Roan Plateau rises 3,000 feet above the Colorado River valley and is known as one of Colorado’s more biologically diverse landscapes.  Home to pure strains of native trout and rare plants, Roan Plateau is a natural haven for wildlife and backcountry recreation.  In an inventory of the area, completed in 2000, BLM found that over 21,000 acres of the area included significant wilderness characteristics. 

In an ecological sense, it’s what’s on top that counts. The Roan’s cliffs give way to a broad and rolling plateau with quiet forests, sagebrush parks, and wildflower meadows. Several creeks cross the plateau before dropping into dramatic box canyons. One stream marks its journey down with a 200-foot cascade. These streams still harbor some of the purest strains of imperiled Colorado River cutthroat trout.

Every bit as much as hikers, hunters know the real values of Roan Plateau. The habitat is outstanding. It supports elk, mule deer, black bear, and mountain lion.

Rarity in Ecological Richness
Bald eagles and peregrine falcons make a living there. And on the plateau grow plant species that have been found nowhere else on the planet. The top of Roan Plateau is quite simply one of the most ecologically diverse places in western Colorado.

It is also one of the most popular for the human species. The top of the plateau is a favored place for hikers, campers, hunters, anglers, horsepackers, and others seeking renewal in the out-of-doors. Hunting alone pumps nearly $4 million into local economies every year, the ultimate renewal resource, good just so long as the habitat is good.

Drilling the Heart of the Plateau

All that we value on, and about, the plateau is at risk. In September 2006, the Bureau of Land Management announced its final management plan for the Roan Plateau.  The BLM’s plan opens the pristine and ecologically sensitive top of the plateau for gas development and emphasizes immediate drilling over Roan Plateau’s other public and traditional uses, including fishing, hunting, ranching, and camping. 

The management plan would also limit recreational opportunities leading to the eventual loss of the plateau’s backcountry and undeveloped land.  Outdoor experiences for hunters, hikers, birdwatchers, and mountain-bikers may be reduced to weaving in and around gas operations.  The proposed plan would significantly degrade the quality of habitat of wildlife, including big game winter range and streams that support the native Colorado cutthroat trout.  In addition, the plan would eliminate the wilderness character on the plateau’s wilderness quality lands and eliminate opportunities for primitive and unconfined types of recreation, naturalness, and solitude.

Unnecessary and Unnecessarily Destructive
By any measure, such a wholesale surrender of precious habitat and recreational opportunity is unnecessary. First, 94 percent of the natural gas reserves under federal management in western Colorado are already open to leasing and drilling. Meanwhile, only 30 percent of the federal public land already leased for oil and gas in Colorado is actually being used to produce oil and gas.

Second, at least 85 percent of the natural gas can likely be produced from the Roan Plateau Planning Area over the next 20 years (around one trillion cubic feet, as natural gas is measured) without drilling a single well on the sensitive and biologically rich plateau top at all!

That gas can be responsibly produced using existing production fields around the base of the plateau. There, roads, pipelines, pads, and support facilities already abound. More, steady advances in drilling technology will eventually provide access to much of the gas under Roan Plateau itself, again without siting wells on the top. Surely, we can afford to protect the top and the spectacular cliffs themselves while that technology evolves.

Please Take Action Today to Save Roan Plateau!
You can use our letter to take action, or write your own letter and send it, by midnight, October 16th, to: