Army says it has been good steward in Pinon Canyon

Opponents of a proposed Army training site expansion in southern Colorado are disputing the military's claims that it has been a good steward of ranch land it seized by force in 1983. They include Gene Schroder, a third-generation rancher and one of a dozen ranchers who owned a grazing association when troops in military helicopters swooped in and ordered them off 33,000 acres of their land at gunpoint. That land went to the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, operated by Fort Carson south of Colorado Springs. "This isn't good stewardship. This is a fire hazard," Schroder said, pointing across the Purgatoire River during a recent field trip to swathes of wild plains where the Army conducts its training. Schroder said he visited his former property a year ago - with Army permission - and found windmills trashed, fences in disrepair and weeds and grass growing rampant, posing a wildfire hazard. The land is located west of Kim, 190 miles southeast of Denver, where roadsides are dotted with signs saying that private property is not for sale to the Army....