The Conservation Alliance

Southwestern Colorado is a special place.  It has it all - great rivers, high mountains, desert canyons and some of the wildest landscapes in the lower 48.  Within southwest Colorado are the San Juan Mountains region, which encompasses vast roadless areas and rich forests that provide critical habitat for wildlife such as lynx, elk, and Colorado River cutthroat trout.  The region is a destination for outdoor enthusiasts from around the world who enjoy its recreational opportunities, including hunting and fishing, mountain bicycling, backpacking, and horse packing.  Further, the San Juan Mountains provide a special quality of life - simply put, that is why so many of us choose to live here.

The only thing missing, for a bunch of outdoor enthusiasts with an addiction to working to protect our remaining wild places, was a viable campaign to protect the remaining wild places in the region as Wilderness and now with the new San Juan Mountain's campaign we truly do have it all.  

Here, at The Wilderness Society (TWS), our mission is "to protect wilderness and inspire Americans to care for our wild places."  At the heart of this mission, TWS' Wilderness Support Center has worked tirelessly to support grassroots wilderness groups and to develop and implement strategic campaigns to protect wilderness across the country.  Further, we invest in building, sustaining, and strengthening a broad and interconnected conservation community.  We are proud of our many successful wilderness campaigns and will continue to work with our partners across the country to develop and implement new efforts.  That said, Colorado's San Juan's Mountains are special - they are our backyard, and we are excited to bring our experience and expertise to protect wild lands we can see from our office in Durango.

While our goal is to see permanent protections enacted for the entire San Juan Mountain region, we have chosen to focus strategically on a proposal to designate wilderness in San Juan, San Miguel, and Ouray Counties, as well as a proposal for the Hermosa Creek watershed near Durango that would include both wilderness and a special management area designations.  This is truly a grassroots, backyard effort undertaken in collaboration with local conservation partners working to involve the communities in and around the proposed areas.  These place-based campaigns will build towards the longer term conservation vision for the San Juan Mountains region and Colorado's Western Slope by building broad local support for wilderness, developing effective working relationships with mountain bicyclists, sportsmen and other recreational interests, and establishing Colorado's Congressional delegation as conservation champions.