by Tate Zandstra

The conservation of our resources,” former president Theodore Roosevelt once said, “is the fundamental question before this nation.”
The sentiment seems like a modern reaction to a shrinking natural world but, even a century ago, Roosevelt saw an urgent need to protect wild places. He had witnessed the decline and near extinction of the buffalo, decimation of redwood forests and the destruction caused by rampant mining. The world population at that time was about a billion and a half. Now, with 7 billion and counting, President Barack Obama appears set on a conservation plan of his own, one seemingly tailored for the modern world, and it starts in Colorado.
The American Great Outdoors Initiative is a nationwide conservation plan to get more Americans outside, not only to instill in them an appreciation for open and wild places and a desire to protect them, but to create outdoors-related jobs and stimulate tourism. The Great Outdoors Initiative aligns somewhat disparate government agencies like the Departments of Interior (DOI) and Agriculture (USDA) with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Council on Environmental Quality in order to conserve two or more key wilderness areas in each state. Colorado’s Front Range turns out to be the testing grounds for the new plan.
The Rocky Mountain Greenway, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced last May, “will connect the Denver Greenway System to the three National Wildlife Refuges in the Denver metro region and, eventually, to Rocky Mountain National Park.” In his speech, which took place at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Rocky Mountain Arsenal visitor center, Salazar said the plan would enhance the Denver metro region’s connections to the natural landscapes and counties surrounding it — and result in increased tourism spending.
The Rocky Mountain Greenway is one of three Colorado projects to be constructed under the Great Outdoors Initiative. Connecting three major National Wildlife Refuges — Rocky Flats, Two Ponds and Rocky Mountain Arsenal — with many smaller state parks and recreation areas, the plan creates a large wildlife corridor with 140 miles of unbroken trails in some 40,000 acres of open space. The plan also calls for water quality testing and improvement and eventual extension as far as Rocky Mountain National Park.
Urban areas are beautified with the addition of parks, and citizens benefit from outdoor activity, education and clean water, but there are real monetary benefits, too, according to the Great Outdoors Initiative. The plan cites the successful rehab of Confluence and Commons parks from dumping grounds for garbage and raw sewage in the ’70s to places that enhance the quality of life of Denver’s residents and attract tourists today.
“If there’s a system of trails to link national parks together, it would benefit communities around that trail system, absolutely,” says Maryann Mahoney, executive director of the Boulder Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The National Park Service just released data about total visitor spending in communities in and surrounding national parks, and it’s significant.”
Very significant, in fact. According to EPA figures, U.S. National Parks draw 280 million visitors each year, provide 250,000 related jobs to Americans and generate $12 billion in visitor spending.
“Outdoor recreation contributes $730 billion to the U.S. economy, and Colorado’s active outdoor recreation contributes more than $10 billion annually and supports more than 100,000 jobs,” says Avery Stonich of the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA), an outdoor recreation trade association based in Boulder. OIA estimates as much as $289 billion of economic activity is generated nationally by peripherals like gas, food, taxes, and retail sales and services in a ripple effect dependent on tourism at public lands and largely benefiting small business.
“People come to Boulder and they want an activity,” says Bill Leuchten, who owns Boulder’s Front Range Anglers. “They may go horseback riding, ballooning, hiking, or they may try fishing.”
Leuchten’s concern is with stream quality, and he says he feels that federal money would be best spent improving habitat in rivers like the Platte, which flows through much of the Greenway.
“Stream improvement would bring in revenue, no doubt,” Leuchten says, “Good fisheries bring people from all over the world.”
Leuchten employs six full-time retail employees and dozens of part-time and private contractors as guides. He is one of many business owners whose livelihood depends upon sound conservation measures.
In financially stressful times, any advantage to local economies is precious, but there are skeptics.
“I think bringing people out to see wild animals and nature is pretty much always a good idea, especially if they can’t afford to do it otherwise,” says Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, but he cautions that the process needs to be managed carefully. “You’re going to have to be smart about it and think about what kind of infrastructure you’re creating to do that, and make sure that you aren’t damaging nature to do it.”
There have been many cases where conservation strategies aimed at protecting environments through stimulating economic gains have backfired, causing greater damage to the environment, he says.
“There’s a limit to how far you can go with the argument that protecting the environment has economic value,” Suckling says. “There certainly is economic value, but ultimately, nature needs to be protected because we have an ethical responsibility to do so, regardless of economic benefits.”
Otherwise, he says, the effect is to reinforce the same self-centered principles which led to degradation in the first place.
“There’s always a balance between conservation and use,” OIA’s Stonich says. “We see it all the time in Boulder when our open space charter specifically sets aside land for conservation with recreation secondary, then people get up in arms when the open space department won’t put a trail there.” Still, she says she believes that money is a necessary component of conservation.
“OIA lobbies in D.C. to make sure there are lands conserved and through that people go make their purchases, contribute to the economy, and enjoy the outdoors and become stewards of the environment,” she says.
“There are a lot of successful projects where resource users are brought into the fold of environmental protection without actually watering down that protection,” Suckling says. “Projects are most successful when they can clearly articulate how the environment is being threatened, and how it is beneficial to our resource users to protect the environment.”
The Great Outdoors Initiative is a necessary risk, Mahoney says. She says she believes that the more people who are allowed to experience the outdoors, whether they come as tourists to support the local economy, or they come from inside Denver and would never normally journey outside the city, the better.
“If you’re an inner-city person who has never been to the Rocky Mountains, which are 30 minutes or an hour away, then your only perspective of your environment is urban,” she says. The experience of getting out of that environment “can be life-changing. It’s important to the overall education of what we have in our state and what we have in the United States.
“It’s what people recognize when they think of Colorado and when they think of Boulder; we’re recognized as a place that has access to hundreds of miles of great hiking trails, 45,000 acres of open space and mountain parks. … That’s part of our brand and it’s very important.”

