JulyOnlineIssue

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CONTENTS
About the Cover:
Chanel, a Labradoodle,
cools off in a creekbed
with shooting stars!
Pages
NO FIREWORKS, NO EXCEPTIONS
4
Getting our voices heard - Re: Gross Dam Exp.
5
Do WE want over 7000 new homes in our area?
6
Outdoors-Good to know before you go-RMNP 7, 8, 9
Wildlife Update - Buffalo Field Campaign
10
NutritionSmoothies Are Summer’s Delight
11
Animals Tips for Helping Pets With Stress 12, 13
Observation-What should we do w/our Time? 14, 15
PoliticsNo Answers If No Questions 16, 17
Conservation - Do subdivisions designed work? 18,19,20
21
Letters Stage 2 Fire Ban Restrictions - CRC
24
Health - Scientists dev. drug to combat viruses
Wisdom Fierce Grace 26, 27
Environmental - Pesticides on food- Birds vs.Wind 28, 29
Issues- Does bark beetle kill lead to more severe fires 32,33,34
Science-Method for measuring exposure: Metals
35
Choices - Talking vegetarianism to a Hunter 36, 37
Environmental Ponderosa Pine a Lifeline 38, 39
Conservation -Largest Single Cons. Easement
40
Distribution - Where you can pick up a copy
41
Issues -
P UBLISHER , E DITOR , A DVERTISING S ALES ,
C OPY E DITOR , P RODUCTION & D ESIGN
Anita M. Wilks
C ONTRIBUTING W RITERS
Diane Bergstrom
Buffalo Field Campaign
EarthTalk [email protected]
Chris Garre - Pres. TEG
Craig Gurian-RemappingDebate.org
Melissa E. Johnson
Bob Kropfli
Brendan Leonard-Writes on the Range-HCN
Tracy Reseigh
Shirley Perryman- CSU
Catherine Ryan-High Country
Stephen Trimble - High Country News
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Gail Wells-High Country News
Emily Wortman-Wunder - High Country
A.M. Wilks
C ONTRIBUTING P HOTOGRAPHERS /A RTISTS
Diane Bergstrom
Melissa Johnson
Anita M. Wilks
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Email/Advertisers: [email protected]
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REGULAR FEATURES
Animals & Their Companions
Book & E-Book Reviews
Poetry
Ad Index & Telephone #’s
HANDY NUMBERS
COUNTY SERVICES
Fire & Ambulance .................................911
Jefferson County Sheriff.......303-277-0211
Boulder County Sheriff.........303-441-4444
Gilpin County Sheriff............303-582-5500
Crescent Branch P.O.............303-642-0119
Golden Post Office...............303-445-8900
Golden PO Bulk Mail ...........303-278-9235
Pinecliffe Post Office............303-642-7358
Rollinsville Post Office .........303-258-3326
Jeffco Animal Control...........303-271-5070
Boulder Animal Control ........303-441-4444
SCHOOLS
Coal Creek K-8 ....................303-982-3409
Drake Middle School............303-982-1510
Ralston Valley Sr High .........303-982-1078
Golden Senior High .............303-982-4200
Nederland Elementary .........303-258-7092
Nederland Jr & Sr High........303-258-3212
Gilpin County. ......................303-582-3444
CANYON ORGANIZATIONS
CCCIA..................................303-642-1540
CC Community Center.........303-642-7300
Gilpin Community Center.....303-582-1453
The Environmental Group....303-642-7243
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YEARLY SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE $25.
Copyright 2012, Highlander Monthly. All rights reserved.
Republication in whole or in part is expressly prohibited
without prior written consent from the editor.
July
22, 23
30
31
42
2012
PAGE 3
Highlander Issues
NO FIREWORKS ~ NO EXCEPTIONS!
Call 911 if you hear fireworks in your neighborhood and
stay alert long after they stop. Not a 4th of July goes by
without some foolish person igniting illegal firecrackers in
our neighborhood. It puts us all at risk and on edge. While
not a fan of vigilante actions, this always pushes my
buttons and literally makes me think of doing them harm.
Stress management in high fire danger season for
mountain residents is crucial to any enjoyment of your
summer. It is more than difficult to relax sitting on your
deck watching the hummers and butterflies while folks up
north, south and west of us are being evacuated or worse,
losing their mountain homes.
We must prepare: do the mitigation, have the evacuation
list, buy plastic bins and fill them with your ‘can’t live
without’ stuff, continue to keep your defensible space up so
volunteer firefighters can do their jobs if need be. Network
with your neighbors for ‘in case of reverse 911 calls’ and
all the things professionals and experienced folks tell us to
do.
Most importantly work at preventing the start of a fire.
Go outside after a thunderstorm and look for smoke in the
daytime or fire at night. Use those binoculars that you
usually use for wildlife watching to scan what you can see
from your home, front and back...the hillsides where no
one lives especially. When a lightning storm passes by and
you wake up in the middle of the night, use that time to
stand on your deck and check for fire from lightning
strikes.
In past times we had fire rangers who lived in small tall
structures on top of many mountaintops. They did this job
and got paid pennies for it, but all the same had the best job
in the world to live in the woods to look out for fires. For
some reason these jobs have been outdated and I for one
think we should use technology to replace this prevention
technique.
If we can use video cams to check out the ski slopes in
winter before we decide whether to call in sick to work and
go cut fresh powder after a snowstorm, can’t we monitor
from mountain tops for lightning strikes? When Thorodin
Mountain fire station became defunct it was before remote
video cameras, but now we have the capability to put
camera’s up and even make them scan areas that can be
remotely observed even by volunteers.
I propose we become the first canyon to install and
monitor our area for lightning strikes via video on
Thorodin Mountain. Maybe we’re not the first, but I
haven’t heard of any other mountain community doing this
to prevent catastrophic forest fire events started by
lightning strikes, cigarettes, carelessness or campfires.
The important thing is to act; in action we can manage
our stress and enjoy living in a forest environment even in
drought conditions. As fall conditions come upon us our
carefulness must mount. Grasses that are green now will
naturally go dry and threats go higher. Many of us cut
wood to burn in winter so go that extra measure and have a
shovel, lengthen the garden hose and take a fire
extinguisher out with you to cut your wood.
While watching the coverage of our recent regional fire
events I heard one homeowner say he put out lawn
sprinklers on front and back decks before he left and his
home survived. Few of us mountain residents even have
sprinklers, but it makes one pause for thought. By A.M. Wilks
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July
2012
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Highlander Issues
Getting Our Voices Heard-Re:Gross Dam Expansion
By Chris Garre
The rivers are bone dry and temperatures are breaking
records every month here along the Front Range. But
rather than panic and hand the fate of our rivers over to the
water boards and utilities, citizens of Colorado are stepping
up and taking a pro-active approach to ending the
ever-growing consumption of our most precious natural
resource, fresh water.
On April 16th, the Colorado Supreme Court approved the
text of two state-wide ballot initiatives - 3 and 45 - that
create “an obligation to protect the public’s interests in
water” and prevent any use that would cause “irreparable
harm” to water. The two initiatives, drafted by Richard
Hamilton and Phil Doe, were released to the public for
collecting signatures. To make the November ballot, each
initiative must garner 86,000 signatures of Colorado voters
by August 6th. Environmental organizations and citizens
groups are working statewide to collect the required
signatures and significant progress has already been made.
THE INITIATIVES WOULD: #3 - Reclaim public
ownership of water, as originally asserted in our CO
Constitution, and grant right of public access to the rivers.
#45 - Clarify that water use rights don’t include the right
to completely contaminate our water, rendering it unusable.
What would it mean for the Gross Dam expansion project
specifically? “I think it would stop it,” says Phil Doe, “...it
would simply say ‘you can’t do this because you’re
destroying the river.’ In fact, they might have to put some
back.” Over half of the water consumed by Denver
currently goes onto grassy lawns. “We can do better, and
nobody will suffer,” Phil states.
More specific information regarding proposed initiatives
#3 & #45 can be found on the Protect Colorado Water
website: http://ProtectColoradoWater.org TEG, The
Environmental Group is collecting signatures in our
mountain region. The TEG website at http://TEGCoal
CreekCanyon.org for upcoming opportunities to sign the
petitions. Also, if you’re interested in collecting signatures
yourself, or if you’d just like to have the petitions available
for signing at a one-off event like a party or pot-luck,
contact TEG President Chris Garre through the TEG
website:http://TEGCoalCreekCanyon.org/contact.html
A great chance to sign the petitions will be at the Fourth
of July celebration in the CCCIA parking lot, the TEG
booth will have several copies so no waiting and you can
ask any questions you may have to help you decide to sign.
31528 Hwy 72
Save the Date:
Sept. 22nd
PANCAKE BREAKFAST
Blood Donation Van & Flea Market
If you get the chance to notice the
New Windows in the Hall - they were
purchased from Home Depot and
THANKS go to the Catholic Churchʼs
donations towards the project.
Also, thanks to Bruce & Tom for
improvements on the sign and
donations from the Lutheran Church
for materials!
July
2012
PAGE 5
Highlander Issues
Do WE Want Over 7000 New Homes In Our Area?
construction will not begin for up to 15 years according to the
developer, the request for a zoning change from rural to
Big changes are happening on Boulder’s southern doorstep. residential/commercial was made just recently. Why so early?
That’s uncertain, but most likely the request was made so
Four major subdivisions are either underway or in the
soon because the current Jeffco commissioners are
planning stage; they are enabled by two major infrastructure
sympathetic to that kind of growth. Unlikely as it may seem,
projects promoted by Jefferson County developers, the
future commissioners may not be as disposed to sprawl so it
Jefferson County Board of Commissioners, and the city of
Arvada. All of them will impact those of us who use Hwy 93 makes sense for the developer to apply now. The Jeffco
and will stress the environment. Most people, including many Board of County Commissioners will listen to citizen input
and rule on the zoning request on June 26 at 8 AM, making it
political leaders in Boulder, have not really connected the
easy to attend for early risers without jobs. More details on
dots yet, or if they have, they remain silent about it.
Keller Farms can be found at www.friendsofthefoothills.com.
The subdivision now well underway is Arvada’s Candelas.
Anyone who drives Hwy 93 will be affected by these
It will sprawl over 1500 acres and will have as many as 4600
projects. Currently, other than the shoulder widening now
residential units and commercial buildings up to 180 feet tall
underway, there are no improvements planned to handle the
in an area that was recently open prairie grassland but
additional traffic resulting from these new subdivisions.
deemed ‘urban blight’ by Arvada. It’s located between the
Furthermore, Boulder’s 1200 acre Jewel Mt. Open Space
former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant to the north, Hwy
near Hwy 93 and Hwy 72 will be compromised. The
72 to the south and between Hwy 93 and Indiana St. Dozens
of earth-moving machines are currently flattening hills on the additional traffic resulting from over 7000 new residential
units will impact wildlife and degrade air quality. The rural
eastern end of the project.
character of this area will change dramatically.
A few miles to the south of Candelas and just east of Hwy
Clearly, Arvada’s toll-way, a.k.a. the Jefferson Parkway, is
93 is another recent Arvada annexation where a subdivision
the infrastructure project that will enable these four
of 1400 homes is planned. In order to bring utilities to the
project Leyden Road has been torn up for months, closing the subdivisions to proceed. However, taxpayer-supported traffic
studies have not endorsed the toll-way and have generally
exit from Highway 93.
