What a great time for wilderness in Colorado!

Today, we held a press event outside the state’s largest outdoor recreation company, REI where we delivered more than 13,700 comments supporting new wilderness protection to Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall.  (Check out the slide show below!)

Colorado is beautiful country, and we showed that the people of Colorado are behind efforts to keep it that way. That took a lot of hard work by our canvassers, going door-to-door and hitting the streets, asking Coloradans from Durango, Steamboat Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, Pueblo – all across the state – to take action and support wilderness. Today’s press event was a great way to celebrate that hard work and call for action to support wilderness.

I started things off in the office around 6:30 a.m. this morning to get ready for the event. As it turned out, I found out we had some changes to our speaker line-up, so it took a little fancy work to change our materials and get ready. Our field organizer, Gavin Clark, helped gather the postcards of support, which we bound with rubber bands and twine. The postcards stacked up more than 5 feet high! Then, it was off to the printers to grab copies of other petitions.

Kurt Kunkle of the Colorado Environmental Coalition loaded-up his car with the podium, postcards, and petitions, and we were off to the event.

The event went off without a hitch. Our speakers joined us, including Suzanne Jones of The Wilderness Society; Bill Dvorak, the state’s first commercially licensed outfitter, and Aron Ralston, mountaineer and author. Also, Zane Kessler of Sen. Bennet’s office was on hand to pick-up the public comments.

The support from the community was fantastic! Activists and staff joined from the Colorado Environmental Coalition, the Colorado Mountain Club, Defenders of Wildlife, The Wilderness Society, Environment Colorado and others were all there. And, Patagonia lent their name of support.

The afternoon was just as important, where a few of us spoke to senate staff about the need to protect wilderness, especially in light of growing pressures to drill even more natural gas on Colorado’s wild lands. As development speeds up, protecting the most ecologically important areas and economically important areas for wildlife and outdoor recreation becomes more critical.

Today’s events were a great step toward protecting wilderness in Colorado. There’s three big proposals out  there, including the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado, the Hidden Gems in the White River National Forest region, and Colorado’s Canyon Country that spans the state. We have the vision, now we just need our delegation to come together and support new wilderness protection.

Let’s make it happen.

Matthew Garrington, Advocate

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