After months of argument and not a few hard feelings, the renewal of the Colorado Habitat Stamp effectively comes down to this: more money and a more flexible format with which to spend it.
By every indication, the Colorado Senate will this week, perhaps as early as today, give approval to a program that will pump an estimated $7 million a year into habitat protection and public access.
The measure, SB 235, marks the renewal of a landmark initiative that brought both achievement and conflict in its initial three years of existence. This new and revised version is not perfect, but one thing seems certain. It represents a substantial improvement over the original.
A single alteration makes it so. SB 235 is not bound by the stricture that required 60 percent of stamp proceeds to be spent for big-game habitat and migration. The result was a stifling arrangement that restricted spending for public access while short-changing other activities, mainly cold-water fisheries.
The initial multitiered allocation raised about $10 million during the three years, most of which was used to obtain conservation easements. This revised stamp, authorized through 2013, mandates a one-time $10 payment by everyone who buys a hunting or fishing license. The resulting yield will be considerably greater than the original.
Leading up to the Senate vote, much has been said about how the money would, or should, be spent. Many caring people in and outside the state wildlife hierarchy have expressed strong opinions on a subject that, by its nature, causes controversy. This proclivity for disagreement grows in direct proportion to the amount of money and depth of passions involved. Expect plenty of both.
Many will clamor for more fee-title purchases of land where the public can hunt and fish. Everyone will have a pet project, or notion. Resolution won’t come easily.
Even without the elimination of the 60 percent stricture, this version has many advantages. One is that stamp funds may be used to maintain lands subsequently acquired by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, a huge benefit lacking in the original.
Faced with budget shortfalls, the agency badly needs spending leeway to administer these huge blocks of land, both in materials and personnel.
The current bill is not perfect, but in politics nothing ever is.
Changing landscape.
President Barack Obama’s signing of the National Landscape Conservation System legislation Monday not only represents a major shift in Washington’s attitude toward public lands, it brings the change close to home.
Notable among the 866 separate individual units of Bureau of Land Management properties marked for preservation is a key portion of the Wyoming Range containing threatened cutthroat trout and some of the most unspoiled land in the West.
Supported by Wyoming’s political hierarchy and spearheaded by Trout Unlimited and dozens of other conservation groups, the Wyoming Range Legacy Act protects some 1.2 million acres of prime hunting and fishing terrain.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
