{"id":30876,"date":"2023-11-02T22:28:25","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T04:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/more-action-to-be-taken-to-help-conserve-dolores-river-canyon-country\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:28:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:28:14","slug":"more-action-to-be-taken-to-help-conserve-dolores-river-canyon-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/more-action-to-be-taken-to-help-conserve-dolores-river-canyon-country\/","title":{"rendered":"More action to be taken to help conserve Dolores River Canyon Country"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Legislation
Legislation was presented in Washington, D.C., to conserve land surrounding the Dolores River on Wednesday. (Protest the Dolores Coalition\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Colorado Wildlands Project, in partnership with Conservation Science Partners, released an analysis report this week that showed that the land within Western Colorado\u2019s Dolores River Canyon Country is the \u201clargest, most biodiverse unprotected publicly owned lands in Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biodiversity measures the variety of life in a place, looking into the number and species plants and animals present.<\/p>\n

\u201cA primary goal of this analysis is to offer decision-makers a road map, backed by the best-available science, to prioritize critical lands and waters most-deserving of conservation policy action in Colorado,\u201d said report co-author Tina Mozelewski, Ph. D., lead scientist at Conservation Science Partners and the report\u2019s co-author. \u201cOur assessment isolated 71 areas on unprotected federal public lands in Colorado containing particularly high biodiversity. The public lands in Dolores River Canyon Country stood out for their unique combination of size, intactness and biological richness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dolores River Canyon Country covers parts of five counties on the Western Slope area: Montezuma, Dolores, San Miguel, Montrose and Mesa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dolores River Canyon Country is one of Western Colorado\u2019s most outstanding natural treasures, which most people have never heard of,\u201d said Scott Braden, director of the Colorado Wildlands Project said. \u201cFor five decades, Coloradans have strived to protect these dramatic canyons, wildlife-rich mesas and verdant river bottoms throughout the Dolores canyons. It\u2019s past due for this incredible place to receive the protections it deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, there is legislation under consideration by Congress, and is sponsored by Colorado Democrats Sen. Michael Bennet and Sen. John Hickenlooper, and Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert.<\/p>\n

If passed, this legislation will work to protect a portion of the Dolores River Canyon Country, making the areas in Dolores, Montezuma and San Miguel counties national conservation areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new analysis underscores the immediate need for comprehensive, landscape-scale conservation to protect the irreplaceable values and public lands surrounding the Dolores River,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n

While areas in Dolores, Montezuma and San Miguel counties would be protected, the proposed legislation would not protect public lands in Montrose and Mesa counties, which the news release says are home to the majority of the most highly biodiverse lands in the Dolores River Canyon Country.<\/p>\n

\u201cA locally driven coalition<\/a> of organizations and businesses have proposed working with Colorado congressional leaders, Governor Jared Polis and President Joe Biden to protect critical public lands in Montrose and Mesa counties as the Dolores Canyons National Monument,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

The full analysis, \u201cColorado\u2019s Most Important Unprotected Biodiversity Hotspot,\u201d is available here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

identifies the public lands encompassing Western Colorado\u2019s Dolores River as the state\u2019s largest, most biodiverse unprotected landscape<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[837,341,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dolores-county","tag-dolores-river","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30876","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=30876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81234,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30876\/revisions\/81234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30876"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}