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Work begins on Hermosa Creek protection

Year to scope out uses
Relay Creek Road will remain in use, but no new roads will be built in the northern part of the Hermosa Creek Watershed Protection Area, after Congress approved establishing the protection area. Grayrock Mountain is seen in the background. Planning has begun for management guidelines of the protection area.

And now it starts. After decades of attempts and six years of stakeholder meetings, the Hermosa Creek Wilderness Area and Special Management Area made it through Congress and was signed by the president.

“When I went to the party to celebrate the signing in December, everyone was ‘Yeah, we did it,’” said Special Management Area plan project leader Cam Hooley, who’s with the Columbine District of the San Juan National Forest. “But as far as we were concerned, the work was just beginning.”

The San Juan National Forest has three years from the date of signing, Dec. 19, to complete a plan for the special management area, Columbine District Ranger Matt Janowiak said at an open house Tuesday at the San Juan Public Lands offices. Different disciplines from within the team – water and fisheries; vegetation and fire history; over-snow and over-ground recreation; minerals, grazing and other uses – had created maps showing both what is currently happening in the area and illustrating what is called for in the act.

“We spent a lot of time in the last two summers up there,” Janowiak said, “in part preparing for this and in part because the public told us there were things that needed attention. But we don’t want to give the impression that we have everything solved because we don’t. We’re starting with a blank page.”

The team is planning to take a solid year of scoping all uses, holding open houses, collecting public comment and conducting field trips for different interest groups. Then the writing will start with drafting a proposed plan during summer 2016. It will be followed with the creation of an environmental analysis in spring 2017, and the draft plan will be open for public comment in summer 2017.

But for now, they want to hear from as many people as possible.

“Stakeholders did a wonderful job of coming together and creating consensus to get the act passed,” Janowiak said. “This is now concrete, and everyone will have to put everything on the table to be analyzed and discussed, so we can come to educated decisions.”

abutler@durangoherald.com

To learn more

By the end of the week, information and maps the Forest Service has developed to show current activities in the Hermosa Creek Special Management Area will be available at http://fortlewis/edu/riverprotection.

To comment, visit www.fs.usda.gov/goto/sanjuan/HermosaCreekSMA.

To learn more, call project leader Cam Hooley at 884-1414.



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