{"id":73674,"date":"2016-08-24T02:16:47","date_gmt":"2016-08-24T08:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/endangered-mice-found-near-durango-la-plata-county-airport\/"},"modified":"2016-08-24T08:16:47","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T08:16:47","slug":"endangered-mice-found-near-durango-la-plata-county-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/endangered-mice-found-near-durango-la-plata-county-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"Endangered mice found near Durango-La Plata County Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><!-- gallery:2b8c0978-2383-4bcc-9a4a-7ebee8a3a803 --><\/p>\n<p>Endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mice found near the Durango-La Plata County Airport could force plans for the access road to change.<\/p>\n<p>Surveys that ended in August found federally protected <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fs.usda.gov\/detail\/r3\/home\/%3Fcid%3Dstelprd3809040\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mice<\/a> living where officials had planned to build a new alignment of County Road 309A.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt complicates the new access point and introduces questions about if that will work or how that will work,\u201d said Tony Vicari, interim director of aviation.<\/p>\n<p>The access road project was planned to coincide with construction of a new terminal on the east side of the runway.<\/p>\n<p>County voters will consider a property tax increase to cover $40 million of the construction. Grants and other funding measures are expected to cover the remaining $85 million of the project\u2019s first phase.<\/p>\n<p>The road was to be built east of the intersection of County Road 309 and Colorado Highway 172 to improve safety, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.durangogov.org\/index.aspx%3Fnid%3D152\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Durango-La Plata County Airport Commission <\/a>and other city and county elected officials were notified about the mice last week and airport consultants are exploring solutions, Vicari said.<\/p>\n<p>Raising the road a few feet off the ground may be one solution, he said. Moving the road might be tough because of the airport\u2019s property lines, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDramatically moving it is probably not realistic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving the current access road in place might be possible, but it would be less direct, and the capacity of the road would have to be examined, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Consultants with Jviation should have more answers to these questions in two weeks, and the results will likely be presented to Durango city councilors and La Plata County commissioners.<\/p>\n<p>The boards will make major decisions about access, if necessary, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The mice were not found near the east side of the runway and no changes will need to be made to plans for building construction, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Consultants also were looking for endangered Southwestern Willow Flycatchers, but none was found, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The search for these endangered species is part of the environmental assessment required to build the new terminal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>access road to be revisited<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[915,108,13,1469,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-73674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-la-plata-county-airport","tag-endangered-species","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-travel-and-commuting","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73674","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=73674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73674"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=73674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}