Rancher: Property rights are threatened

Private property rights are threatened along streams newly designated by the Bureau of Land Management as eligible for protection as “wild and scenic,” the county commissioners were told on Monday, Dec. 21. The recently released draft eligibility report by the BLM’s Uncompahgre Field Office nominates river and stream segments that pass through private land in Delta County for further study as candidates for possible wild and scenic designation. The BLM’s eligibility designation places the water and a half-mile wide corridor on either side under federal protections, rancher Dick Miller told the county commissioners. “That is the same thing as declaring a private stream and private land as a wilderness study area,” Miller said. When the BLM designates a stretch of stream and a quarter-mile on either side as “eligible” for study and possible designation as wild and scenic, Miller explained, it is the same thing as designating land as a wilderness study area. That land can then be managed as wilderness until Congress decides what to do with it, a process that can take years...read more