Additionally, the future subdivision of Canyon Pines will sit demonstrated the critical need for improvements to 93 and
Indiana (www.gothebetterway.com). Clearly the real reason
two miles west of 93 where 90 homes will be nicely
for the toll-way is to promote full build out of the four
“shielded” from view by newly planted trees since it is on a
subdivisions within an area that is currently rural.
visible hillside adorning the mountain backdrop. When
Boulder has chosen to sit on the sidelines on this issue
Canyon Pines was first annexed into Arvada the nearest
while Superior, Golden and two environmental organizations
Arvada neighborhood was six miles away. That gap,
fight the toll-way in the courts. They certainly could use
however, is rapidly closing by the westward intrusion of
Boulder’s help. Citizens not enamored by such massive scale
Candelas.
development on their doorstep might want to express their
Finally, there’s Keller Farms, a proposed 1200-acre
subdivision with 1200 homes and commercial areas just west views to the city and ask for reconsideration. Several recent
letters in the Camera have done just that.
of 93 roughly from 56th to 64th streets. Even though
Another enabling infrastructure project
is the planned tripling the size of Gross
Reservoir in Boulder County. Arvada has
promised $60 M toward construction of
the five year, $300 M project,
presumably to provide water to its new
subdivisions. So expect that trucks
Wireless or Wired Network setup
loaded with rocks, sand and gravel will
High Speed Internet Access Expert
rumble along Highways 128, 93 and 72
Web site design, development and optimization every few minutes, further exacerbating
driving conditions and damaging roads
Computer repair, upgrades, virus removal
along these routes.
Gross Reservoir is a complicated issue
Mountain resident - will travel
but explained clearly in a video at
www.nowatertowaste.com.
Hopefully, city and county officials will
view it and the county will eventually
consider changing course and try to
promote sensible land use planning on
Wondervu Consulting Services
Boulder’s southern doorstep.
303-642-0433 or visit us at www.wondervu-consulting.com This piece was previously published in
Michele Barone - [email protected]
the Boulder Daily Camera.
By Bob Kropfli
Computer, Network & Web
Suppo r t & S e r vi c e s
Secure online purchasing
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PAGE 6
July
2012
Highlander Outdoors
Good To Know Before You Go: RMNP
Article and Photographs by Diane Bergstrom
Before you head for higher ground and cooler
temperatures in Rocky Mountain National Park, you should
be aware of road
construction
happening on the
east side of the
park which will
affect visitors
who plan to
travel along Bear
Lake Road. Two
words will sum it
up, prepare you
for your drive,
and calm the
nerves for
knowing in
advance.
EXPECT
DELAYS.
Forewarned is
forearmed.
Bring extra car
snacks and your
favorite tunes.
As RMNP nears
its 100th
anniversary (2015), this multi-million dollar road project
should be completed in time for the celebration. The road
was initially completed in 1928 and the lower section
hasn’t had
major work
done in over
80 years.
Upper Bear
Lake Road
improvements
concluded in
2004. The
construction
starts at the
junction of
Bear Lake Road
and Trail Ridge
Road (Highway
36) going up to
the Park and
Ride (Glacier
Basin
Campground
intersection),
ranging 5.1
miles.
Why now?
Retaining walls
are being
constructed to
add safety and
drainage along
(Continued on next page.)
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July
2012
PAGE 7
Highlander Outdoors
the road. A one-mile stretch will be rerouted away from
Glacier Creek to protect wetlands and riparian habitat. The
Big Thompson
bridge will be
repaired. The
road will be
widened and the
surface
improved for
shuttle buses
and snowplows.
The inadequate
pullouts and
parking will be
redesigned.
Safety,
wilderness
protection and
enhancing the
visitor’s
experience
along with
careful
consideration of the environmental impact plan, are all part
of these improvements.
What to do? Until October 9, from 9 am to 4 pm, seven
PAGE 8
July
2012
days a week, Bear Lake Road one mile southwest of
Moraine Park will be only accessible by free shuttle buses.
Yes, there’s a lot going on in that sentence. But there’s
more. Private vehicles can access the road before 9 and
after 4, so one option is to hike early or hike late. How
early? You
must reach the
kiosk by the
Big Thompson River
BEFORE 9 am
and there is
road
construction
before you get
there. Plan for
one 20-minute
delay
after you
get
through
the gate
beyond
Beaver
Meadows
Visitor
Center.
All visitors in
private
vehicles or
shuttle buses
should expect
(2) 20- minute
delays. The
park personnel
suggest you
park at the
fairgrounds in
Estes Park
(most parking)
or the Estes Park Visitors Center (some parking) and board
the shuttle from there. Shuttles then stop at Beaver
Highlander Outdoors
Meadows Visitor
of various sizes and ages, graze in the meadow next to the
Center (less parking)
orange construction fence, a few vehicles of late hikers
and then go on to the
pulled to the side of the road, high mounds of freshly
hub at Moraine Park
turned earth,
Visitor Center (least
and John
parking) for transfers
Deere wheel
to the other shuttles
loaders and
for Bear Lake or
excavators.
Fern Lake/Cub Lake.
OccasionTo stay on top of the
ally looking
latest developments,
in my
go to nps.gov/romo
direction,
and click on the
they
desired information
determined I
icons.
wasn’t a
The cloudless day I
waited at Beaver
Meadows Visitor
Center for the
shuttle to
Moraine Park, I
chatted with
other happy
visitors and
watched golden
mantle ground
squirrels run
between the
spruce trees. While waiting in line at Moraine Park, a
family of magpies harassed a hawk soaring circles above
us. A young magpie whose tail feathers hadn’t grown in
threat, and lay down to chew their cud. They were
yet, hopped down the line inspecting the visitors. Standing
completely indifferent to the presence of the heavy
still provides the opportunity to view more wildlife, even in equipment. After all, an elk’s gotta do what an elk’s gotta
a shuttle line. I opted to camp in Moraine Park campground do.
(NOTE that Glacier Basin campground
is closed for 2012); call 877-444-6777
for RMNP campground reservations. I
strolled Loop A on the first evening,
Associate Broker
admired the various vehicles at sites,
Cell: 303 475-9370
watched a dad throw a ball with his
Office: 303 722-3300
young boys in a clearing, and spoke
[email protected]
with the sole concessionaire, Daryl
Davis, about his offerings of ice and
frozen Snickers ice cream bars. He had
sold wood but RMNP has enacted a fire
UNDER CONTRACT
ban. See the website for complete
210 Kimbark St.
details. I watched the sun set over the
Continental Divide from Moraine Park,
Lafayette, CO
sat on a rock and counted 90 elk as the
4 Bed/ 2 Bath
cows grazed and the calves bedded
Denver Central
down to rest. Well worth those 20
$239,000
1777
S
Harrison St Suite 1100
minute waits. The second evening, I
Denver, CO 80210-3936
returned to the Park near Bear Lake
Each Office is
Road and quietly observed five bull elk,
Independently Owned & Operated
Gail Kirby
July
2012
PAGE 9
Highlander Wildlife
Update - Buffalo Field Campaign
Wild buffalo continue to be needlessly harassed by
livestock interests merely for being in their native
Montana. The
government’s bison abuse
activities are dwindling
down, though have yet to
cease. When the agents
finally leave the area,
they will also leave
behind a veritable buffalo
ghost town. Tracks, tufts
of woolly hair, and old
scat will be all that’s left
to remind us that the
miracle of the gentle
giants was not just a
dream.
Buffalo Field Campaign
patrols remain in the
field, documenting all
actions made against our
wild friends. While our
volunteers have been giving their all in the field for the
buffalo, they have also been hard at work to begin another
season of outreach. Summer tabling inside Yellowstone and
Grand Teton National Parks is about to begin, our 20112012 field season newsletter will soon be printed and
mailed, we have just completed our 2013 Wild Bison
Calendar which we know you will love. (Not like the above
picture of a truck hazing a mother and newborn.)
Once we have them on hand, we could use your help in
distributing our new newsletter. If you’d like us to send
you a stack so you can
put them out in your
community, please reply
to the address here or
call the phone number to
let us know with your
mailing address and tell
us how many you’d like
us to send. The sooner
you let us know, the
better, as we can remove
you from the upcoming
mailing.
As we work to protect
the buffalo, inching our
way towards a better
future, we also work
hard to cultivate wild
buffalo champions and to
honor these gentle giants
in every possible way. It is because of you and your
support that we are able to continue in our work
defending wild buffalo and their right to roam.
Wild is the Way ~ Roam Free!
Buffalo Field Campaign,
P.O. Box 957, West Yellowstone, MT 59758 406-646-0070 www.buffalofieldcampaign.org
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PAGE 10
Mon-Thur 9am-10pm
July
Fri & Sat 9am - Midnight
2012
Check out our Online
Issue at our WebSite
www.highlandermo.com
& Links to our
Advertiser’s Web Sites.
303.642.7878
[email protected]
Highlander Nutrition
Smoothies Are Summer’s Delight
By Shirley Perryman - CSU
flaxseed or wheat bran. Nuts and seeds along with nut and
Malt shops were the rage in the 1950s. Whether you sat
seed butters, such as peanut butter and sunflower seed
at the soda fountain or had your order delivered by a
butter, contribute protein, fiber, antioxidants,
carhop, the frozen blended ice cream concoctions were a
phytonutrients and heart-healthy unsaturated fats.
treat. Today smoothie shops are everywhere, serving a
Along with these great health benefits come more
range from healthful fruit-based smoothies to calorie-dense calories, too. For variety make green smoothies. To get
frozen yogurt drinks. A smoothie can replace a meal and is
your greens blend green, raw leafy vegetables such as kale,
easy to make at home. Let your imagination be your guide
spinach, collard greens, Swiss chard, avocados, parsley,
to this nearly foolproof, cold, blended beverage.
broccoli and celery with fruit for natural sweetness.
The basic ingredients are a small amount (about one-half Flavorings can add a new twist to smoothies. Experiment
cup) of liquid plus fruit, plus other ingredients you could
with extracts, spices such as pumpkin pie, cinnamon and
add, such as nuts, tofu or soft cheeses. In addition to
nutmeg, or cocoa powder. A little bit can go a long way so
utensils a blender is the only required equipment. Fruit
start with a pinch or a few drops.
smoothies are a favorite of mine because they offer a
The caution flag should come out with certain
variety of flavors depending on the ingredients you choose. ingredients: You’ll bump up calories by adding chocolate,
Fruits: Use washed fresh or frozen fruit. The benefit of
honey, maple or agave syrup, and turbinado (sugar). Use
using frozen fruit in place of some of the ice to thicken
these in moderation to temper the extra calories. For those
your beverage is that it adds more nutrients, but it also
looking to increase the protein with eggs, avoid a food
bumps up the calories. When fresh fruit is in season freeze
safety fiasco and use only pasteurized eggs or a pasteurized
some to have on hand for a future craving and save some
egg substitute. What about those add-ins that are promoted
money, too. Berries are a snap to freeze. Wash them, spread as a way to increase the nutritional value of your smoothie?
in a single layer on a tray, freeze, and then scoop into a
Some smoothie chains use these as a marketing gimmick to
plastic bag for longer storage. Unsweetened fruit also adds
help you “burn fat,” “cure a hangover,” or “increase
sweetness without adding a sweetener, which keeps the
immunity.” Turning your smoothie into a vitamin pill will
calories lower.
put a dent in your wallet. Blue-green algae, bee pollen, and
Have you ever looked at that bowl of ripening bananas
many other supplements do not have to be preapproved by
and wondered what else you could make besides banana
the Food and Drug Administration and have not
bread? Making smoothies is a great way to use fruit that is
demonstrated significant health benefit. These options may
at its peak ripeness before it spoils. Liquids: Low fat milk,
be an unnecessary addition and some could have harmful
either dairy or non-dairy, and juices are all good choices for side effects.
the liquid portion of the recipe. When choosing non-dairy
beverages select those with added
calcium to get the benefit of helping
your bones.
If you choose 100 percent juice,
sugar is ‘naturally’ present in the fruit
used to make the juice. Choosing juice
drinks or punches means added sugar.
Fruit flavored yogurt with added sugar
also has more calories than plain
yogurt. Choosing yogurt with live and
active cultures offers some health
benefits. Get a protein boost by using
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July
2012
PAGE 11
Highlander Animals
CSU Vets Offer Tips For Helping Pets With Stress
Trauma affects animals much as it does people, say
veterinarians at Colorado State University’s Veterinary
Teaching Hospital, who offer tips on the importance of
routines, including play time and meals, and such therapies
as pet massage. Signs of a stressed or anxious pet include:
The pet’s unwillingness to leave the owner. Lack of desire
to eat or lack of usual focus, often attributed to
disobedience when it may be anxiety.