by Clay Fong

Federal farm bills are the 400-pound gorilla of American agricultural policy, setting direction for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), if not the entirety of domestic farming. The last one was passed in 2008, and consisted of a $403 billion package covering, among other items, food stamps, biofuels, international trade, school lunches and rural energy efficiency.
“It’s very complex. It’s like wandering into the intestines of the worm; it’s like watching paint dry,” says David Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now! (FDN), an Iowa-based organization promoting progressive agricultural policy. “It’s one of the most important pieces of legislation — it connects the environment, land and the food we eat.”
FDN has called for increased government support of smaller-scale and organic farming in the 2012 farm bill. The organization proposes passing a Beginning Farmer and Rancher Bill to encourage development of smaller, local operations, putting in place a million new farmers by 2020. More sustainable, small-scale practices will be encouraged by coupling conservation compliance with receiving crop insurance and limiting government payouts up to 1,000 acres per farm. FDN also advocates allocation of some $25 billion to support a transition from traditional agriculture to organics, with a goal that 75 percent of farms be organic certified by 2025.
“Subsidies also come from the farm bill — it drives what farmers grow,” says Carol Carlson, chair of Slow Food Boulder, which provides education about the relationship among food, community and the environment.
According to the Congressional Research Service, U.S. farmers receive about $7 billion a year in subsidy payments from the farm bill, and 90 percent of this largesse is associated with corn, cotton, wheat, rice and soybeans. Ten percent of subsidy recipients get 66 percent of the money.
The abovementioned products are what are known as commodity crops, and make up the lion’s share of agricultural sales. Most of Boulder County’s agriculture is commodity farming, according to Michael Brownlee, co-founder of Transition Colorado, a supporter of local food systems.
“There are a number of larger-scale commodity crop farmers in Boulder County who receive subsidies,” Brownlee says. “On the other hand, small ‘specialty’ producers — small-plot, bio-intensive farmers often using organic production methods and primarily marketing directly to consumers — receive no subsidies at all.”
In terms of federal payments, $376,000 was paid out countywide, according to the 2007 USDA Census of Agriculture. A single farm, Bcjj Farms, based in Byers, received $384,754 in USDA commodity subsidies in 2010.
Boulder’s a poor cousin compared to neighboring Weld County, one of the top 10 richest agricultural locales in America. Large-scale agriculture operations, particularly those relating to cattle, contribute to Weld’s 2007 farm product sales figure of a staggering $1.5 billion dollars. Weld farmers also received some $15 million in federal payments. Total value of Boulder County farm products sold was $34 million. Thirteen farms reported income of more than a half million dollars, but average net farm income was a loss.
Boulder may be mostly commodity crops, Brownlee says, but “Weld County has a higher percentage of larger commodity crop farms, and few market farmers.”
Far removed from the world of commodity agribusiness, Jason Griffith owns and operates Aspen Moon Farm in Hygiene. His farm has been approved as biodynamic, a term trademarked by Demeter USA, a nonprofit that certifies farms. Biodynamic farming eschews chemical fertilizer and pesticide use, emphasizes treating soil homeopathically and encourages crop rotation and growing a complementary mix of species.
Griffith has been able to benefit from federal legislation through Farm Service Agency (FSA) loans. FSA financing and programs help farmers with down payments and equipment purchases. Griffith has used FSA loans for purchasing equipment.
This small-scale family assistance is consistent with President Abraham Lincoln’s initial vision for the USDA. In 1861, the Great Emancipator deemed agriculture “confessedly the largest interest of the nation.” Lincoln would also describe the USDA as “precisely the people’s department, in which they feel more directly concerned than in any other.”
“When Lincoln founded the USDA in 1862, farmers made up 50 percent of the nation,” Murphy says. “Now that number is 2 percent.”
But the percentage of farmers isn’t the only factor that changed since Lincoln’s time. The small-scale farmer isn’t the focus of federal farm policies anymore.
The 2008 legislation had a limited impact on organics, including development of an initiative to share organic certification costs with farmers, and the allocation of $78 million for research.The bill also provided an $80 million loan guarantee to a single company, Broomfield-based Range Fuels Inc., a now-defunct biofuels operation.
Organic and local food proponents argue that it may be time for a more aggressive legislative approach supporting local, small farmers and organics.
Murphy says he realizes his goals for the FDN are ambitious, but he says, “[You] never get what you want if you ask for what you think you can get.”
There’s fundamental rationale for understanding and changing the laws governing what we eat, Murphy says: “Food laws are a reflection of how democratic, fair, open and just a society is.”
Editor’s note: Clay Fong and David Murphy were college housemates.

