February 10th, 2009
A fascinating feature on the Pinon Canyon land debate
Behind all of the passion surrounding the military’s efforts to expand its Pinon Canyon training grounds in southern Colorado, this article stands out as a thoughtful, articulate explanation of what’s going on. Here is an exerpt from a report by Trey Garrison in a recent edition of The Land Report.
“[Mack Louden] thinks one of the biggest problems expansion opponents face is that the opinion makers and major media types in Washington and New York can’t fathom the scale of acreage under discussion.
‘For someone who pays $1 million for a 1,000-square-foot apartment or a quarter-acre lot, they think 100,000 acres is all the land in the world. Why not give up a little?’ Louden says.
But in this part of the country a rancher needs up to 100 acres to support a single cow-calf pair. In the warmer months herds are fed grain. During the harsh winters they survive on protein-rich native grasses. Louden, whose own 30,000-acre ranch supports just 300 Red Angus, says that when all is said and done a rancher with his size operation is lucky to net $35,000 a year. Most ranchers and their wives work extra jobs to make ends meet or to get health insurance coverage.
Louden and I are driving down a dirt road that runs between along the fence line of the existing PCMS. Kennie Gyurman, who lost his ranch in the first PCMS back in 1983 and is still mad about that 25 years later, has joined us. Gyurman’s beat-up Ropers, faded Wranglers, and angry disposition come across anti-military, but once upon a time he worked for the Department of Defense just outside Denver.
‘You can’t trust a thing they tell you,’ Gyurman says. ‘They’ll say they want one thing and take another. They’ll say they just want this much, and then they’ll take everything. We have to stop them.’
Opponents of the expansion such as these two aren’t worried about their land. Gyurman’s already lost his, and Louden’s ranch isn’t even in the Army’s sites. Their position is as much philosophical as it is self-interest.
As Lon Robertson told me last year, ‘They say they need the land to help train our soldiers to fight for our rights. I thought one of our rights was the right to own property.’”