Pacing, circling or other repetitive behaviors. Stereotypic
behaviors can increase or develop in times of stress.
Excessive panting, hair loss and dilated pupils. Increased
licking or self grooming, which can lead to self-injury.
Increased startle behaviors. When they startle at sounds
or sudden changes, this tells you they are more on edge
than usual. Hiding behaviors displayed in cats in particular,
which can sometimes lead to inappropriate elimination.
How to help: Calm yourself first. Recognizing what’s
happening to you can help you calm down and also help
your pet, particularly animals that are very bonded to their
owners. Develop and maintain as much of a routine as you
can. That includes feeding, walking and playtime.
Routines, even when you and your animals are displaced,
can have a calming effect.
Continue normal behaviors. If your dog or cat is trained
to offer certain behaviors (sitting before accepting a treat,
for example), continue those routines because animals
expect them. Realize the power of massage. Scientists have
proven that petting a dog or cat can decrease human blood
pressure, but petting with purpose can also help calm
animals. Try slow strokes with mild to moderate pressure,
but stop or try another region if the pet dislikes the touch.
Many animals appreciate some gentle kneading to the
neck and shoulders if stress has built
up there. Consider using natural
approaches to relieve stress. Lavender
aromatherapy, provided as easily as
Jan Kramer, CVT
applying a few drops of pure essential
oil to a tissue near the animal, calms
Stop-ins & overnights
both pets and people. Classical music
for dogs, cats, exotics
with a slow tempo, one or two
instruments, and relaxing melodies can
& barn animals.
also relieve anxiety.
Commercial products such as
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Feliway and DAP - or even CDs that
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for your pets.
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effects that only the animals will
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PAGE 12
July
2012
Highlander Animals
only rejuvenating, it also reduces pain and allows the body
and mind to recover from stress.
Practice relaxation. Encourage your pet to sit in front of
you and maintain eye contact. Use a stay cue if they know
one. Feed them treats every few seconds at first for sitting
still and focusing on you. This is harder for stressed pets,
but when they are eating and breathing deeply, their stress
level will start to come down. Increase the amount of time
between treats given to encourage the pet to stay relaxed
longer. This simple exercise of being still can relieve
anxiety for both pets and people.
Breathe deeply along with your pet - sometimes they
pattern their breathing on you! Change how pets feel about
particular stressors. When pets are under stress they often
react with barking, vocalization or even aggression. These
behaviors can all be manifestations of fear. Depending on
the stimulus that prompts these episodes of reactivity, work
with them at a distance so that they notice the problem
situation but can keep in control. Feed them a treat every
time they experience that environmental cue. Think of it as
food for feeling better. With enough repetitions, the pet
learns that a thing that predicted something scary for them
now predicts a tasty treat.
Pets then start to anticipate change more positively and
this can dramatically reduce environmental stress. Exercise
your pet. A tired pet is a happy pet. As for people, exercise
calms pets and helps them feel more relaxed. If you haven’t
been exercising your pet, now is a good time to start with
short walks in the early morning or evening to avoid the
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2012
PAGE 13
Highlander Observation
What Should We Do With Our Blink Of Time?
By Stephen Trimble/High Country News
the evolutionary spiral. But now we don’t just live within
this geologic story, we shape it. With that power comes
responsibility. Geologists think of the last 65 million years
as recent, and so all the epochs in our era end with -cene,
from the Greek for “recent.” Pleistocene. Eocene.
Holocene. The prefix changes, but the “-cenes” mark
“recent” developments in evolutionary and tectonic cycles,
even when the timeline for these epochs reaches back tens
of millions of years. Many scientists now believe that we
have entered the Anthropocene. In just two centuries of this
“human-dominated recent time period,” beginning with the
Industrial Revolution, we have transformed half of the
Earth’s land surface, changed global climates and triggered
losses in biodiversity.
Animals slip away as we destroy their habitat, at
extinction rates 45 times greater than the long-term average
(for mammals) and 270 times greater than average (for
rainforest species). In the Anthropocene, 7 billion people
everywhere insert themselves into delicately interwoven
systems. Bio-crusts carpet the soil in dry country. Disturb
The long view of science turns out to be both reassuring
and daunting. Life on Earth turns out to be remarkably
resilient. Within the story of our 13.5-billion-year old
universe, our own lives - so crucial to us and to our
families and dear friends - look fleeting, gossamer. These
paradoxes overwhelm me. For five years, I’ve immersed
myself in geologic time while writing exhibit text for the
new Natural History Museum of Utah.
Again and again, mass extinctions sweep away millions
of years of diversity, and we start anew. One time period
produces six-foot-long arthropods that look like centipedes
in a child’s nightmare. Another evolutionary interval yields
a flightless six-foot-high bird whose head mostly consists
of formidable jaws, a predator that may have hunted in
packs. The Mesozoic landscape teems with dinosaurs the
size of commuter jets - and then the strange animals are
gone. Evolution proves relentlessly inventive as life forms
come and go.
I recognize that humans appear as just one more entry in
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July
2012
Highlander Observation
that living crust in the redrock canyons of the Four Corners
with a careless boot print, too numerous livestock, or a
freewheeling all-terrain vehicle, and you liberate dust to
blow onto the snowpack in the Rockies.
Dark snow melts faster than clean snow, and the spring
runoff now comes 50 days earlier in the Colorado River
Basin, with stark consequences downstream. We’ve
constructed a desert civilization in the American Southwest
that depends on water from elsewhere. When climate
change drains the delivery system, will Phoenix and Las
Vegas (let alone small towns like Hanksville and Needles)
dry up and blow away? And so I’ve become obsessed with
fragility. We can take nothing for granted, from the air we
breathe, to the value of our homes, to the well being of our
loved ones.
In one recent week, I saw this tenuousness shatter four
exceptional people. I attended memorial services for two
friends, one who died in a freak accident at 41, a second
who died of a disease with no treatment and no cure, at 63.
In between, I visited a mentor living with the debilitating
aftermath of a stroke and a legendary teacher paralyzed in a
bike accident and fighting for breath, year after year. Watch
your step. On this day-to-day level, live every moment
fully. Nurture resilience.
When we can define geologic time by our actions, we
must think hard about consequences. When we have
become connected to one-third of the people of the planet
through our computers, our effects multiply; politics and
social justice and human rights are no longer local issues.
In the Internet-driven Anthropocene, we mightily affect our
generation and those who come after us. We can deal with
the Anthropocene with hubris - why conserve when in a
million years we will move on to a new evolutionary
world?
This might explain the Utah Legislature’s selfish attempt
to turn over fragile public lands to the state for
development, for management by the few and for the few,
even though all Americans own the federal lands in
question. Or the fossil fuel industry, intent on maximizing
profits until we’ve drilled the last drop of oil, without
regard for the people who live nearby. Or we can deal with
the extraordinary opportunity of our few decades on Earth
with restraint, blessed by the fragile miracles of our health
and acutely aware that we must act with care if our natural
world is to flourish.
Stephen Trimble is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org He is a writer and
photographer in Salt Lake City and was the lead writer for
the new Natural History Museum of Utah.
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2012
PAGE 15
Highlander Politics
You Don’t Get Answers If You Don’t Ask Questions
By Craig Gurian - Remapping Debate
A New York Times/CBS News poll released last fall
confirmed that Americans, by overwhelming margins,
believe that there is too much income and wealth inequality
(66 to 26%), that Congressional Republicans favor the rich
as opposed to favoring other classes or treating all classes
equally (69 to 26%), that taxes on large corporations should
not be lowered (67 to 27%), and that taxes should be
increased on those with household income of $1 million or
more (65 to 30%).
Now, we find out, those identifying themselves as “Tea
Party supporters” (24% now as compared with 18% in
April 2010) are dwarfed by those who “generally
agree...with the views of the Occupy Wall Street
movement” (43%). Did these beliefs just arise lately? With
due respect to Occupy Wall Street efforts recently
underway, I think not.
No one, of course, would deny that the current economic
disaster - the only serious question today is whether we are
in a depression or “merely” a serious recession - has
concentrated public attention on the gap between haves and
have-nots. But it is hardly plausible that basic beliefs on
issues like income inequality just shifted on a dime. Much
more likely is the hypothesis that these widely held views
have been in circulation for a long time - in circulation, that
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is, everywhere except in the White House, much of
Congress, and almost all of the press corps.
For the press, you don’t get answers if you don’t ask
questions. And you don’t ask questions if you don’t think
that there is an issue worth exploring. When the press was
so aroused by the emergence of the Tea Party wing of the
GOP, it could have examined whether there were any other
political tendencies out in the land. Except for rare
exceptions, it did not. Now, we find out, those identifying
themselves as “Tea Party supporters” (24% now as
compared with 18% in April 2010) are dwarfed by those
who “generally agree...with the views of the Occupy Wall
Street movement” (43%).
Lusting for the “Grand Bargain” - More fundamentally,
there are policy questions that have distinct and mutually
exclusive answers. If you are a Republican presidential
candidate or Congressional leader, you probably want to
roll back regulation, spending, and entitlement programs at
least to 1950s levels; labor protections at least to the 1920s;
and the power of the federal government at least to the
1880s. If you are a progressive or what used to be counted
as a mainstream Democrat, you do not.
Put another way, the differing substantive answers to
substantive policy questions are profoundly incompatible.
Nevertheless, for almost all of the last year, the press has
been obsessed with the idea of “Grand Bargain,” in the
form of Bowles-Simpson, the original Obama plan (I’ll
even put Social Security on the table), or otherwise.
And coverage and polling followed this preoccupation.
Don’t people want there to be compromise? Can’t we move
away from extremes? What would independent voters say?
Why can’t Washington politicians get things done? (Hint:
because people and politicians really, really disagree with
one another.)
The article does point out that it is not just Democrats (or
Occupy Wall Street participants) who think that there is too
much inequality of wealth: “two-thirds of independents...
say that the distribution of wealth in the country should be
more equitable.”
Even the article that accompanied the poll was inclined to
look at how the results might have an impact on candidates
(“more than half of the public say that [the President] lacks
a clear plan for creating jobs”), leaving to a subordinate
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2012
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Highlander Politics
clause the finding that “the poll found substantial support
for the plan’s individual components.”
Indeed, many of the individual components are not
mentioned in the story, including the fact that the idea of
spending money on the nation’s infrastructure to create
jobs was supported by a margin of more than five to one
(80 to 15%).
The press is not responsible for the fact that the Obama
administration and campaign have chased independent
voters as though two-thirds of them thought there wasn’t
enough income and wealth inequality, but it is responsible
for failing to ask until recently questions that would open
and encourage debate beyond the adored Ben Nelson - Joe
Lieberman spectrum.
Better ways to take a poll? - If the current coverage
marks something of a turning point in terms of
acknowledging deep and basic concerns of Americans, it
does not, however, mark a turning point as to a common
deficiency in most polling (which can’t be ignored just
because one may happen to like the results of a particular
opinion survey).
Some conservatives, alarmed by the poll’s results (at least
those suggesting that Americans want the long era of joint
GOP and Democratic obeisance to wealthy individuals and
businesses to end), will warn against uncritical acceptance
of poll results.
They’re right. It is certainly not the case that poll
respondents always have the factual background needed to
July
appreciate fully the consequences of the policy positions
they support, and it is also true that many polls are too
wide-ranging to ask questions at sufficient depth.
Take one of the few poll results that might discomfit
progressives: the finding suggesting that half the public
supports reducing or ending some government regulations
on business “in order to try to create jobs.” The question (at
least standing alone) has some obvious flaws. Inquiring
about reducing regulation in general is more likely to elicit
a positive response than a question asking respondents
whether they want their air and water quality to return to
the levels of the 1960s. A question measuring support for
reducing regulation “in order to create jobs,” leaves poll
respondents without the information that there is no
evidence to suggest that cutting regulations would yield a
net increase in jobs at all.
