DENVER - A report due out today puts it succinctly: Colorado and the West are the best when it comes to job growth and economic development.

The report from Headwaters Economics finds the West's employment grew by 152 percent during the last 40 years, compared with a national growth average of 78 percent in the same time period. Towns near national parks or wilderness saw their jobs jump by nearly 350 percent.

Headwaters Economics associate director Benjamin Alexander says these aren't just low-paying tourism jobs or jobs in the energy industry. He says the growth is in the high-paying service sector, which in Colorado includes health care, the science and tech industry, and real estate and financial services.

"In the western United States - and Colorado is a great example of this - our success is based on our ability to attract talented, skilled people. Our public lands are a tremendous asset in our competition for those knowledge workers."

Some critics in Congress have suggested the United States should get rid of its public lands because the resources could be better used in private hands. However, Alexander says the report shows just the opposite - that access to public lands is one of the reasons why these businesses are settling in Colorado and the West.

Boulder-based social-media marketing firm Movement Strategy is one of those service industries. For that company, says co-founder Eric Dieter, the old real estate adage proved true: it was all about location, location, location.

"It's just kind of a place where the stars aligned for us. It's great for our industry. It's great for us personally. If I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn't have changed anything."

Alexander says it's not just the typical Front Range hubs such as Boulder or Golden that are booming. Even more isolated towns such as Salida in central Colorado or Glenwood Springs on the Western Slope are benefiting from the trend.

"That's what's amazing. It's driven part by the more footloose nature of today's industry. So, they can locate in other places, and they're finding that they can use delivery services, Internet and regional airports as a way to stay connected."

The report looks at the economies of 11 Western states: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington. The full report is available online at headwaterseconomics.org.


get more stories like this via email

Conservation groups are rejoicing over the decision Friday by the Biden administration to reject a proposed mining road in Alaska.

The 211-mile Ambler Road would have sliced through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, severing the migration route for a Western Arctic Caribou herd.

Alex Johnson, interior Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said it was important for the feds to take a stand in Alaska so mining interests do not start eyeing other national parks.

"This is a very expensive, destructive and just highly speculative project that does not in any way support our clean energy goals as a country," Johnson contended. "And ultimately would permanently threaten the health and well-being of local communities and the tribes."

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski slammed the decision, warning it could limit jobs and tax revenues for Alaska by preventing exploration for minerals she said are important to national security, like copper, cobalt, gallium and germanium.

Jayme Dittmar, a photographer and filmmaker from Fairbanks, said the road would have been very disruptive to the 66 Native American villages along the proposed route.

"That'd be 168 trucks passing through close vicinity to the villages," Dittmar pointed out. "There would be hundreds of bridges built. It would dismantle a subsistence livelihood that's been in place for thousands and thousands of years."

The road was seen as a negative for tourism to the Brooks Range area. According to the Alaska Travel Industry Association, Californians make up 9% of visitors to Alaska.

Arizona conservation groups and sportsmen alike say they're pleased the Bureau of Land Management will now recognize conservation as an integral part of public lands management.

The agency's new rule puts protecting the environment on par with other land-use priorities.

Scott Garlid, executive director of the Arizona Wildlife Federation, said historically the BLM has done what he termed a "pretty good job," not only managing about 12 million acres of public lands in Arizona, but also protecting natural resources.

"They've got a tough job," Garlid acknowledged. "I think this rule helps make their job a little bit easier because it gives them some tools to balance those different demands on the 12 million acres that they manage."

Garlid predicted the rule will raise what he terms "harder-to-quantify conservation values" to the same level of importance as more extractive land uses like oil and gas exploration and mining. He thinks most Arizonans will recognize the new rule as a positive. A solid majority of Arizona voters across party lines say they are conservationists and use public lands for recreation.

To Garlid, the rule makes it clear the BLM is recognizing certain parts of federal lands, in Arizona and around the West, have been degraded. He contended restoration leases will be a good tool, allowing the BLM to lease acres to groups specifically to improve the conditions on a given landscape. He noted opponents of the new rule might see the leases as a way to "lock up" land but he argued it is not true.

"One example could be a nonprofit, like the Arizona Wildlife Federation," Garlid pointed out. "We could get a conservation lease from the Bureau of Land Management to do riparian restoration work, or work to remove invasive species along a creek bank."

According to the BLM, while a restoration or mitigation lease is in place, casual uses of the leased lands like recreation, hunting, fishing and research activities would generally continue.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

State and federal agencies are collaborating to increase the use of prescribed fires in the Northwest.

Prescribed fire is the controlled use of burns to minimize the larger risks of wildfires and smoke. It is seen as an increasingly important strategy as wildfire seasons pose greater threats to the Northwest.

Casey Sixkiller, Northwest regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said authorities want to work together to maintain forest habitats.

"Prescribed burn is one of the best tools we have for making our forests more resilient against catastrophic wildfires and they help to manage and target hazardous fuels and make for healthier forests," Sixkiller explained.

Sixkiller pointed out the EPA is involved because wildfire smoke poses risks to people's health. The collaboration is between federal agencies, departments in Oregon and Washington, and tribal governments.

Sixkiller noted the collaboration needed a formal agreement to move forward.

"That is what we've been able to do here with this agreement," Sixkiller emphasized. "To get federal land managers and states and us all in the same room, making sure that we're all on the same page about what success looks like."

Sixkiller added the collaboration has another advantage: It helps drive engagement with communities potentially in the path of prescribed burns.

"They have the confidence that the effort that's gone into planning that activity has been thought out from soup to nuts," Sixkiller acknowledged. "And that they have a seat at the table and are being engaged and their concerns are being addressed as we go forward with that activity."


get more stories like this via email