“The Guild is in a process of rapid transformation as it evolves from a Boulder-centric group promoting ‘green as hot and new’ to a broader organization with a new vision that says green is for everyone looking for long-term solutions that control costs, improve health and help foster a sustainable community,” says Julie Herman, Executive Director of the Guild. “We are excited to take on the challenge of positioning the Guild to be the organization for tomorrow’s economic development and sustainable green practices.”

The Guild will continue to be  focused on promoting resource-efficient homes and workplaces with builders who support the Guild’s values of green building and sustainability. The change to the Colorado Green Building Guild will merely help customers throughout the state benefit from the Guild’s services, instead of  only those in the Boulder area. The change will also come with a nifty new website.

The new site will help people locate builders who are members of the Guild, learn about individual contractor qualifications and experience, and make more informed decisions about who to interview for a project.

For more information about the Guild and to check out the new site (coming soon!), visit www.bgbg.org

‘Chasing Water’ tells the tale of the once-mighty Colorado River

by Traci Hukill

In a sense, photographer Pete McBride has been preparing to make Chasing Water all his life. Raised on a cattle ranch in the Roaring Fork River Valley, he grew up working hay fields irrigated by the snowmelt that carved the Grand Canyon and slaked the thirst of the Southwest.

“I often used to think about water,” he says in the film. “I wondered how much went into our fields and how much returned to the creek.”

Later, as a photographer for National Geographic, Outside and Men’s Journal, McBride traveled to some of the world’s most exotic locales — often, as it happened, shooting stories that related in some way to water.

His 18-minute documentary, judged the Best Short Mountain Film of the 2011 Banff Film Festival and screening Wednesday at the Boulder Theater, didn’t begin as a film at all.

“This started as a magazine assignment for the now-defunct National Geographic Adventure,” McBride said in November in a conversation at Banff. The original idea was to shoot writer Jonathan Waterman’s paddling trip down the length of the Colorado River, one of the most heavily diverted waterways in the world. “Then I was like, ‘This is too dear to my heart,’ and I thought maybe we could get a book, and then sponsors showed up.”

In fact, two books resulted from the project: Waterman’s Running Dry and the McBride/ Waterman coffee table stunner The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict. While taking aerial footage for the book from the cockpit of his father’s plane, McBride shot some HD video, and the idea for a film took hold. McBride connected with fellow Coloradan and film editor Anson Fogel (also of the Banff triumph Cold, see story here), who convinced him to participate in the film as a narrator.

Shot almost entirely from overhead, Chasing Water, the film, follows the river’s progression as it flows southwest from its mountain headwaters through the Grand Canyon and southern California toward its ignominious end in the Mexican desert, drained by the thirst of 30 million people and 3.5 million acres of farmland. The vantage point gives the piece a cerebral aspect: There’s nothing like an aerial view to show the cold logic of dams and canals, and the 100-foot “bathtub rings” around Lake Powell serve as a grim reminder that the water demands of the Southwest far exceed its diminishing supply.

