wrote:


The lower stretches may be cleaner (probably mainly because fewer people
use them) but healthier and closer to the natural state? It's the lower
stretches (including the private stretches) that have had the fish kills
in recent years due to irrigation usage. There was a heavy kill in the
lower stretches a few years back. And alfalfa fields and grazing cattle
are closer to its natural state?


Wrong places - the first 300 yards or so below the dam are off-limits to the
public, the next 400 yards are public-access (where your aptly-described
"circus" takes place), and then, it's private for quite a distance, and while it
is a ranch, the river itself is about as pristine as anything in the area.


You're right I was thinking of the Delores. But the points are the same.

Any area that is heavily used (which means to me that it is popular
with people) is going to need "maintenance". But that applies to private
as well as as public properties. Usage will have an impact. If the
ranch you refer to is "cleaner, healthier, and closer to its natural
state" it's only because less people use it and the owner CHOOSES to
maintain it in this manner and not to develop it. In Colorado, as well
as the other Rocky Mountain states, more and more privately owned tracts
of land, especially along rivers, are being subdivided into communities
of "recreational" homes (which is the right for privately owned land).
Public lands are protected from this, as well as other types of,
development.

Just because something is private DOESN'T mean that that owner is going
to be concerned about the environment as a whole. It's NOT true that the
majority of privately owned land is "cleaner, healthier, and closer to
its natural state" than our public lands.


Willi