap the life from the Upper Colorado River Basin, according to American Rivers, a national conservation group.
The organization declared the Upper Colorado America's sixth most endangered river earlier this month in its annual survey of the health of the nation's rivers.
“We can't continue to take and take water from the Upper Colorado without accounting for the serious impacts to fish and wildlife habitat,” said Ken Neubecker of Colorado Trout Unlimited. “This river is on the brink. A vibrant, healthy river system in the Upper Colorado is every bit as important to the future of Colorado as the water it supplies to our farms and cities.”
http://www.postindependent.com/article/20100630/VALLEYNEWS/100629860/1083&ParentProfile=1074
Cars decorate Vail Valley river banks
Sarah MausolfVail Daily
There are actually two cars in the banks of the river in Edwards, and one fishing guide estimates there are about 15 cars altogether in the stretch of river that runs through Eagle County.
Local lore claims ranchers placed the cars along the river's edge to stop the banks from sloughing off and prevent the river from encroaching on their land.
“It was done to keep the bank from eroding,” said John Packer, owner of Fly Fishing Outfitters in Avon. “People used to do stuff like that back in the day when it was only slightly illegal. Nowadays, throwing cars in the river is not really kosher.”
Several people familiar with the river guessed the cars date back to the '40s and '50s. Ken Neubecker, a former Eagle resident and past president of Colorado Trout Unlimited, said he once uncovered a car during an Eagle River cleanup event about 12 years ago. Only the roof of the car was peeking out of the river sediment, he said.