Some public opinion researchers have begun the process
of moving towards polling that follows the provision of
background information on the issues as to which opinion
is being measured. Those efforts are worth exploring
further.
In the meantime, the more the press can imagine the idea
that a wide range of substantive policy proposals deserve
serious attention, the more that even standard polls will be
able to measure informed opinion.
This article originally appeared in Remapping Debate an
online public policy news journal, remappingdebate.org
Reprinted with permission.
2012
PAGE 17
Highlander Conservation
Do Subdivisions Designed For Conservation Work?
By Emily Wortman-Wunder/High Country News
For millennia, Colorado’s Yampa River Valley has
followed the rhythms of wildlife mating and migration, the
habits of elk and grouse and bear. The arrival of ranching
in the 1880s altered the pattern a little, but radical change
didn’t occur until the last half of the 20th century. That’s
when the big ranches began to be broken up into small
ranchettes and vacation-home lots, the kind of low-density
exurban sprawl responsible for habitat fragmentation
across the West. Desperate to preserve Routt County’s
character, in the mid-1990s its commissioners fought to
pass Land Preservation Subdivision ordinances, or LPS. It
was an early form of conservation development, an
increasingly popular land-planning tool that develops part
of a property to fund the preservation of the rest.
Conservation development is usually regulated at the
county level. Ordinances encourage developers to cluster
houses on a portion of land and leave 40 to 80 percent of it
as open space, and often give a “density bonus” for such
clustering, allowing up to 70 percent more housing units
per project. Such developments typically sell well and
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July
2012
command premium prices. They feel in touch with an
agricultural past, where people can live within walking
distance of hiking trails and fishing ponds. And they’ve
found favor across the West: The passage of such
ordinances took off in the ‘90s and has more than doubled
in the last decade. They seem to offer a way for mountain
communities to have it all. A 2011 study estimated that
conservation development has preserved nearly 10 million
acres across the U.S. since the 1960s. But questions about
its effectiveness remain: Is that open space really helping to
maintain biodiversity?
“The key to integrating nature and urban growth is
scale,” says Armando Carbonell, chair of the Department
of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute of
Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass. Local land planners and
developers, he says, need to understand both the ecosystem
context and the ecological consequences of their actions.
Sarah Reed, a conservation biologist with Colorado State
University and the Wildlife Conservation Society,
co-founded the Center for Conservation Development at
CSU in fall 2010 to assess county development choices and
their ecological consequences. In 2010, Reed and her
coworkers examined land-planning ordinances in all 414
counties of the 11 Western states. While over a third of the
counties had regulations that promoted some form of
conservation development, many did so in ways unlikely to
preserve critical wildlife habitat or other natural values.
Few promoted land stewardship, or ensured that open
space parcels were contiguous within or among
developments.
One of the biggest issues, Reed concluded, is the quality
and type of data used to create the conservation design. Her
preliminary results show that only 13 percent of the West’s
conservation development ordinances mandate a study of
the property’s ecological attributes. “There’s no reason to
believe that (the land that) got protected is any better than
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rather than conservation.
what got developed,” Reed says. In contrast, she points to
All of these issues contribute to a growing sense that
Routt County, which specifically requires developers to
clustered development is not living up to its promise. “I’ve
identify and avoid “Critical Habitat of Threatened and/or
watched the Land Preservation Subdivision program as it
Endangered species, including nesting, roosting, mating,
was developed and used over the years, and from a habitat
birthing and feeding areas.”
preservation standpoint, it’s not great,” says Jim Haskins,
Then there’s the question of who manages the conserved
wildlife manager with the Colorado Parks and Wildlife
land once the houses are built. Reed found that few
ordinances require any sort of post-development oversight: Steamboat Springs office in Routt County. Marabou
Ranch, one of the newest and most upscale LPS
That’s left up to homeowner associations. Some make
developments in Routt County, offers hints as to where the
weed control, wildfire reduction, habitat restoration and
problems might lie. The 1,717-acre subdivision five miles
riparian management a priority and set up funding; others
west of Steamboat Springs fulfills Routt County’s
don’t. And there are other flaws; Wyoming and Colorado,
in particular, are notorious for allowing reserved land to be guidelines to the letter and circumvents many, but not all,
of the issues identified by Reed.
reopened for development after 65 and 40 years,
It has reserved 1,325 acres as open space; a lot map in the
respectively. Another problem is lot size. In 2011, Reed
sales office marks the location of a lek site for Columbian
examined 372 conservation developments in Colorado and
found that the average total size of a single project was 501 sharp-tailed grouse and an elk-calving area, both of which
are off-limits to development and subject to seasonal
acres, with varying amounts set aside as open space,
closure. A resident manager is
mostly in small scattered parcels. A 2006 study of
(Continued on next page.)
developments near Boulder with open-space parcels
ranging in size from 200 to 500 acres
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found that they were no different in
terms of wildlife variety than
traditional exurban sprawl.
“We should have been seeing vesper
sparrows, grasshopper sparrows, the
specialized species of conservation
interest,” says ecologist Buffy Lenth,
the study’s lead author. Instead, she
and her coworkers saw starlings,
grackles and robins, the same old
generalist species and invasives that
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characterize the fragmented habitat of
traditional development. The reason
was not entirely clear. Lenth suspected
heavy use of the open space by
residents and their pets might be a
factor, along with its small size and a
design intended to maximize views
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PAGE 19
Highlander Conservation
responsible for stewardship. But 62 homesites are scattered
throughout the site; the open space, though large, is
fragmented, with lots of edges. The sensitive habitat is
located at the edges of the property; the lek lies along the
road and the calving area is crowded by homesites.
Carbonell tends to blame the way such developments are
originally planned. “It’s important (for planners and
developers) to start interacting before a design gets
finalized. In the absence of understanding how watersheds
work, or how an ecosystem works, you can get
development patterns that are not terribly functional.” Not
surprisingly, the projects that have done well on an
ecosystem scale are enormous, built by developers with
deep pockets and a grand vision. Santa Lucia Preserve,
Calif., is 20,000 acres, with 18,000 acres permanently
conserved. Galisteo Basin Preserve outside of Santa Fe,
N.M., is 13,522 acres, with more than 12,800 acres of open
space. Highlands Ranch, Colo., is 22,000 acres with 13,000
acres preserved, including a “backcountry wilderness” of
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8,200 acres that supports an elk herd.
These three developments preserve meaningful chunks of
open land and connect with other natural reserves conservation easements, state parks, national forest. They
also take habitat stewardship seriously. The Santa Lucia
Preserve established an endowment to fund the Santa Lucia
Conservancy, a nonprofit group with an independent board,
to manage its preserve land and set long-term ecological
goals. The Galisteo Basin Preserve coordinates with two
nonprofit organizations, a corps of graduate students, and
local volunteers to perform monitoring and restoration
work. Highlands Ranch employs three full-time natural
area managers and seasonal rangers, plus resident
volunteers. However, it is possible to achieve landscapelevel results through interaction and flexibility.
Just west of Salt Lake City, Utah’s Tooele County
specifically requires that at least 75 percent of a
development’s open space lots “shall be in a contiguous
tract” and “adjoin any neighboring areas of open space.”
Douglas County, Colo., is currently amending its
regulations to mandate formal community meetings before
a project is finalized. Then the development can better
meet the conservation goals articulated in the community’s
master plan: Wildlife corridors and open-space parcels can
be planned so that they align, watersheds can be protected
along their length, and development can be steered so that
it clusters along major roadways and population centers.
“Watersheds, ecosystems, migration patterns can be
functional in close proximity to people and cities,” says
Carbonell.
Conservation development is just another element in the
planning process. Reed recommends that the open-space
parcels be big enough (she is currently
seeking funding to determine the best
size), and that they minimize edges
and be properly monitored and
maintained. The entire project should
be surveyed at the start to identify
critical habitat, and the development
should be planned around it. Finally,
the open-space parcels should
communicate with other natural areas
outside of the development. Ideally,
Reed says, each community should
develop a vision that manages growth
while protecting critical areas and
corridors for biodiversity - and then
use “conservation development as one
way to attain that ideal configuration.”
This story originally appeared in an
issue of High Country News (hcn.org).
Highlander Letters
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Dear Readers,
Fortunately for our mountain communities the Stage 2
Fire Ban Restrictions have been implemented now
as this issue goes to press. What this means for our region
- the four canyon - three county (Boulder, Jefferson and
Gilpin) is that NO CAMPFIRES are allowed, even in
the metal ones in designated campsites. It also means
NO CHARCOAL GRILLS are allowed, only gas
grills and cook stoves - not only when camping but also at
your own residences.
Cigarette smokers MUST BE INSIDE
houses, vehicles and even tents. No portable
fireplaces or patio fire pits, even chimineas and tiki lights
are prohibited from use. NO FIREWORKS at all,
(too bad the governor didn’t use his power to ban the
selling of fireworks - which he could have done) even
though you will see them for sale. What a crock that you
can buy them or sell them when you can’t set them off. I
am usually moderate when it comes to regulations, but I
don’t trust individuals to use self-control when it comes to
fire safety and celebrating holidays like the 4th during
EXTREME FIRE CONDITIONS. Editor
Letter to the Editor,
Taking Root-Something amazing is happening in
Boulder. Over 100 professional and local artists along with
a like number of local businesses have joined CRC’s
(Center for ReSource Conservation) volunteer-led “Bold
Doors” project to explore the concept of creating a bridge
between sustainable materials and art.
Starting June 16th, all doors have been on display in
businesses throughout Boulder. Maps are available in
kiosks and displays throughout downtown Boulder and
online for download so you can track down doors, view
them and vote on your favorite. The event will culminate
on August 4th during CRC’s “Door Jam” where doors will
be auctioned.
In May over 60 student groups led the way and displayed
their art at an exhibition that took place at our ReSource
yard and raised funds for local schools and CRC. Overall,
the response from the public to the “Bold Doors” idea has
been overwhelmingly positive, which reflects the
burgeoning numbers of people wanting to engage in issues
around sustainability, how we all can play a role in reuse.
This is also evident in our “Garden in a Box” sales,
where to date over 1,300 people from throughout the Front
Range have decided to conserve water by purchasing the
affordable xeriscape kits. This has surpassed last years’
total figures, and we’re just halfway through the season.
I hope your Highlander readers can participate in many of
our great opportunities. Executive Director, Center for
ReSource Consevation, Keith Frausto
July
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Page 21
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July
2012
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PAGE 23
Highlander Health
Scientists Developing Drug To Combat Viruses
Professors at CSU and the University of Northern Colo.
are developing a drug that can stop replication of West
Nile, dengue and yellow fever viruses that continue to
plague two-thirds of the world’s population with no
clinically useful antiviral drugs available.
West Nile and dengue fever are vector-borne viral
diseases - pathogens that can be transferred from an insect
to a human - in a family of viruses known as the
flaviviruses. The National Institutes of Health considers a
number of flaviviruses priority pathogens because they
cause life-threatening illness with few drugs or vaccines
available and have the potential to be used as biological
weapons. More than two billion people are at risk globally
of infection by dengue virus, and West Nile virus is
endemic in 47 of the 48 lower United States. Dengue virus
has re-emerged in southern Florida and Hawaii over the
past few years. Worldwide, as many as 50 million dengue
infections occur each year causing roughly 20,000 to
30,000 deaths.
The two scientists are developing a drug that can bind to
a protein critical for viral replication and block the
protein’s function. The viral protein forms a structure on
the genome called a “cap” that helps the virus make its
replication proteins and protects the viral genome from
PAGE 24
July
2012
being degraded in cells. Without this cap structure the virus
can’t make the proteins it needs to replicate and the viral
genome will be destroyed by the cell.
The researchers screened large chemical libraries for
molecules that inhibited this enzyme, then used computer
modeling to identify molecules that were better able to bind
the viral protein. One of the molecules they found was able
to reduce virus replication in cells by more than 1,000-fold.
