Competing interests stall Bear Ranch land exchange legislation

The fight in the North Fork Valley isn’t over

As it played out over the summer months, the saga surrounding the Bear Ranch land exchange showed all the elements of a great drama: a wealthy mineral tycoon and his quest to expand a mountain retreat; a congressman benefactor; a proposed act of congress; and a group of locals willing to fight for what they see as the public domain.

The Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times all picked up the story, briefly putting a Gunnison County issue in the national spotlight.
But even though the legislation would have involved a trade of federal and private land in Gunnison County—and county residents stood to gain a significant piece of a long-envisioned trail between Crested Butte and Carbondale—the concerns surrounding the deal became about people in the North Fork Valley and Delta County, and about the perceived taking of public land without asking the public first.
For Crawford plumber John Craven, it was about giving the heirs of a rich man an estate to inherit and leaving Craven’s own kids with stories about how he used to be able to hunt and hike in a piece of heaven before the government gave it away.
For Paonia Chamber of Commerce director and former High Country News editor Ed Marston it was impossible to sit by and watch the land exchange go through.
Then Rep. John Salazar announced that he would take HR 5059, the Central Rockies Land Exchange and National Park System Enhancement Act of 2010, containing the Bear Ranch Land Exchange, out of consideration for the legislative session. This would only pause a brewing battle.
The part of the bill that details the Bear Ranch land exchange involves four parcels of land: two privately owned by Bill Koch and two owned by the public. One parcel the public stands to lose includes more than 1,800 acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management, running in a long thin strip east from Paonia Reservoir between two halves of the Bear Ranch.
As well as being a Gunnison County landowner, Koch is chairman of the Oxbow Corporation, which owns the West Elk Coal Mine in the North Fork Valley and Gunnison Energy Corporation, one of the county’s biggest natural gas producers.
He was also among the 500 richest Americans last year, coming in at 236th according to Forbes.com, with a worth of about $1.5 billion.
The other publicly owned parcel is a three-acre piece of the National Forest that borders a resort Koch owns along County Road 12 near Highway 133.
Salazar spokesman Eric Wortman said the decision to pull the bill was “a simple calculation of math, with so many bills being introduced and only a few weeks left of the congressional session.” He added, “Before [Salazar] reintroduces the bill next year, he’ll hold additional public meetings in and around Gunnison County.”
Although the loss of a legacy for people like Craven might be what comes out of the bill drafted by the congressman, Salazar told KVNF radio in Paonia, “I’m a little surprised,” as the congressman’s intentions were quite the opposite.
In an interview with KVNF, Salazar ticked off the groups and governments that had sent letters of support for the legislation and said he had approached the Delta County Commissioners about the deal, but was told “It was not of their concern because the land was not in their county, so they deferred to the Gunnison County Commissioners.”
Gunnison County signed on with cautiously enthusiastic support.
Without feedback from the opposition, the trade seemed only to consolidate two neighboring halves of a large ranch where trespassing was said to have been a problem.
In return, the federal government would get, from Koch, a historic 80-acre property in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and another 911 acres near Curecanti National Recreation Area that would preserve a view of the Dillon Pinnacles at the west end of Blue Mesa that is seen by millions of visitors every year.
It seemed like a win-win until an internal memo was leaked from the BLM Minerals Office that raised some concerns about the fairness of the trade, and a movement was born.
The memo raised a few concerns about how the legislation could affect the public, by endangering several utility and road rights of way and taking a potentially gas-rich area in the Bear Ranch out of reach of the public.
But before the legislation could go through, the effort to kill it found an organizer in John Craven and a voice in Ed Marston.
Marston has made it his personal mission to see the Bear Ranch land exchange bill die “with a stake through the heart.” He doesn’t want to see the discussion take on more public dialogue, in part “because it shouldn’t be a matter of competing interests” between people on either side of Kebler Pass—it should be seen as the back-room deal that Marston believes it to be.
So to see it from his perspective and hear the arguments first-hand,I drove over Kebler Pass on a recent Friday morning.
Standing at the bottom of a rugged four-wheel drive road near Munsey Creek, Marston looked up from a map of Gunnison Basin public lands to talk to a hunter. If Koch has his way, he said, the solo sportsman could have a lot of company next year if the road is improved, as Koch said he would do as part of the deal. “I can see that I’ll be doing a lot of that,” he said of the outreach.
While an improved road might sound like a good idea to some, Marston points from the window of his pickup toward the property that abuts the road. It isn’t all owned by Koch and not all of the owners, he says, are happy about the idea of seeing their out-of-the-way property move into the more mainstream.
Nor does the access have the jaw-dropping views of the Raggeds Wilderness that the public has via the alternative access from Paonia Reservoir that will be lost if the bill goes through. In part, “it’s an aesthetic thing,” Marston says.
But, he said the problem at the heart of the fight is that one wealthy person is taking up such a huge footprint and leaving less for everyone else—sportsman and blue collar recreationalists who “don’t want to be forced out by the privacy interests of an absent billionaire.”
And what has driven Marston to near obsession is the way the exchange is being done, with legislation, as opposed to the more common and public approach. Trading land via an act of Congress isn’t common; the Government Accountability Office reports that fewer than 10 percent of land trades are conducted with legislation.
And while an act of Congress can accomplish just about anything, there is precedent for using the legislative process for a land exchange under special circumstances, including those involving two federal land management agencies (like the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service) and when the trade involves land parcels in two states. The Bear Ranch land exchange fits both of those criteria, ensuring that Congress would carry the deal.
To make things more interesting, Koch is one of Salazar’s biggest financial supporters, giving the maximum $39,800 to his campaign every year since 2006, and allegedly plays host to the congressman on guided hunting trips as Koch does for many guests.
The connection between Koch, Salazar and the Bear Ranch land exchange is hard for Marston to see as coincidental, and he isn’t going to let the momentum he has helped create die now that the bill has been put on hold.
When Senator Mark Udall, who took a version of the land exchange bill to the Senate, made an appearance at the Legion Park Pavilion in Gunnison last Tuesday, Marston was there too, to ask Udall how he felt about the bill. Craven met with the Delta County Commissioners the same day to discuss the county’s position.
The commotion hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Gunnison County Commissioners, who have gotten significant press coverage over the exchange and plan to make a new position statement in the coming weeks.
This drama will definitely play on…