{"id":24794,"date":"2024-11-18T17:40:51","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T00:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-residents-send-letters-to-politicians-form-chicken-creek-coalition\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:02:17","slug":"montezuma-county-residents-send-letters-to-politicians-form-chicken-creek-coalition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-residents-send-letters-to-politicians-form-chicken-creek-coalition\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County residents send letters to politicians, form Chicken Creek Coalition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Community
Community members take down a barbwire fence on the disputed forest land northeast of Mancos that was put up by the Free Land Holder Committee blocking off 1,460 acres near Chicken Creek. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A diverse group of community members that first banded together in October to remove a highly contested fence at Chicken Creek outside of Mancos has formed a coalition.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s called the Chicken Creek Coalition, and the group is just as diverse as it was on Oct. 10 when they first went into the woods.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are people who would not normally be working shoulder to shoulder. There\u2019s little beefs between the different groups, but we are all working together,\u201d said Howard Kalnitz, one member of the coalition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this common thread, it was so easy and comfortable to come together and work together,\u201d said Brad Finch, another coalition member who lives in Mancos.<\/p>\n

The coalition is made up of people from the Mancos Trails Group, the Chicken Creek Nordic and Back Country Horsemen, too. Some are grazing allotment holders, and others are private landowners.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are rallying together for our public lands,\u201d one member said. \u201cThe coalition is everybody. We just happen to be a few people who are willing to speak up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Free Land Holder Committee, the group that erected 4.5 miles of fence last month on public land, put up new proclamations that say, \u201cTo all those with an equal, previous or superior claim, please reply \u2026 by Dec. 15, 2024 or be it this claim has been resolved forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile under land law for the customary 61 days public notice for a lawful land claim, we continue to wait for anyone making claims,\u201d Free Land Holder ambassadors wrote to The Journal<\/em> in an email.<\/p>\n

Most of the coalition agreed they didn\u2019t take the deadline seriously, and that talking to the Free Land Holders before Dec. 15 legitimizes what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like assurance from the Forest Service or the Sheriff that they would act \u2026 in case they try to build a fence again,\u201d said Ryan Brown, a landowner and coalition member.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way I read it is that on Dec. 15, they consider that land theirs. And as they believe it to be their land, will they defend their land?\u201d Kalnitz said.<\/p>\n

Brown noted that they\u2019ve never seen any of the Free Land Holders bearing arms, and all interactions with them have been peaceful.<\/p>\n

But just because it\u2019s been peaceful and just because the fence is down doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s over, said a coalition member who asked not to be named.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need people to keep active,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

The coalition now has a website,<\/a> a stem off the Mancos Trails Group main site. Plus, coalition members put up QR codes leading to that website around Mancos and in Cortez, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to make it as easy as possible for people to become aware of information first, and if they want to, they can reach out and help by contacting local officials or the Forest Service,\u201d said John Early, the coalition member who created the website.<\/p>\n

At the bottom of the webpage, below elected officials\u2019 contact information, there\u2019s letters drafted to streamline the process in contacting those officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best way to influence Forest Service is through kind of their purse strings, which comes from Congress,\u201d Kalnitz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can get Congress to really lean on the Forest Service, then the Forest Service has a clear mandate to go and do something. If the Forest Service is left alone, they\u2019ll try and pick the least confrontational solution, and they may just back off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The coalition set up a table during the Mancos Valley River Film Festival, and community members signed and sent out roughly 70 letters that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had stamped envelopes and address labels, and copies of letters they could sign or write a note of their own,\u201d said Jen Magnuson of the Mancos Trails Group and coalition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ran out of paper copies midway through and had to go make extras,\u201d a member added.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, coalition members signed and sent out letters and have heard back from U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Michael Bennet\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

The response \u201cwas nothing too specific, I\u2019d say,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, they assured the coalition that they\u2019re \u201cclosely following\u201d the issue and have been in contact with Montezuma County and Forest Service leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur approach is the same as it has been,\u201d said San Juan National Forest District Ranger Nick Mustoe. \u201cWe are trying not to escalate tension.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mustoe said the U.S. Forest Service is consulting with federal agents, planning the best path forward.<\/p>\n

He said the Forest Service has titles of the lands, and the agency is seeking a \u201cconclusive resolution\u201d on the issue through federal courts.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of this will be dealt with through law enforcement and the courts,\u201d said Finch. \u201cWe feel like we could influence that just by letting them know how we feel about it, and \u2026 putting the right kind of pressure on folks so they know we care and we\u2019re not going to stand for the land being taken out of public use.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coalition is also monitoring new activity because \u201cwe don\u2019t want to be surprised by a fence again,\u201d Finch said.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re keeping tabs on people recreating at or around Chicken Creek and the disputed area, since a lot of the public doesn\u2019t feel as safe to be there anymore, Finch said.<\/p>\n

He added that the 1,460 disputed acres \u2013 when compared to prices of 35 acre lots for sale at Lost Canyon Ranch just north of that land \u2013 is worth an excess of $10 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so clearly opportunistic, with lands just adjacent to the private lands that they own. It\u2019s suspicious and greedy \u2026 in addition to it being totally obviously illegal,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just public access lost: \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t forget these things are valuable,\u201d a member said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s strength in our conviction,\u201d said Finch. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a dance, because we don\u2019t want confrontation, but we\u2019re also, I think we speak for all of us, that we\u2019re not going to yield to intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018The coalition is everybody,\u2019 one member said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,83,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24794","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=24794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78677,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24794\/revisions\/78677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24794"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}