Ultimately, though, Chasing Water is essentially an artistic film because of its remarkable beauty and its shockingly personal impact. When McBride as cameraman deplanes, leaving behind lyrical views of the turquoise river meandering through red sandstone to meet up with the kayak-bound Waterman in what McBride calls “the frappuccino pit” in the Delta, it’s like a kick in the gut. The foaming sludge of agricultural effluent and raw sewage, what is now the graveyard of the Colorado River, used to be a braided network of lagoons where birds nested and shrimp hatched. McBride and Waterman had to walk the last 29 miles to the Sea of Cortez in order to complete their mission of following the river’s old course.

Only the remoteness of the Delta has allowed this to happen, McBride said.

“The river stopped reaching the sea in the ’80s,” McBride explained, “but during the spring runoff it would reach it. Not a drop has reached since the late ’90s, but most people don’t know that. And that’s a big issue, I think. Because if the river ended in San Diego they’d freak out. They’d be like, ‘Where’s our river?’”

photo courtesy of NOAA

Small, summertime hail storms in the Colorado Front Range could disappear by 2070, according to a recently published study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The study focuses on the effect of climate change on the smaller hail storms typically seen during the spring and summer seasons in the Front Range. Assuming climate-warming greenhouse gases continue to increase from the current atmospheric levels of 390 parts per million to the estimated levels of 620 parts per million in 2070, the hail produced from these storms may melt to rain before it ever reaches the ground.

While the prospect of fewer potentially damaging hail storms may excite the gardeners and farmers concerned about their plants and the handful of people who don’t own a Subaru and are instead concerned about the paint job on their ridiculously expensive, mostly useless sports car, the lack of hail may actually cause problems for the Front Range, says Kelly Mahoney, a research scientist at CIRES and the lead author of the study.

The Front Range is used to summer storms producing hail instead of rain, which means the area is used to experiencing a slow melt after a storm, not a sudden downpour. If the atmospheric temperature continues to rise and the hail melts into rain before hitting the surface, it could lead to problems of flash floods in the Front Range, according to Mahoney.

But, there are a couple reasons we shouldn’t be too concerned. First, maybe we will figure out some super-efficient alternative energy source that will basically eliminate greenhouse gases and rising atmospheric temperatures will no longer be a concern. Second, if that doesn’t happen, by 2070 we may have discovered things like floating houses, flying cars and teleportation that make the threat of flash floods laughable. Finally, if all else fails, there’s always the Mayan prophecies for the end of the world on Dec. 21 of this year, so who really cares about 2070?

Though Congress this year may be better known as the session that failed to accomplish anything, a report commissioned by three ranking members of the House shows this year’s collection of Representatives has cast more anti-environment votes than any other in history. The total averages out to one anti-environmental vote for every day in session in 2011. The votes were split by party, with 94 percent of Republicans voting anti-environment and 86 percent of Democrats voting pro-environment.

“The House Republican assault on the environment has been reckless and relentless,” says Rep.

Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) in a press release. “In bill after bill, for one industry after another, the House has been voting to roll back environmental laws and endanger public health.”

According to the report, which was commissioned by Representatives Waxman, Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.), “the House has voted 191 times to undermine protection of the environment.” Those votes have included blocking actions to prevent air pollution, disarming the Environmental Protection Agency when it comes to enforcing water pollution standards and Clean Air Act protections, addressing climate change, designating wilderness lands, allowing oil and gas development off the coasts of states opposed to offshore drilling and slashing funding — by 80 percent — for the Department of Energy to support renewable energy and energy efficiency.

“These votes are just a preview of coming attractions if the fossil fuel industries get their way and place more Republicans in Congress and the White House,” Markey says in a press release. “With that kind of cast, anti-environmental blockbusters will be the norm, sending more mercury into our kids, more air pollution into our lungs, and more carbon pollution into our atmosphere.”

“We have so many natural resource-type situations here, so we find ourselves in Colorado getting hit by these votes all kinds of different ways,” says Veronica Egan, executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, a Durango-based environmental advocacy group founded in 1989 to make the case that seniors still enjoy wilderness areas. “I think probably the primary way is that there have been votes … to reject scientific findings, in other words to compromise the role of science in decision-making. And right up there with that is votes to block action on carbon pollution on climate change and planning for adaptation to climate change.”