More work is ahead to improve the effectiveness of the
drug now that they’ve confirmed it works in cells against
several different viruses.
Geiss and Keenan have filed a provisional patent with
CSU Ventures to commercialize the technology. “We’re in
the process of testing these drugs against a number of
different flaviviruses and trying to improve how well it
works in animal models, so there’s a lot more work to get it
to the point where it would be used as an investigational
new drug,” Geiss said. “However, this is an exciting new
finding that has the potential to reduce the suffering caused
by these serious pathogens.”
Geiss’ and Keenan’s research is supported by the Rocky
Mountain Regional Center of Excellence at CSU - one of
only 10 NIH supported centers nationwide aimed at
developing novel therapeutics and diagnostics against
emerging infectious diseases.
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PAGE 25
Highlander Wisdom
Fierce Grace
By Melissa E. Johnson
Don’t tell me you want to hold
the whole world in your heart.
Show me how you turn away from making
another wrong without abandoning yourself
when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.
~Oriah, The Dance
Nothing fires me up like injustice. As a self-proclaimed
crime fighter and human rights advocate, I am incensed by
the horrific crimes against humanity that plague our
“modern” world, especially given all of our technology,
intelligence and means to achieve great ends. That we’re
still trying to abolish slavery in the U.S., for instance-some
145 years after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendmentreally blows my mind. And I struggle to find compassion in
my heart for the oppressors.
But whether we’re speaking of the political genocides in
Rwanda in the 90s, the female genital mutilation of women
in Somalia, or the Burmese government’s imprisonment of
its elected democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to prevent
her from taking office, or the brutal rape of women in the
Congo as a “war strategy,” or the “honor killings” directed
at women and children in Pakistan, or the use of religion
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and tradition by patriarchal societies in the Middle East and
Asia to prohibit equal rights and education for women, or
the many faces of modern day slavery and human
trafficking around the world-yes, even in the U.S., and yes,
even in the Boulder-Denver Metro Area-the oppression and
exploitation of people by people still exists.
From the wealthiest countries to the poorest, the roots of
human suffering run deep. And though I carry great hope in
my heart that with education, financial assistance, public
awareness, and the adoption of international human rights
treaties we can begin to penetrate the ideologies and fears
that give rise to these oppressive behaviors, sadly, all that
I’ve seen leads me to believe that the root of these ills lies
in our basic lack of compassion for each other and the
inability to see our connection to the One that created it all.
Consider the issue of human trafficking and the sale of
young children into prostitution. Not long ago I read an
article that effectively blamed these young girls for
choosing the path of prostitution! What about the fact that
these girls were sold by their families to brothels before
they were even of an age to make such a choice; deprived
of their basic freedoms and forced to perform sex acts with
men old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers? Doesn’t
it matter that these girls (and boys)-some of them as young
as 5 or 6-were treated as slaves for the better part of their
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PAGE 26
July
2012
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Highlander Wisdom
lives and that, by the time they reached a universally
Harvard grad and author of the 1971 title “Be Here Now.”
acceptable age of consent, they had no education or formal In this scene, Ram Dass talks openly about his debilitating
skills that could support them; prostitution was all they
stroke. He tells the story: There he was, lying on the floor
knew? That some people would sit back from their relative after having been “stroked”, as he calls it, looking up at the
place of comfort and convenience and judge the end result
ceiling and the exposed pipes, and not a single spiritual
of a tragic life as a “choice,” without any compassion for
thought entered his mind; not one. He-THE Sir Baba Ram
the circumstances, is perhaps the greatest crime against
Dass, spiritual guru-and not one spiritual thought.
humanity of all.
Laughing, he says, “It just shows I’ve still got a lot of work
But it’s not just a big-ticket issue. It’s not just about the
left to do...”
oppressor’s lack of compassion towards the oppressed, or
Ram Dass is not alone. For most of us, anyway, I think
our lack of compassion towards them. I think we all
it’s easier to love those we know than it is to open our
understand compassion as a concept, and some of us are
hearts to strangers; to look out for our own before we even
able to empathize with others, to put ourselves in their
think about caring for others; to side with those who are
shoes and understand their suffering; or try to understand
most like ourselves rather than finding connection with
why some folks do what they do. Sometimes we get it. But those we despise or don’t know. But to live with a
how many of us practice it in our day-to-day lives? In our
compassionate heart means that we extend our goodwill to
relationships? When watching the news or reading about
everyone, not just a select few. This is fierce grace.
events that compel us to point the finger of judgment at
I suppose we’ve all got some work to do.
others? How many of us live in that state of grace that
Melissa is a writer, photographer, artist and lawyer. Read
comes from viewing the world through the eyes of our
more on her blog at www.HeartLaw.blogspot.com, or visit
oneness, connecting with humanity as a whole rather than
her website at www.MelissaEJohnson.com.
carving up the lot in separate pieces based on our
differences? How many of us actually
extend our compassion to people,
countries, circumstances and ideas that
Wood
are foreign to us; those beyond our
Gas &
immediate circle of understanding?
I think truly connecting with another
Pellet
comes, in part, from our ability to
Stoves
understand their suffering. Yet even
when we think we understand, we can
never truly experience their misery, nor
Summer is the BEST
would we want to. But if we can see
time to get ready
some small part of ourselves in the
other person or their circumstance,
for Winter....
some common thread of humanity that
we share, then perhaps our compassion
Sweeps – Repairs
will grow and so too our desire to help
them. I aspire to live in this space, but
Installation of Your
there’s still much work to be done.
Which reminds me of a clip in the
New Stove
documentary, Fierce Grace, a reflection
on the life of American contemporary
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PAGE 27
Highlander Environmental
What Pesticides On Food ~ Birds vs. Wind Power
Dear EarthTalk: How do I learn about what pesticides
may be on the food I eat? - Beatrice Olson, Cleveland, OH
Along with the rise in the popularity of organic food has
come an increased awareness about the dangers lurking on
so-called “conventionally produced” (that is, with chemical
pesticides and fertilizers) foods.
“There is a growing consensus in the scientific
community that small doses of pesticides and other
chemicals can have adverse effects on health, especially
during vulnerable periods such as fetal development and
childhood,” reports author and physician Andrew Weil, a
leading voice for so-called integrative medicine combining
conventional and alternative medical practices. He adds
that keeping one’s family healthy isn’t the only reason to
avoid foods produced using chemical inputs: “Pesticide and
herbicide use contaminates groundwater, ruins soil
structures and promotes erosion, and may be a contributor
to ‘colony collapse disorder’, the sudden and mysterious
die-off of pollinating honeybees that threatens the
American food supply.”
In general, fruits and vegetables with an outer layer of
skin or rind that can be peeled and discarded are the safest
in terms of pesticide residues. Most pesticides are sprayed
on the outside of produce. So if you are going to toss the
rind of that cantaloupe, you might as well save money and
buy a conventional version. But a red pepper would be a
different story: For those items consider it money well
spent to go organic.
The non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG)
lists a “dirty dozen” of fruits and vegetables with the
highest pesticide load so that consumers know to look for
organic varieties of them when possible. The dirty dozen
are: apples, celery, strawberries, peaches, spinach,
nectarines, grapes, sweet bell peppers, potatoes,
blueberries, lettuce and kale/collard greens.
Another non-profit working hard to raise awareness about
pesticide residues on foods is the Pesticide Action Network
(PAN). The group’s recently launched website and
accompanying iPhone app called “What’s On My Food”
helps consumers know specifically which pesticide residues
are likely ending up on their foods (and in their bloodstreams). In creating the database, PAN linked pesticide
food residue data with the toxicology for each chemical and
made the combined information easily searchable.
“Pesticides are a public health problem requiring public
engagement to solve,” the group reports, adding that
“What’s On My Food” can be an important tool in raising
awareness.
While the website version of “What’s On My Food” is
helpful for advance planning, the iPhone app is handy
while plying the supermarket produce aisles to help decide
whether to go for organic vegetables or stick with the
cheaper conventional ones. For
instance, the database shows that
conventionally grown collard greens
likely contains residues of some 46
different chemicals including nine
known/probable carcinogens, 25
suspected hormone disruptors, 10
neurotoxins and eight developmental/
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PAGE 28
July
Discounts
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Dear EarthTalk: One of the objections
to wind power has been that the
turbines can kill birds. Has there been
some progress in developing birdfriendly wind power? - Marcie
Highlander Environmental
Mahoney, Boston, MA
avoid dividing important habitats like forests and
Bird collisions have been one of the primary negatives of grasslands, thus maintaining their suitability for wildlife.
the recent growth in wind power
“These first-ever federal guidelines
across the United States and beyond.
are a game-changer and big win for
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
both wildlife and clean energy,” says
(USFWS) estimates that way too
Yarnold. “By collaborating with
many birds are killed each year in the
conservationists instead of slugging
U.S. by wind turbines. “Birds can die
it out, the wind power industry gains
in collisions with the turbine blades,
vital support to expand and create
towers, power lines, or related
jobs, and wildlife gets the protection
structures, and can also be impacted
crucial for survival.”
through habitat destruction from the
For its part, the American Bird
siting of turbines, power lines, and
Conservancy would like to take the
access roads,” the non-profit
voluntary out of the guidelines and
American Bird Conservancy reports. “Some birds, such as
instead require wind developers to comply. The group
recently filed a petition with the U.S. Dept. of the Interior
sage-grouse, are particularly sensitive to the presence of
calling for mandatory rules protecting millions of birds
turbines, and can be scared away from their breeding
from the negative impacts of wind energy and rewarding
grounds several miles away from a wind development.”
responsible wind energy development. National Audubon,
In response to this growing problem, the USFWS
www.audubon.org; USFWS “Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines,”
released new federal guidelines in March 2012 for landwww.fws.gov American Bird Conservancy, www.abcbirds.org. Photo
based wind developers trying to avoid or minimize impacts courtesy of iStockPhoto:
to birds and their habitats. The guidelines are voluntary at
this point, but U.S. wind developers interested in a
smoother ride through various permitting processes and the
blessing of environmental groups-several were consulted
extensively in drawing up the new guidelines-are doing
their best to make their designs and implementations
comply.
The federal government’s 22-member Wind Turbine
Guidelines Advisory Committee, which included experts
from the National Audubon Society, Nature Conservancy,
Defenders of Wildlife, Massachusetts Audubon and Bat
Conservation International, developed the guidelines.
Committee members report they are optimistic that the new
guidelines provide a path to better protection for birds and
their habitats.
“The guidelines steer wind turbines
away from vital habitat...and toward
land already marked by development,”
says David Yarnold, National
Audubon’s President. “They give the
A delicate exploration
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service a place
of the life of America’s
greatest woman poet,
at the table for siting decisions; they
Emily Dickinson.
help protect sites with high potential
risk for birds; and they minimize
Award winning actress
habitat fragmentation.” He adds that
& Artistic Director for
the guidelines are based on the best
Miners Alley, Paige L.
available science and “provide a
Larsen, gives a tour d
roadmap to better bird protections
force performance of
Ms. Dickinson’s
across each of America’s four great
JULY 13
remarkable and
flyways.”
through
eccentric life.
Audubon pushed to ensure that the
AUGUST 19
guidelines address habitat
fragmentation, one of the biggest
1224 Washington Ave., Downtown Golden
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MINERS ALLEY PLAYHOUSE
July
2012
PAGE 29
Highlander Book Review
Series Of Contemporary Political Thrillers
By Tracy Reseigh
Transfer Of Power, by Vince Flynn
is the third book in Flynn’s Mitch Rapp
series (it was actually the first book,
but Flynn has subsequently written two
other books about the young Mitch
Rapp). Transfer Of Power is the story
about a hostage situation inside the
White House. Notorious Arab terrorist
Rafique Aziz and his crew take control
of the white house, and politicians and
military commanders have to unite to
re-capture control of the most iconic
landmark in the United States Of
America, the White House.
