Save Pinon Canyon From Military Expansion!

You Can't Bomb Land and Ranch It at the Same Time

TRINIDAD, Colorado (Wednesday, June 20)-All Coloradoans should be greatly concerned by Senator Ken Salazar's continuing support for Pentagon plans to massively expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in the state's southeast, opponents of the expansion said today.

Despite overwhelming opposition at every level - community, county, state and in the US House of Representatives - Sen. Salazar continues to support the military's reckless and destructive plan to triple the size of the existing and underutilized 238,000-acre site. In his comments today, Sen. Salazar even outbids the Pentagon's public statements to date by calling for a permanent base to be built at Piñon Canyon.

"The will of the people and their elected representatives on both sides of politics is clear on this issue," president of the Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition Lon Robertson said today. "Rhetoric about 'win-win' situations is simply designed to distract attention from the stark truth that this is a zero-sum game. You can't bomb land and ranch it at the same time."

"There won't be any 'win' for the fourth- and fifth-generation ranching families forced off their land. There won't be any 'win' for the state's agricultural economy which the expansion plan will devastate. There won't be any 'win' for the diverse wildlife dependent on the region's grasslands."

Fourteen county commissions voted unanimously against the plan. Eighty-eight per cent of Colorado's state legislators voted to block the use of condemnation for the expansion. Ninety-one per cent of US Representatives voted just last week to stop funding for the expansion.

"We urge Sen. Salazar to just say 'No' to the expansion and help dispel the dark cloud that has hung over the Piñon Canyon region for the past year and a half. He says in his letter to Secretary Gates that he wants to protect 'the livelihood, property rights and way of life of the residents of Southeastern Colorado'. The best way he could do that is to stand with us in opposition to the expansion."

Mr. Robertson urged Sen. Salazar to meet with landowners to ensure he has a proper understanding of the dire consequences of the expansion plan.

"Sen. Salazar may not have had the opportunity to review all the available information. But those of us who have taken a long look at those consequences - ranchers and farmers, rural communities, environmentalists, historians, archaeologists - know that the expansion plan would bring about an across-the-board catastrophe - social, economic, environmental and scientific."

Mr. Robertson said Sen. Salazar's latest letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accurately states that promises were made in the early 1980s that the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site would bring jobs and revenue to local communities. Yet not one of these promises was fulfilled.

"The people of southeastern Colorado are not interested in new promises. Our economy is based on agriculture and those related economies best suited to the area. Why would Sen. Salazar want to transform the stable agricultural market economy we're rooted in into a federally funded welfare project? Why would we want transitory residents instead of generational family ranchers and rural family enterprises?"

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