Tag Archive | BLM regulations

Please Try Again!

Feb15

I’m very grateful to those of you who tried to submit the comment form to the BLM using the link in yesterday’s post. If some of you were successful, so much the better! But some of you had trouble getting it to go through, as did I, which I reported to the Conservation Center. They fixed the glitch, and at least one person was able to successfully submit the form from yesterday’s link. If you’d rather not try that again, please try starting at their main page, and then click on the light green block on the left just below the banner heading and follow on to the form. Thank you again!

I’m also grateful today for another simple salad, and for a leftover heel of sourdough that I chopped up and toasted in bacon fat to make croutons. I’m grateful for an abundance of smoked Gouda, which I added to the salad, along with avocado, carrot, broccoli, celery, and a little bit of bacon. I made a simple vinaigrette the way I learned from the Colonel, including a pinch of dry mustard, a spoonful of mayonnaise, and some herbs. So simple, so delicious. And I’m grateful to understand that my contentment can hold sadness.

I’m grateful for playing in the snow with little Wren.

Environmental Protection

Feb14

I’m grateful for community activism on behalf of environmental protection, and this time it’s right in my own back yard. As a community, we’ve been fighting for our quality of life and our livelihoods for more than a decade, in a battle with the oil and gas industrial complex that seems to never end. If you’ve ever visited here, or you just want to support us, please consider signing this comment form to the BLM now. The deadline for comments is February 20.

When this started in 2011 with proposals to lease public lands at the heart of our watersheds for fracking, there was enormous community response. Hundreds of people attended meetings, thousands sent letters, urging the government to protect these lands that are crucial to the agriculture and recreation that drive our economy. What can one person do? I realized I could compile some of my many photographs of the area into a ‘visual comment’ to submit to the BLM during the initial public comment period. And then I realized I wasn’t the only one who had photographs.

By the time it was done, more than fifty valley residents and a few visitors from out of state had sent me hundreds of digital images, which I complied into the North Fork Scrapbook. Please visit the online scrapbook generated and maintained by our leading environmental protector, Pete Kolbenschlag, now director of the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance, to learn more about the unique valley and the looming threat to its health. I’m grateful to Pete, to the Western Slope Conservation Center, to Citizens for a Healthy Community, and to the thousands of valley residents who are making their concerns heard in an effort to protect our home.