This is the fourth in a series of posts about the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is set to expire in September 2015 unless Congress takes action. Previously: How LWCF Enables Restoration of Our Lands and Waters
Colorado is a changing landscape. Population growth, habitat fragmentation, lingering drought conditions, and the effects of climate change represent significant challenges for wetland conservation, and our wetlands are in decline. Since the late 18th century, Colorado has lost approximately 50 percent of its original wetlands.
Now, wetlands comprise less than 2 percent of the state, but provide essential benefits to over 75 percent of its wildlife species. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (or LWCF) provide critical funds to ensure we protect and restore what’s left of Colorado’s wetland habitats.
The majority of Colorado’s remaining wetlands are concentrated in the San Luis Valley, the world’s largest high-elevation valley, where rainfall averages 7 inches per year and water is both essential and contentious.
In his piece “Emotions Run Deep in the Valley,” Denver Post staff writer Jim Hughes captured the region’s tense relationship with its water resources:
“Sin agua no hay vida.” Ever since Spanish settlers first arrived in the San Luis Valley, this has been the undisputed motto here, a truism proven by fields whose promise is turned into reality by massive pivot sprinklers: Without water, there is no life …. So common and so fierce is the push-and-pull over water rights here that it has, in many ways, become “The Issue,” the defining topic central to the way valley residents think about their communities and about their relationship to the rest of the state and the West.
In the heart of the San Luis Valley, the Blanca Wetlands Habitat Area (WHA)— home to 207 wetland sites offering refuge and nesting grounds to over 150 migratory bird species—is a victim of this “push-and-pull over water rights.”
In the last century, over-pumping and redirection of surface waters for irrigation left behind dry wetlands, earning the Blanca WHA a local nickname: “Dry Lakes.” In the 1960s, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) intervened, leading a restoration development effort.
Now, LWCF has stepped in to play its part in the on-going effort to acquire the water rights necessary to fully restore and maintain the Blanca WHA.
In 2001, the BLM used over $1 million in funding from LWCF to purchase the Simpson Ranch on the Conejos River, which contains a deep water well adjacent to the Blanca WHA. The water rights acquisition was an important step towards restoring the wetlands to full productivity.
The BLM has made huge strides in managing the wetlands to provide rich habitat for the valley’s diverse bird populations. In 2008, the local newspaper called the Blanca WHA “proof of life in the desert.”
But the work doesn’t end there. The President’s 2016 Budget Request includes $6,346,000 in LWCF money to purchase 12,000 acres along the northern boundary of the Blanca WHA. However, nothing is certain. If Congress doesn’t act soon to reauthorize LWCF, the funding for this project—and the benefits it would provide to Colorado’s wetlands—would simply disappear.
LWCF is a critical tool for restoring our depleted wetlands; we can’t let it run dry.