Aziz does not force his way into the
White House with explosives and
guns. Instead, he poses as a wealthy
presidential campaign contributor,
which gets him an invitation to walk
right in the front doors of the White
House. Once inside the White House,
all hell breaks loose, and within
minutes, the United States Secret
Service has lost control of the White
House, the President is in an
underground vault, and Aziz has made his demands known
to all of America.
Counterterrorism expert Mitch Rapp is made aware of
this attack minutes before it happens. Now, as the only man
who knows of Aziz’s reign of terror, and the atrocities he
will have no qualms committing, Rapp is the one who has
to get inside the White House to try and stop this take-over.
With the help of a select few, Rapp worms his way into the
White House and begins his plan to thwart Azis’ takeover.
Unfortunately for Rapp, dealing with
a crazed Arab terrorist is not his only
problem. With the President
incommunicado, power has been
transferred to the Vice President. Rapp
soon discovers that the Vice President
has ulterior motives, and he comes to
realize that he is fighting both
international and domestic terrorists.
Flynn’s descriptions of the White
House are very in depth. He describes
air duct paths, underground passages
and secret doorways in a way that had
me really wondering what was fiction,
and what might be fact. His
understanding of the political workings
in Washington, D.C., and his
understanding of the terrorist climate
around the world also created a story
where as a reader I kept thinking...this
could really happen one day...
Transfer Of Power is not the best
Mitch Rapp book written by Vince
Flynn. I have read the entire series, and
the books get better as he continues to
develop the main characters; however, if you are a fan of
book series’ and contemporary political thrillers, the Mitch
Rapp series is a good one.
Published by Atria Books, Transfer Of Power is
available at Barnes & Noble in paperback for $9.99. You
can also visit his website at www.vinceflynn.com for a look
at any of his other books.
Healing Body, Mind and Spirit
HANDS
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Please leave a message.
PAGE 30
July
Wondervu, CO
2012
303-503-6068
[email protected]
www.handshoofsandpaws.com
Highlander Poetry
Wildflower Logic
By Rosemary Wahtola Trommer - Word Woman
summer will pass
winter will wane
slowly take root
in whatever soil
you will learn
you find
to live with snow
to survive drought
there you will learn
to scatter your seeds
to reach for the sun
with no expectation
to honor rain
to take from
only then,
the earth
with your roots
only what you need
established
your earth-sense
strong
it will be many more seasons
your sky-mind keen
before you earn your blooms
then your summer will come
summer will pass
for blossoming
winter will wane
(Printed with permission from ‘if
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PAGE 31
Highlander Issues
Does Bark Beetle Kill Lead To More Severe Fires?
By Gail Wells/High Country News
The lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests of the
Intermountain West are reeling under a one-two punch:
more frequent and severe wildfires, and an epidemic of
tree-killing bark beetles. Once-green forests are filled with
red dying trees and patches of gray dead ones. From a
distance, the effect is oddly beautiful. Up close, people
often experience a visceral jolt, followed by a sense of
alarm: Can’t somebody do something?
Steve Currey has fielded his share of anxious phone calls.
“A few years ago,” he says, “we were under a lot of public
pressure to stop the beetles from spreading further.” Currey
is director of bark beetle operations on the sprawling
Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest in Wyoming and
Colorado. The outbreak there started in northwestern
Colorado in the mid-1990s and moved northeast to central
Wyoming. “The beetles aren’t killing every tree,” Currey
says, “but they are killing a majority of mature lodgepole
pine, and we’ve lost half our limber pine, too.” More than
116 million acres in the North American Rocky Mountains
have been affected. “People are beginning to understand
that this thing is too big to stop.”
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PAGE 32
Wildfire and beetle epidemics both have long histories in
Western forests. Their patterns have been shaped somewhat
by human impacts, but outbreaks, which tend to be
infrequent and severe, are driven by larger factors.
Scientists believe a warming climate is the main factor
behind the West’s more frequent severe wildfires, and is
also likely amplifying the current bark-beetle epidemic, the
most widespread on record. Warmer winters allow beetles
to spread into more northerly and high-elevation territory.
Beetles reproduce more often during longer warm seasons,
and more larvae survive winters.
It might seem that fire and bark beetles are locked in
some malevolent feedback loop, with fires inviting beetles
to devour weakened trees, and beetles creating fuel for
future fires. But “there were surprisingly little data backing
up that conventional wisdom,” says Monica Turner, a
University of Wisconsin landscape ecologist and coauthor
of a much-discussed 2011 study that examined links
between beetle epidemics and wildfires in the Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem.
The study’s findings - that beetle attacks don’t increase
severe-fire risk, and may in fact reduce it as dying trees
shed needles - may sound counterintuitive. But they are in
line with more than two decades of research indicating that,
while bark beetle epidemics and fire are entwined in
complicated ways, one does not necessarily amplify the
other.
Yet this recent study - which used a computer model that
simulates fire behavior to predict severe-fire risk based on
current conditions, unlike most of the previous research,
which looked to historic beetle epidemics and fire patterns
to unravel the relationship between the two - has drawn
sharp criticism, particularly from those who manage fires
in beetle-killed forests. Turner and her colleagues say that
large-scale removal of dead trees - often proposed to
reduce fire risk - is “probably not needed” in lodgepole
forests, which dominate the upper montane and lower
subalpine zones of the Rockies.
2012
Highlander Issues
Critics counter that the study’s methodology and narrow
geographic scope don’t justify its sweeping conclusion,
and that it shouldn’t be interpreted as a broad indictment of
salvage logging. This collegial wrangle illuminates how
messy - yet essential - it is to apply land-management
science to management itself. And it raises the question:
Should we do something with all that dead wood?
Crown fires are typically the severest fires: They spread
treetop-to-treetop and burn huge swaths of forest to the
ground. Bark beetles attack forests like a slow tide, taking
a decade or more to kill most (but hardly ever all) of the
trees. Depending on the stage of attack, a beetle-infested
stand may contain live trees, dead-but-still-green trees,
dead trees with dried-out red needles, and bare, gray dead
trees. The risk of crown fire is greatest the first year or two
after attack, when trees are still standing and there’s ample
fuel left in the canopy.
Turner, coauthor Martin Simard and their team measured
and mapped fuels in the canopy, understory and forest floor
in beetle-killed and undisturbed forest stands, then fed the
data into the computer model. They concluded that a
wildfire in a beetle-damaged forest is no more likely to
develop into a crown fire than one burning in a green,
living stand.
“(Beetle-killed forests) will burn perfectly well,” says
Turner. “The point is that they will burn no more severely
than a comparable green forest.” That’s because, in this
forest type, severe wildfires are mainly driven by climate,
not fuel quantity or arrangement.
But some wildfire experts maintain that fuel, and
specifically its moisture, is a bigger factor in fire severity
than Turner and Simard’s results indicate. Missoula, Mont.based Forest Service ecologists Matt Jolly and Russ
Parsons recently found that the foliage of red beetle-killed
trees is much drier than living foliage, ignites more readily,
releases more heat when it burns, and is more apt to throw
burning material into adjacent areas. This seems to explain
what Dana Hicks, regional fire management specialist for
the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, observed in the
mid-2000s, when massive fires ripped through beetle-killed
forests near Prince George. These fires, he reports, were as
intense as those in a green forest, but much faster-moving,
“with double, if not triple, the rates of spread that you get
in a green forest.”
Turner and her colleagues acknowledge that none of the
currently available fire-behavior models account for fuel
moisture very well. (It is devilishly difficult to get a
computer to accurately simulate a (Continued on next page.)
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PAGE 33
Highlander Issues
real fire.) But the team maintains that its model was
adequate, and that critics overestimate the degree and
rapidity of beetle kill and the ensuing accumulation of fuel,
leading them to overestimate the severity of future fire.
Because of the diffuse character of beetle attacks, they
note, a stand as a whole never gets as dry as a single dead
tree.
Lodgepole pine is exceptionally prone to crown fire, so it
made sense to study whether bark beetles exacerbate that
risk. But it’s not only dramatic crown fires that worry
managers, says Mike Battaglia, a Forest Service researcher
in Colorado. A hot surface fire, fed by heavy fuel buildup,
“is going to cook the ground and all the regeneration (or
seedlings). And if those trees aren’t old enough to have put
out cones yet, you have a problem.”
So what’s a forest manager to do? In most of the West,
widespread salvage logging is unlikely to become the
preferred method for managing beetle kill. It’s expensive,
and many affected areas lie in hard-to-reach wilderness or
other environmentally sensitive places. The key objective
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for managers in these forests, says Steve Currey, is to
protect human life and safety.
At lower and middle elevations, that means removing
hazardous trees from campgrounds and along trails, taking
out smaller wood from surrounding forest, and working
with communities to reduce fuels around homes. At higher
elevations, the most effective strategy is probably to do
nothing beyond clearing dead trees from popular trails.
Battaglia and Currey also argue that as access and
budgets allow, judicious use of salvage logging,
mechanical thinning, planned fire, or all three, in beetlekilled areas can reduce the risk of severe fires later on.
Such measures can also encourage an uneven forest mosaic
of varying ages that’s more fire- and beetle-resilient.
Simard and Turner aren’t saying that salvage logging is
never a good idea, or that it never reduces fire risk. Nor do
they recommend allowing beetle outbreaks and wildfires to
run their course because they are “natural.” But they do
believe that managers considering fuel-reduction projects
should justify them carefully.
Logging or thinning beetle-killed forests is often advised
for the sake of “forest health.” But there is nothing
intrinsically unhealthy about a beetle outbreak, argues
University of Wisconsin entomologist Ken Raffa, even an
epidemic-sized one. “Beetles are part of the forest,” he
says. “They play valuable roles, just as fire does. If we say
we’re managing the forest to promote ‘forest health,’ that’s
not a fair way to say it. If we’re honest, we’ll say we’re
managing the forest because we and the beetles are
competing for the same resource.”
This story originally appeared in an issue of
High Country News (hcn.org).
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Highlander Science
Method For Measuring Exposure - Toxic Metals
Two CSU professors have developed a simple, low-cost
method of determining levels of heavy metals in
contaminated air using filter paper, water and a little
chemistry. A device built by Chuck Henry, a chemistry
professor, working in tandem with John Volckens,
associate professor in Environmental and Radiological
Health Sciences, takes only minutes to determine whether
someone has been exposed to high levels of airborne
metals.
A new paper on the research appeared recently in the
journal Analytical Chemistry. “We hope to be able to
understand what tasks and/or locations in a particular job
have the highest exposure,” Henry said. “Millions of U.S.
workers are exposed to heavy metals, and if we can
identify these exposures in a cost-effective manner, then
we should be able to help mitigate the problem and protect
the health of our industrial workforce.”
How it works: The researchers first collect an air sample
onto a filter and then, using a hole punch, remove a small
portion of the sample for analysis. This sample is placed
onto their new technology, called a Paper-based Analytical
Device (PAD), which tells them how much of a certain
heavy metal was present. The PAD is roughly the size of a
quarter and made using wax printed onto filter paper. The
wax is patterned into a “circuit” that directs the collected
sample through a series of channels and into various
“reaction zones.” Each reaction zone contains a tiny
amount of chemical reagent that changes color when
specific metals are present. These color changes are
detectable to the naked eye and can be quantified using a
digital camera or a simple desktop scanner.
“Although our PADs are about the size of a quarter, they
actually cost less than a nickel each,” Volckens said.
“They’re simple enough that we can collect samples in the
field and analyze them on site in a matter of minutes. Other
methods take weeks to process samples and cost hundreds
of dollars per measurement.”
Initial studies in industrial areas have focused on copper,
nickel and iron, which can be toxic when inhaled or
ingested at high levels. Next up are tests with lead and
cadmium, Henry said.
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PAGE 35
Highlander Choices
Talking Vegetarianism To A Hunter
Nugent type of hunter, the other trying to communicate that
even though he’s a vegetarian, he’s not a militant,
In the end, all I could tell the guy was, “I agree with you. anti-hunting activist.
