BLM plan draws fire

Ranchers, a company drilling for carbon dioxide, recreational users and private landowners are up in arms over the resource-management plan adopted in June for Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. What they're seeing is not what they understood they would get when the resource-protection plan was being crafted, disappointed stakeholders say. Cattlemen are receiving fewer grazing permits and less time on federal land; a large mineral-extraction company is seeing its ability to operate curtailed and, as a direct result, county governments may receive less tax revenue. Heather Musclow, acting manager of the monument, thinks their dissatisfaction is normal reaction to change. Protests to BLM headquarters in Washington after the preferred plan was selected were rejected, she said. "There's nothing new since the decision so there shouldn't be any surprises," Musclow said. "We're doing business in a new way, so now they would have to take us to court." Canyons of the Ancients, administered by the Bureau of Land Management, encompasses 171,000 acres in Montezuma and Dolores counties. The monument, located 10 miles west of Cortez, has 12,000 acres of private inholdings and 400 acres managed by the National Park Service within its boundaries...more