Western Voices: Barbara Vasquez focuses on keeping North Park 'marvelous place to live'

WALDEN, Colo. _ After traveling the world during her career, Barbara Vasquez was determined to escape big cities once she retired.

``I’d been required to live in cities for my career and I’m not a city person. I had promised myself that I’d find a place that had more four-footed than two-footed critters,’’ Vasquez said.

With the help of a friend, she found a place that fit the bill _ and then some. A friend who had hunted and fished in North Park introduced her to the area, a north-Central Colorado  valley ringed by mountains.

The area, more than 8,000 feet in elevation, is home to moose, elk, deer, pronghorns and sage grouse. It is the headwaters of the North Platte River and several tributaries and is the site of the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge, a major nesting spot for waterfowl.

``It’s such a beautiful, well-watered, lightly populated place full of wildlife. I just really fell in love with it,’’ Vasquez recalled.

The energy and drive that propelled her through a career as a biomedical researcher and an engineer in the semiconductor industry have kept Vasquez busy serving on natural resource councils and roundtables as a way to give back to the community. She was appointed to resource advisory councils for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest and northwest Colorado office of the Bureau Land Management.

Vasquez is also vice chairwoman of the North Platte Basin Roundtable, one of nine such groups statewide working on water issues, and heads a North Park committee working with the Colorado Division of Wildlife on wetlands.

Running through all her work is the desire to keep the area ``a marvelous place to live.’’  Vasquez recognizes that energy development has long been a part of the economy, in addition to hunting, fishing, wildlife and bird watching and agriculture. Oil has been produced in the area since the 1930s, but it’s been ``pretty much out of sight, out of mind,’’ she said.

That will no longer be the case if development revs up as expected as a result of companies tapping the Niobrara oil formation, which stretches into Wyoming and Nebraska.  About 50 wells in various stages of production have cropped up since 2007 and six more are in the works, Vasquez said.

``My expectation, given the success they’ve been having, is we’ll see three to four times that many in the next few years,’’ she added.

The BLM withdrew some oil and gas leases proposed for North Park last year when state wildlife officials questioned the impacts on sage grouse. The National Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups protested the leases.

Vasquez and representatives of NWF, the Colorado Wildlife Federation and Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development toured Jackson County in late September to get a look at some of the current development. The groups have identified North Park as a prime candidate for a master leasing plan, one of BLM’s recent reforms intended to be a proactive, more comprehensive approach to addressing potential impacts.

The Kremmling BLM office is considering a new resource management plan for the area. Meanwhile, Vasquez and others concerned about the effects of widespread drilling are trying to ensure development is done responsibly. Spills could be devastating for wildlife, people and agriculture, she said.

A recent report by NWF showed a trend of declining mule deer and pronghorn populations along the Wyoming-Colorado line and the need for state and federal agencies to coordinate planning and consider the cumulative impacts of development.

As someone tagged with the ``environmental’’ label, Vasquez is working to find common ground with people who see oil and gas development as an economic bonanza.

``I try to point out the benefit of hunting and fishing to the local economy and to the lifestyle of the people who live here. A lot of the people who live here enjoy hunting and fishing,’’ Vasquez explained. ``It’s a soft argument when people are looking at the kind of money that can be potentially generated by oil, but a lot of local jobs you hope will be developed will be phantoms and you’re left with a mess. ’’

That can happen,she said, when big companies leave and smaller producers don’t have the money for reclamation.

``There are a lot of people around Colorado and from out of state who view North Park as one of the premier places to come hunting and fishing,’’ Vasquez said.