© Environment News Service (ENS) 2001
By Bob Berwyn
June 22, 2001

VAIL, Colorado, June 22, 2001 (ENS) - A subsidiary of Colorado's biggest ski company, working in partnership with a Canadian resort giant, is pushing to intensify development on a parcel of land that juts into a critical wildlife movement corridor.

The developer, Keystone Real Estate Development, is made up of Colorado's Vail Resorts, the largest ski company in the state, in a 50/50 partnership with the Canadian company Intrawest.

The development proposal could start a reprise of a fierce battle that took place several years ago between Vail Resorts and environmentalists over expansion into what was deemed by conservation groups to be prime lynx habitat.

State and federal wildlife experts say the current plan by Keystone Real Estate Developments known as the Settlers Creek development could prove harmful to wildlife. The development is located between Keystone Resort’s River Run base area and the town of Montezuma.

The developers want to increase the number of homes on a 16.3 acre plot of private land near River Run. Together with other developments in the area, the proposed neighborhood would pinch the wildlife movement corridor used by shy forest animals including threatened lynx.

Several of the rare wild cats have been tracked in the area recently. Wildlife researchers are still not sure what route the lynx are taking, but by connecting the dots from the various locations, they think the animals are using the corridor to skirt a nearly solid east-west wall of development that impedes north-south wldlife movement in much of Summit County.

Biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Colorado Division of Wildlife described the potential consequences of the Settlers Creek development in a series of letters to the Summit County Planning Department. The letters come in advance of a public hearing set for Monday, when the Summit Board of County Commissioners is scheduled to decide on the application.

Existing plans for the parcel permit 14 single family units, with provisions for greater density if the project meets certain wildlife related conditions outlined by the county’s development codes.Officials with Keystone Real Estate Development say their plans meet those conditions. They will ask the county commissioners to approve 21 single family lots and two open space tracts on the land.

The small increase in the number of units would not constitute a significant adverse impact to the corridor, Keystone Real Estate Development planner Thomas Davidson said during an earlier hearing in front of a local planning commission.

Keystone Real Estate Development officials said the recent designation of a large open space tract nearby will help preserve the integrity of the wildlife corridor.

But a May 17 letter from state wildlife biologists says that impacts from the Settler’s Creek proposal together with impacts from other developments nearby would most likely have an adverse impact on wildlife movement.Currently, the neighborhood in question is physically separated from the wildlife corridor by a rocky ridge, but the new parcel would be on the corridor side of the ridge, increasing impacts on wildlife.

The corridor between Keystone and Montezuma is one of only two north-south passages across an increasingly urbanized Summit County. A similar path between Copper Mountain and Vail Pass is being squeezed from both sides by winter recreation.

Conservation experts have said the corridors are crucial to maintaining biodiversity in the greater Southern Rockies ecosystem by connecting larger areas of suitable habitat. Due to intense development in all its valleys, biologists say Summit County has become a choke point for wildlife.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) biologists, responsible for managing threatened and endangered species, wrote that they would like to see the parcel rezoned to move development away from the corridor rather than seeing density in the area increased.

"This last connecting sliver of forest is already highly compromised by the proximity of ski area and associated valley development, and is tenuous at best," the USFWS wrote in a 1999 letter commenting on the Keystone Real Estate Development proposal. "If it is lost, all remaining potential for landscape connectivity from the Continental Divide to the Tenmile Range will be lost permanently."

The federal agency also recommended against development of other nearby private parcels and pointed out that a 1994 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wetlands permit for the project should be reviewed for compliance with Endangered Species Act requirements.

State law empowers local governments to protect land from activities that would cause "immediate or foreseeable danger to significant wildlife habitat and would endanger a wildlife species."

Based on that authority, Summit County land use codes direct the county commissioners to give "special consideration to wildlife habitats that are determined by the Colorado Division of Wildlife to be of critical or unique value."

In an internal planning department memo, Summit County’s environmental planners pointed out the "extreme importance" of the wildlife corridor and urged the county commissioners to consider the input from the agency biologists.

Conservation activists speculate that Keystone Real Estate Development is trying to press the issue before officials release a new plan for the White River National Forest and before the Colorado Division of Wildlife releases its first formal report on the lynx reintroduction program, due in early July.

That report is likely to show that lynx are using the corridor to find suitable habitat in the northern part of Colorado. Error: Unable to read footer file.