Many of these measures were tacked onto other bills, and in a Congress that’s spent more time spinning its wheels than moving forward on anything, a lot of them didn’t pass.

“One of the things that we’ve been so painfully aware of in the environmental business is that we thought, of course, in 2008, ‘Oh boy, the Bush administration is gone and we’re going to see some progress,’ and we’ve been sorely disappointed along those lines,” Egan says.

The lack of strong environmental leadership has led to constant attacks on environmental legislation, even bills with decades of evidence to show they work, like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. Clean Air Act protections were hardest hit with 77 votes that undermined health-based standards and blocked EPA regulation of mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants, incinerators, industrial boilers, cement plants and mining operations.

Since it was signed into law in 1970, the Clean Air Act has reduced air pollution by more than 70 percent, according to the recently commissioned report. The EPA estimated in another report titled “Empirical Evidence Regarding the Effects of the Clean Air Act on Jobs and Economic Growth” that the law has saved more than 160,000 jobs in just the last year, and prevented another 13 million lost workdays and 3.2 million lost school days due to illness or disease caused or exacerbated by air pollution. The act has been heralded as an investment with better returns than Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway over the past 40 years by the National Resources Defense Council.

“Americans rely on our government to protect their families from the dangerous effects of pollution that can poison our air, water and environment,” says Berman in his press release. “This report puts Americans on notice: We must continue to fight efforts to erode the laws that protect our health and wellbeing.”

Activists opposed to genetically engineered foods are not singing the same tune when it comes to reaction to the Boulder County commissioners’ Dec. 20 decision to allow additional genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on taxpayer-funded open space.

On one side, leaders of the GM Know group are alluding to keeping up the fight in terms of voting down open space taxes and bringing in strong anti- GMO commissioners. But on the other side, GMO Free Boulder seems to have been pleased by aspects of the decision and is willing to work with farmers to find solutions.

After the commissioners’ unanimous vote on Tuesday to approve a cropland policy allowing genetically modified sugar beets to be added to the crops grown on county land (GM corn was allowed in 2003), anti-GMO activists said they weren’t surprised by the decision, but they differed on the next steps.

Scott Smith, co-founder of the grassroots group GM Know, told Boulder Weekly that “the Boulder New World Order is genetically modified organics” when asked about the commissioners’ decision to approve a cropland policy that allows for GM corn sugar beets, but no other genetically engineered plants.

“They saw the money to be made on sugar beets, and don’t see the health risks,” he says.

When asked about possible actions to pull back on taxpayer-paid open space purchases, Smith says GM Know would be holding a press conference on that topic in the next few days.

He described the cropland policy approved by the commissioners as being written by county open space staff and simply rubber-stamped by the commissioner-appointed Cropland Policy Advisory Group.

Another activist opposed to GMOs, Sarah Larrabee, told Boulder Weekly that one option is for voters to rescind money they have shelled out for open space purchases.

They say all six individuals running for commissioner seats being vacated by Ben Pearlman and Will Toor are opposed to GMOs, which could mean changes will be in the works after next year’s election.

Mary VonBreck, campaign manager for GMO Free Boulder, says her group had productive meetings with the commissioners and farmers in the last couple of weeks and reached some common understanding. She says that while she anticipated the “yes” vote on allowing GM sugar beets, she was pleasantly surprised by the commissioners’ decision to disallow other GM crops.

VonBreck adds that she was also encouraged by the commissioners advocating for Colorado’s congressional delegation to push for the labeling of genetically modified foods.

She says her group’s future agenda items, in addition to advocating for labeling, include removing GMOs from tax-funded school lunches.

VonBreck says her group doesn’t support pulling funding from open space purchases because of the decision.

“Politically, that was the best thing they could do,” she says of the commissioners’ decision to allow only GM corn and sugar beets on a case-by-case basis. “We kind of understood that sugar beets were in the bag. … Considering that politics is always a compromise, allowing genetically modified sugar beets, we saw that coming.”

VonBreck says a partial victory came when the commissioners decided to go against their staff and preclude other GM crops.

She adds that her group plans to work with farmers and try to create market opportunities that guide them away from needing to grow genetically modified foods.

“A lot of the discussions we started in the last couple of weeks with the county and the farmers made it into the discussion, so we were pleased with that,” she says, adding that “our way or the highway” is not the way to approach the argument.

“I don’t think either side likes being told that,” VonBreck says.