I liked that guy, because he had clearly spent a lot of time
I just don’t eat animals.” During our flight from Portland to
Denver, two major differences between us had come up:
thinking about the morality of hunting and where was the
He was a hunter, and I was a vegetarian. I listened from the best place for him to get the meat he loved to eat. I felt he’d
window seat, two days removed from a backpacking trip in put as much thought into why he ate animals as I’d put into
the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon. He told me he mostly
why I didn’t eat animals. That isn’t always the case when I
meet new people, and they ask: “So ... why don’t you eat
hunted elk and ate what he killed, and noted that the meat
he hunted was healthier for him than anything he could buy meat?” Vegetarianism can be chosen for political,
in a store. I nodded and said, “I know.”
philosophical, ethical or just plain contrarian reasons,
He said you can make all these trips to Whole Foods and
depending on the person involved. So when someone asks
you why, it can get awkward.
buy organic beef, or you can do what he does, and shoot
one elk and feed yourself all year. I said, “I’m with you,”
I try to give a benign answer. I usually say “I like
and continued to nod my head. “I just don’t eat animals,” I
animals” or “I don’t eat animals.” I don’t preach, don’t act
like I’m up on the moral high ground. I don’t like to argue.
said finally. “But I have nothing against hunting at all.” It
was a classic New West conversation, I thought, one guy
I haven’t eaten meat in six and a half years, and I’m not
going back anytime soon. Chances are that you eat meat trying to reassure the other that he’s not the wild-eyed Ted
most people do - and that’s fine with me. But the answer to,
“Why don’t you eat meat?” is exponentially more
contentious than the answer to, “Why don’t you eat
Brussels sprouts?”
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so is your dog. A hunter’s relationship
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PAGE 36
July
2012
Highlander Choices
with animals is different, of course, but as I’ve found in a
few conversations, it can involve similar awe and
reverence for animals as well as a meditative relationship
with nature that’s developed over many hours spent sitting
in one spot and waiting for an animal to walk into range.
I’ve never experienced that; when I see wild animals, it
happens at a lucky moment, because I’m walking through
their habitat and our paths have crossed, not because I’ve
spent long hours becoming invisible in their landscape.
But deep down, hunters and I seem to share the same
feelings about the wild. I understand that vegetarianism
won’t work on a global scale, and I understand that we
evolved by eating animals. But being a vegetarian makes
sense to me, just the way being a carnivore probably
makes sense to you. We can both agree that the mythical
West we learned about in cowboy movies is gone now, if
it ever existed. We’re a region of yogis, rock climbers,
kayakers, hunters, cyclists and ATV users, oil industry
workers, conservationists, vegetarians and omnivores.
And sometimes, we end up sitting right next to each other
on an airplane - where we have a friendly conversation.
Brendan Leonard is a contributor to Writers on the Range,
a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He lives in
Denver, Colorado.
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PAGE 37
Highlander Environmental
Loggers Give Ponderosa Pine A Lifeline
var. willamettensis formally recognized as a distinct
variety.
Settlers decimated the trees when they built homes and
cleared land for agriculture, and until recently, the pine
survived only in scattered stands between Hillsboro and
Cottage Grove. It suffered more than other species because
it grew on the valley floor - unlike Douglas fir, which
occupy hillsides - and was softer and easier to mill than
hardwoods. Animals that relied on the tree for habitat and
food - including the Lewis’ woodpecker and the slenderbilled nuthatch, which both nest in the tree - declined along
with it.
Today researchers believe that the persistence of
ponderosa pine here depends on the survival of the
remaining native stock. The valley’s ponderosas are beginning to rebound, thanks largely to former loggers like Volz.
In partnership with the Oregon Department of Forestry, the
Willamette Valley Ponderosa Pine Conservation
Association - a group composed mostly of timber industry
retirees - has worked since 1994 to preserve the tree’s
genetics, re-establish it on private and public lands, and
create a commercial market for its lumber.
They aren’t ecologically motivated: “Some folks want to
save every tree,” says Bob McNitt, the group’s executive
director, who brags about the number of trees he used to
fell. “We want to grow ‘em and make products for
people.” Yet their championship of the valley ponderosa
has been, in effect, an act of conservation. By preserving its
genetic diversity, the loggers have given this uncommon
tree an evolutionary lifeline. Had the valley ponderosas
been left to themselves, inbreeding within remnant stands
containing only a few trees, coupled with pressures from
development, could have led to the variety’s collapse,
explains Larry Miller, Oregon’s state
forest geneticist. “The association captured a solid sample of the genetic re(small classes, individualized attention)
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“Now, landowners who plant the pine
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By Catherine Ryan/High Country
On a gray February afternoon, rain falls in huge drops on
Chuck Volz’s 65-acre property near Springfield, Ore. It
drips from the brim of his faded camouflage baseball cap
and rolls off his tan jacket as he walks down a muddy path
crisscrossed by deer hoofprints. He stops at a young
ponderosa pine and frowns: “Horn rubbing,” he says,
fingering a sappy spot where a buck scraped off the bark
with its antlers. He hates to see his trees under duress.
In the last decade, Volz, a retired engineer for the lumber
company Weyerhaeuser, has planted roughly 1,500
Willamette Valley ponderosa pines - a type of the
ubiquitous Western conifer that’s found only in this valley.
Unique genetic characteristics have been discovered in the
pine’s chloroplasts, the part of a plant cell that conducts
photosynthesis. And ponderosas taken from dry eastern
Oregon and replanted in the soggy Willamette Valley
usually die within a few years. With this evidence in hand,
scientists are now in the process of getting Pinus ponderosa
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PAGE 38
July
2012
Highlander Environmental
between stands prevented the trees from cross-pollinating,
so their seeds were likely to be inbred and unfit for
survival.
McNitt and others collected seed and scions - branches
cut from adult trees and grafted onto rootstock - from many
of those sites, then partnered with the Oregon Department
of Forestry to raise them. The fruits of that effort now grow
on a 14-acre seed orchard. When the trees flower, wind
carries pollen from the unrelated individuals throughout the
orderly rows. Once the fertilized flowers become
pineapple-shaped cones, orchard employees break them
open to get at the seeds, which are distributed to nurseries
where landowners can buy seedlings. The state also plants
a small number on public lands.
When the association began its crusade to save the pine,
before the economic downturn, individuals and lumber
companies were thrilled by the variety’s potential. Valley
ponderosa thrive in poor soils where timber staples like the
Douglas fir tend to falter. They also grow fast, ensuring a
relatively quick turnaround from planting to harvesting,
and their lumber can be sold for shavings or even biofuel.
And though the initial fervor has cooled as the timber
market at large teeters, McNitt remains optimistic. “My
feeling is that demand will cycle around again,” he says.
For now he’s focused on increasing supply, urging
friends, neighbors and strangers to plant the tree with an
almost evangelical zeal. Hundreds of thousands have been
planted in the last decade, though the sluggish economy
means fewer seedlings are bought these days. At the same
time, the recession is indirectly protecting established
pines. The real estate bust halted the feverish construction
of the mid-2000s, and for the time being, forested land including ponderosa stands - is less likely to be sold and
converted to housing or strip malls, Miller explains.
Still, the reforestation effort hasn’t been a definitive
victory for habitat restoration, cautions David Hibbs,
professor of silviculture at Oregon State University.
Historically, the pines grew widely dispersed among other
species, particularly oak. Now, people are mainly planting
them in tightly packed mini-plantations. “You don’t want to
mistake this with restoration,” Hibbs says. “They’re not
creating the habitat that the pine used to be a part of.” It’s
better than nothing, though, says research wildlife biologist
Joan Hagar. “They certainly couldn’t (bring back the
habitat) if they weren’t replanting the ponderosas,” she
says.
If McNitt and other loggers get their way, some will be
cut down. But others will thrive and reproduce. And the
future lies in those seeds, says Hagar: “They’re preserving
options by keeping the pine in the ecosystem.”
This story originally appeared in an issue of
High Country News.
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PAGE 39
Highlander Conservation
Largest Single Conservation Easement
large, diverse system of protected lands here along the
Sangre de Cristo range and in the San Luis Valley. As I
make this commitment, I want to thank Secretary Salazar,
the United States Fish & Wildlife Service and Department
of Interior staff for their commitment to conservation here
in Colorado and across the nation - we are well served by
their leadership and forethought.”
The diverse iconic landscapes of these ranches feature
breathtaking vistas of high desert shrubs and mountain
grasslands, combined with alpine forest and alpine tundra.
The area stretches up to the top of one of the highest peaks
in Colorado, Blanca Peak at 14,345 feet above sea level. It
falls in the center of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range,
the longest mountain chain in the United States, and
borders the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.
Under President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors
initiative to establish a 21st century conservation agenda,
Interior has spearheaded a series of voluntary partnerships
with landowners to conserve rural landscapes while
ensuring ranching, farming and other traditional ways of
life remain strong. These initiatives include new units of
the National Wildlife Refuge system, such as the Flint Hills
Legacy Conservation Area in Kansas, the Dakota
Grassland Conservation Area of South Dakota and North
Dakota, and the Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Area
in Montana.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has
been working with landowners in the
San Luis Valley on a similar locallyled, voluntary, cooperative partnership
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keep working lands working. As with
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Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe recently announced
that noted conservationist Louis Bacon intends to donate a
conservation easement totaling approximately 90,000 acres
in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains bordering the San Luis
Valley. This easement will provide the foundation for the
proposed new Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area, which
the Service is in the process of establishing.
“This is the largest single conservation easement ever
donated to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and it
happens to be in one of the most beautiful places in the
country, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the San Luis
Valley,” Salazar said. “Thanks to Louis Bacon’s deep
commitment to conservation, we will now be able to
preserve a diverse mosaic of public and private lands,
creating a landscape corridor for fish and wildlife unlike
any place in America.”
Bacon, a longtime advocate and proponent of landscape
and wildlife conservation, owns the Blanca and Trinchera
Ranches located in the San Luis Valley and intends to
donate the conservation easement announced today on the
Blanca. The Trinchera Ranch is currently protected by an
easement administered by Colorado Open Lands.
Bacon continued, “This action will protect the Blanca
Ranch in perpetuity and create a key connection in the
GOLDEN MILL INC.
1 01 2 FO R D S TR EET,
303-279-1151
PURINA
Dealer
Don’t
Hide
From
New
Business
ADVERTISE
PAGE 40
July
2012
Highlander Distribution
These are business locations where you may
pick up a recent copy of the Highlander Monthly.
