Bipartisan group of (Colo.) Western Slope lawmakers warn of ‘serious risk’ of Forest Service cuts, urge feds to reverse decision
With the summer tourism season on the horizon, a bipartisan group of Western Slope state lawmakers is warning of “serious risk” to Colorado’s public lands if U.S. Forest Service cuts aren’t reversed. In an April 2 letter to United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, lawmakers called for thousands of recently-fired Forest Service staff to be rehired. … The letter states that mountain snowpack runoff — the majority of which flows from national forest lands on Colorado’s Western Slope — supplies three-quarters of the water supply for the state’s four major river systems. “The surface water from these national forestlands supports drinking water needs, agriculture, industrial uses, recreation, and habitat for aquatic life throughout the West,” the letter states. “The potential is great for national forest management to positively or negatively influence the reliability of these water supplies, both in quantity and quality.”
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