Six years ago, in the interest of protecting Colorado’s pristine wilderness areas while the national roadless area rule was being contested in court, the state began development of a roadless rule. Two drafts and 200,000 public comments later, local conservation organizations are now looking to scrap that rule and go back to the national roadless rule, which has since been validated twice by circuit courts, including the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver in October. Not only is a state rule no long necessary, conservation groups say, the Colorado roadless rule doesn’t offer protections for Colorado’s forests that are as strong as the national rule. They’re putting pressure on the Obama administration to block the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule.

“The national rule, because it was so thoroughly prepared and it does include so many thoughtful accommodations for special needs for community safety and good forest management and healthy forest and road building for existing valid rights — because all that stuff is there, roadless areas and Colorado’s other needs are well protected under this newly affirmed national rule, so that’s the standard we need to uphold,” says Steve Smith, president of the board at the Wilderness Workshop. “The proposed Colorado rule diminishes protections, takes lands out of protection compared to the nationwide rule, so it’s not as strong. … It would end up with Colorado having a rule that was weaker than what other states have.”

Roadless rules provide specific directions for the conservation — in terms of road building, tree cutting and construction zones — of 4.2 million acres of National Forest lands in Colorado and 60 million acres across 39 U.S. states.

In response to criticisms that Colorado’s proposal didn’t offer tight enough protections, the U.S. Forest Service added an “upper tier” designation for lands in need of a high level of conservation. That distinction applies to 562,000 acres.

“As opposed to the 2001 rule, the Colorado Roadless Rule is tailored to Colorado’s needs of conserving land areas and encouraging economic development and job growth and continuing use,” a U.S. Forest Service document says about the Colorado Roadless Rule.

Colorado’s rule also provides an exception for the North Fork coal mining area, which includes parts of the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests, and for ski resorts that may want to expand.

After a 90-day public comment period this summer, the proposed rule was sent to the federal government for approval. That process is expected to conclude in 2012 with a decision on the rule.

The Colorado Environmental Coalition, Colorado Mountain Club, Earthjustice, High Country Citizens Alliance, The Pew Environment Group, San Juan Citizens Alliance, Rocky Mountain Wild, Sheep Mountain Alliance, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, Western Colorado Congress, and the Wilderness Workshop have been running ads requesting people to petition President Obama to overturn the state plan.

“Roadless forests are some of the most important areas in the state for our drinking water sources, for wildlife habitat, for backcountry recreation,” says Elise Jones, executive director of Colorado Environmental Coalition. “These are really some of the gems, and it’s really important that we have the strongest possible protections.”

Now that it’s been defended by the courts, the national roadless rule is the best tool to provide strong protections for the forests, Jones says.

“The vast majority of people who work in forest conservations would prefer not to have a state rule but to have a national rule that covers all the forests so that there’s consistent protections,” Jones says.

There’s a question of how other states might handle their own roadless rules, Steve Smith says, a process that could leave the doors open to development. So far, Idaho is the only other state that has written its own rule.

“Because we have something in hand that’s reliable, that’s solid, that’s good protection, we’re reluctant to give it up for who knows what,” he says. “In Colorado, we do know what’s proposed; that’s why the other half of our message is, if you are going to do a state rule in the name of customizing it, then make sure you get it right.”

These conservation organizations have submitted, both during the public comment period and after, suggestions they argue would strengthen the rule at least to the level of the national rule, such as clarifying the distance from town for wildfire buffer tree-cutting and requiring rehabilitation at construction zones for pipe line and power lines. The Colorado Environmental Coalition has also identified 2.5 million acres that qualify for upper-tier protection.

The conservationist groups have also called out 86 leases that were granted when the Bush administration put a hold on the roadless rule, and asked that those leases add explicit roadless stipulations, which require oil and gas companies to use any possible means to access oil and gas reserves without making a road and to reclaim the area afterward.

“We have to team up to be sure that we’re very clear, as a state, as citizens, as governments, which places are going to get some solid protection,” Steve Smith says. “If there is going to be a state rule, it must be at least as protective as the nationwide rule. It’s got to meet that standard.”

This week Repurpose Compostables announced the debut of their One Cup which, according to the press release, “requires no sleeve, uses 65% less CO2 than a traditional cup to produce, and can be composted in 90 days.” And to take it one step further, this 100% certified compostable cup is also made with FSC-certified paper.

Read more about it on Triple Pundit.

The Repurpose Compostables insulated cup won first prize for Sustainability at the Specialty Coffee Association Annual Show in Houston in October.

Now if they could just make a major breakthrough in the guilt associated with a salted caramel mocha.