Ranchers And Army Are At Odds In Old West

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 9, 2007
Pg. 10

By Dan Frosch
DENVER, April 6 — Mack Louden worries that his 30,000-acre ranch sits in the cross hairs of the Army’s plans to expand its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site at Fort Carson, and he, along with other Colorado ranchers, are increasingly upset about the idea.
“Where we live, how we live, it’s all going to die a slow death if the Army gets our land,” said Mr. Louden, a fourth-generation rancher from Las Animas County, along the southern edge of the state.
He and other ranchers are to testify on Monday before a committee of state lawmakers in support of a bill that seeks to keep the Army from acquiring nearly a half-million acres it says it needs to train soldiers in the nuances of modern warfare.
Colorado law grants the federal government permission to condemn land for some purposes, like building courthouses and post offices. And the Defense Department lifted a moratorium this year on land acquisitions to allow the Piñon Canyon expansion.
But State Representative Wes McKinley, a Democrat from Walsh, has sponsored a bill that would try to keep the Army from invoking eminent domain in this case. The Colorado House of Representatives has passed the bill, which is now winding its way through the Senate. The legislation may not affect the expansion, however, as it is unclear if the Army would be bound by state law.
Like many cowboys and ranchers from the region, Mr. McKinley’s family settled in southeastern Colorado’s shortgrass prairie lands as part of the Federal Homestead Act of 1862. The act allowed settlers to live on public land for five years, with the promise that the land would become theirs if it was farmed sufficiently.
Now, Mr. McKinley worries that his traditional rural way of life, and that of his neighbors, will wither in the path of American military might.
“People will have their livelihoods, their heritage, their homes taken away,” he said. “Their lives will be destroyed. There’s not much demand for a 65-year-old cowboy.”
It is not only cowboys and ranchers who are concerned. Bruce Schumacher, a paleontologist with the Forest Service in La Junta, said the land the Army wanted encompassed Picketwire Canyonlands, where hundreds of dinosaur tracks are preserved, and a large part of the Comanche National Grasslands, which is managed by the Forest Service.
Mr. Schumacher said he was frustrated because the Army had not spoken with Forest Service officials about the expansion. “It’s awkward because we have members of the public asking what we think about it, and we’ve received no information directly from the Army,” he said.
The Army says that the expansion is still in the initial planning stages and that an environmental impact study will take nearly two years to complete, leaving plenty of time for public comment and collaboration with other federal agencies.
“We understand that there are some concerns and that there are some residents and landowners that have a vested interest in the land and their culture and their livelihood,” said Lt. Col. David G. Johnson, a spokesman for Fort Carson. “That’s not something we take lightly.”
But Colonel Johnson also said the Army expected Fort Carson to grow by at least 8,000 soldiers in the coming years and that the intricacies of the post-Sept. 11 battlefield warranted more sophisticated training.
“It is our intention to purchase land from willing sellers,” he said. “But the Army will not give up its legal right to use eminent domain via condemnation to acquire much-needed land to train soldiers.”
In the early 1980s, when the Army created the Piñon Canyon site, it acquired about half of the 235,000 acres by condemning the land of owners unwilling to sell and the rest from willing sellers, Colonel Johnson said.
Lon Robertson, a rancher and president of the Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition, a group of 1,100 opponents of the plan, said he feared the process was bound to repeat itself. Mr. Robertson speaks wistfully of this close-knit, conservative community, one of the last vestiges of the old American West.
“You have the military fighting for the freedom of other people overseas, and we’re losing our own back home,” he said. “It makes no sense.”
 
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