The Entire Issue is NOW available at our website.
www.HighlanderMo.com
GOLDEN / WHEAT RIDGE LOCATIONS
Foss Liquors, Miners Alley, Golden
Golden City Hall, 911 10th St. Golden
Golden Mill, 1012 Ford St., Golden
Golden Public Library, 1019 10th Street, Golden
Holly West Restaurant, Applewood Shopping Ctr, Wheat Ridge
Golden Skillet, 807 13th St., Golden
Meyer Hardware - 1103 Arapahoe St., Golden
Miners Alley Playhouse, Above Foss Liquors, Golden
Mutual of Omaha Bank - 770 Heritage Rd, Golden
ARVADA LOCATIONS
3 Sons Italian Restaurant - 64th & Ward Road, Arvada
Malones’s Clubhouse Grill, 64th. & Indiana, Arvada
Susan Duncan YMCA, 6350 Eldridge, Arvada
Town Center Liquors, 14455 W. 64th Ave., Arvada
West Bros. Feed & Tack Repair, N. Indiana St., Arvada
COAL CREEK CANYON LOCATIONS
Canyon Liquor, Hyw 72, Coal Creek Canyon
CCCIA 31528 Hwy 72, Coal Creek Canyon
Kwik Mart, Hwy 72, Coal Creek Canyon
Westfalen Hof Restaurant, 32138 Hwy 72
Wondervu Cafe, Wondervu, Coal Creek Canyon
Roast & Toast Cafe, 1030 Johnson Road, Golden
CENTRAL CITY / BLACK HAWK LOCATIONS
BOULDER LOCATIONS
Central City Information Center, Central City
Central City Post Office Lobby, Central City
Dostal Alley-Brewery & Casino, Central City
Gilpin County Courthouse, Central City
Mountain Family Health Center - Black Hawk
Boulder Broker Hotel, 30th & Baseline, Boulder
Boulder Municipal Federal Credit Union, 2800 Arapahoe,
Dark Horse Saloon, 2922 Baseline, Boulder
Eads News & Smoke Shop - Canyon & 28th Street, Boulder
Flatirons Health Club - Foothills Parkway, Boulder
Holiday Inn Express Hotel, N. Broadway, Boulder
modmarket, 1600 28th St., #1212, Boulder
Moe’s Bagels, N. Broadway, Boulder
Mountain Sun Restaurant, East Pearl Street, Boulder
Murphy’s Restaurant - Table Mesa Shopping Ctr, Boulder
Page Two Cafe, 6565 Gunpark Dr., Gunbarrel
Play It Again Sports, Table Mesa Shopping Ctr, Boulder
Spruce Confections, 4684 Broadway, Boulder
NEDERLAND / PEAK TO PEAK LOCATIONS
B & F Mountain Market, Village Shopping Ctr., Nederland
Bales & Beers Country Store, 99 Dynamite Dr., Hwy 119
Best Western Lodge at Nederland, 55 Lakeview Drive
Dam Liquors, Village Shopping Center - Nederland
Gilpin County Justice Ctr, Hwy 46, top of Golden Gate Canyon
Gilpin County Recreation Center Lobby, Hwy 46, Golden Gate
Dory Hills Campground, Hwy 46, Golden Gate Canyon
Nederland Information Center, First Street & Hwy 119
New Moon Bakery & Internet Cafe, 1 W. First St., Nederland
Roy’s Last Shot Restaurant, 17268 Hwy 119, Peak to Peak Hwy
Mountain People’s Coop, First Street, Nederland
Rustic Moose, 26 E. First St., Nederland
Sundance Cafe, Hwy 119 S, Nederland
Taggerts, Hwy 119 at Colorado Sierra
Thai Restaurant, 155 Hwy 119 East, Nederland
The Savory Cafe, Village Shopping Center, Nederland
Whistlers Cafe, First Street, Nederland
July
KGNU is a community radio station, broadcasting independent,
news and public affairs as well as an eclectic mix of music
including world, hip-hop, folk, reggae, blues and bluegrass.
KGNU gives listeners the opportunity to take the media into their
own hands, providing training, equipment
and access to the airwaves.
NEDERLAND
2012
PAGE 41
Highlander Ad Index & Business Telephone Numbers
ADVERTISING
Graphics Galore pg 22, 34
Highlander Monthly pg 7, 10, 37
www.goGilpin.com pg 40
303.642.7878
303.642.0362
303.582.3101
ANIMAL CARE
Angels with Paws-Cat Rescue pg 35 303.274.2264
Cheshire Cat - Catios
303.642.0362
Golden Mill pg 40
303.279.1151
Hands, Hoofs & Paws pg 30
303.503.6068
Pampered Pet Sitters pg 23
303.642.7847
Vet Tech Pet Sitting pg 12
303.642.0477
APPLIANCE
Hi-Tech Appliance pg 13
303.665.0951
Indian Peaks Stoves & Serv.pg 27 303.258.3474
ProTech Appliance pg 30
303.642.7223
ART
The Silver Horse - pg 18
The Rustic Moose - pg 18
303.279.6313
303.258.3225
AUTOMOBILE
Carl’s Corner pg 36
Kysar’s Place Inc. pg 28
Mountain Man Auto /Tow-pg 19
Mountain Muffler pg 31
303.642.7144
303.582.3566
303.582.5516
303.278.2043
ELECTRIC
HOME IMPROVEMENT
United Power - Inside Back Cover 303.642.7921
Meyer Hardware inside cover 303.279.3393
Mountain Broadband pg 22
303.642.3858
Redpoint Construction pg 20 303.642.3691
Summit Up Prop. Maint/Rep. pg 34 303.582.5456
Trademark Const. & Design pg 17 303.596.6984
ENTERTAINMENT
Boulder Walking Tours pg 4
CCCIA pg 5
KGNU Radio pg 41
Miners Alley Playhouse pg 29
Whistlers Cafe - pg 35
720.243.1376
303.642.1540
303.449.4885
303.935.3044
303.258.0614
EXCAVATING
FARRIER
Town Center Liquors pg 10
BUSINESS SERVICES
Farrier Dan Miller pg 23
303.642.3834
Iron Horse Hoof Care, LLC pg 27 720.684.8287
Forbes Farrier Service pg 38
303.725.8471
Eldora Lodge pg 28
FIREWOOD & FOREST MANAGEMENT
Lumber Jacks-pg 29
303.642.0953
Brightwood Music pg pg 17
FURNITURE
Brent Applegit pg 34
The Silver Horse - pg 18
The Rustic Moose - pg 18
CLOTHING
Indian Peaks Stoves & Serv.-pg 5 303.258.3474
The Rustic Moose - pg 18
303.258.3225
COMPUTER SERVICE & REPAIR
July
LODGING
303.642.7181
MUSIC
303.258.8863
PLUMBING
Keating Pipeworks, Inc. pg 31 720.974.0023
Morgan Rooter Service pg 8
303.642.3166
303.279.6313
303.258.3225
Carl’s Corner pg 10
PROPANE
303.642.7144
REAL ESTATE
GROCERIES
B & F Moutain Market pg 19 303.258.3105
Green’s Market pg 11 -30200 SH72 &Twin Sp.
Golden Farmers Mkt pg 39
303.279.3113
Blue Moon Real Estate pg 7
303.324.1764
Front Range Mtn Properties- pg 25 303.642.8800
Gail Kirby - Keller Williams pg 9 303.475.9370
Mock Realty-Kathy Keating -Back cov 303.642.1133
Summit Up Property Mgt. pg 26 303.618.8266
HEATING
HiTech Appliance pg 13
303.665.0951
Indian Peaks Stoves & Serv.-pg 27 303.258.3474
RENTALS
A to Z Rentals pg 15
Arvada Rent-Alls - pg 16
303.232.7417
303.422.1212
HEALTH & FITNESS
Kathy Gale, CMT pg 8
303.619.4708
Hands, Hoofs & Paws pg 30
303.503.6068
Massage Envy Spa inside front cov 303.423.3689
Naturally Chiropractic - pg 39 303.420.4270
Nederdance pg 38
303.258.9427
Therapeutic Essentials pg 12 303.642.3944
Zen Organics pg 37
800.298.9019
HOME IMPROVEMENT
Anderson Carpet & Flooring pg 27 303.875.5650
B & H Asphalt Paving pg 33 303.810.0531
Ceres Greenhouse Solutions pg 24 303.900.2515
Canyon Colors-Painting pg 32 303.301.4298
Cheshire Cat -Catios
303.642.0362
Colorado Water Wizard pg 36
303.447.0789
Mike’s Mobile Comp. Serv.pg 15 303.642.8306
Wondervu Consulting Serv. pg 6 303.642.0433
PAGE 42
303.940.5735
303.642.7663
CHIMNEY/STOVES/SERVICE
HiTech Appliance pg 13
303.665.0951
Indian Peaks Stoves & Serv.- pg 27 303.258.3474
303.642.3858
LIQUOR
BUILDING/CONSTRUCTION
Graphics Galore pg 23, 34
303.642.7878
Michelle Marciniak, CPA pg 15 303.642.7371
Mountain Broadband pg 7
303.642.3858
Wondervu Consulting Serv pg 6
303.642.0433
303.582.5230
INTERNET
Mountain Broadband pg 22
GIFTS
Anderson Carpet & Flooring pg 27 303.875.5650
Alpine Engineering - pg 16
303.642.7438
Arrow Drilling-pg 21
303.421.8766
B & H Asphalt Paving pg 33 303.810.0531
Keating Pipeworks, Inc. pg 31 720.974.0023
Meyer Hardware inside cover 303.279.3393
Peter Palombo, Surveyor-pg 18 720.849.7509
RedPoint Construction pg 20
303.642.3691
Summit Up Prop. Maint/Rep. pg 34 303.582.5456
Trademark Const. & Design pg 17 303.596.6984
Rudolph Ranch, Inc. pg 20
Driveway Dr/Energy Excav. pg 14 303.642.0606
Silver Eagle Excavating -pg 30
303.642.7464
BANK
Mutual of Omaha Bank - pg 4 303.216.9999
HORSE BOARDING
2012
RESTAURANTS
Malones Clubhouse Grill pg 32 303.940.1800
Westfalen Hof - pg 26
303.642.3180
Whistlers Cafe - pg 35
303.258.0614
RETAIL
Arvada Rent-Alls-pg 16
Golden Mill pg 40
Meyer Hardware inside cover
303.422.1212
303.279.1151
303.279.3393
TAXES
Michelle Marciniak, CPA pg 15 303.642.7371
WATER & WELL
Arrow Drilling pg 21
Colorado Water Wizard pg 36
Doctor Water Well - pg 19
303.421.8766
303.447.0789
303.438.6669
Happy Independence Day! July 4th Celebration at CCCIA Hall
NEW LISTING!
Under
11536 Coal Creek Heights
Amazing 300 Degree Views!
3 BD/ 3 BA.
$549,900
33867 Ave de Pines Lane
Retro Charm - Amazing Views!
1 BD/ 1 BA
$169,000
Contra
ct!
Under
Contra
ct!
11970 Spruce Canyon
Desirable Crescent Park!
4 BD/ 3 BA $279,000
99 Rocky Ridge Road
Stunning Mtn. Top Retreat!
3 BD/ 4 BA
$324,000
578 Meadowlake Drive
Backs to Golden Gate State Park!
3 BD/ 2 BA $309,000
11340 Shimley Road
Majestic Log Residence!
4 BD/ 4 BA $477,900
SOLD!
NEW PRICE!
1095 Rudi Lane
Lovely Custom with Views!
3 BD/ 3 BA. $299,900
Contra
Under
82 St. Vrain Trail
Contemporary Mtn. Retreat
3 BD/ 3 BA.
$395,000
ct!
105 Stone Cliff Circle
Beautifully Crafted – VIEWS!
3 BD/ 3 BA. $599,900
Under
96 Elliot Lane
Your Sanctuary is Here!
3 BD/ 2 BA $324,900
Contra
ct!
34862 Pine Ridge
5 Ac! Beautiful Remodel!
4 BD/ 3 BA $449,000
Divide Views!
SOLD!
11835 Nob Way
Remodeled Throughout!
3 BD/ 2 BA $294,000
NEW LISTING!
SUPER PRICE!
33080 Janelle Circle
Panoramic Views Abound!
3 BD/ 4 BA $349,000
Contra
426 Indian Peak Road
2.03 Ac Nicely Wooded Lot.
3 BD/ 2 BA $229,000
NEW LISTING!
NEW LISTING!
Under
3072 Coal Creek Canyon
Top to Bottom Remodel!
3 BD/ 1 BA $169,900
307 Divide View
Updated w/garage, shed & sep. cabin
2 BD/ 1 BA $199,900
Great Buy!
ct!
33848 Ave de Pines Lane
Bring Your BIG Toys Here! Parking
for 6! 3 BD/ 2 BA
$279,000
Please call Kathy for
information on
Vacant Land
430 Creekwood Trail
Georgeous Log Home - Glorious Views!
3 BD/ 3 BA $339,000
Kathy Keating,
CRS, ABR, GRI
EcoBroker,
Broker Associate
11673 Hillcrest Road
Charming mountain cabin!
1 BD
$89,500
11177 Brook Road
Beautifully maintained home!
4 BD/ 4 BA
$399,999
For additional information and photos:
www.kathykeating.com
[email protected]
303.642.1133