Those recreational activities are also an economic boon to companies such as ours \u2014 Osprey Packs \u2014 that design and sell gear for the enjoyment of the outdoors. In fact, travel and tourism employs more than 6,700 of us locally, and Mesa Verde National Park generates nearly $50 million in economic activity on its own.<\/p>\n
However, there\u2019s a lot of competing uses on our public lands, including oil and gas development. That\u2019s why I was pleased to see the BLM\u2019s Tres Rios Field Office begin a master leasing plan to help avoid conflicts before they start.<\/p>\n
This effort is also a perfect opportunity for local stakeholders to engage and have meaningful input on what happens in the lands we all love and depend on. So why is Montezuma County taking a pass at giving local businesses and other stakeholders a seat at the table to help determine the future of our public lands?<\/p>\n
Even if they don\u2019t want to participate, our community values deserve to be heard.<\/p>\n
I hope our county commissioners rethink their current position, and I\u2019m glad that the BLM has provided this opportunity for recreation businesses like Osprey, and citizens like me, to get involved in determining the future of our public lands.<\/p>\n
Mychal McCormick<\/p>\n
Cortez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
recreational activities are also an economic boon to companies such as ours \u2014 Osprey Packs \u2014 that design and sell gear for the enjoyment of the outdoors. In fact, travel and tourism employs more than 6,700 of us locally, and Mesa Verde National Park generates nearly $50 million in economic activity on its own. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5820,5819],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","category-opinion","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109083"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}