Protections Sought for "Serengeti of Colorado"

Until four years ago, I hadn’t spent more than an hour in North Park. The 8,000-foot-high valley stretching to the snow-capped peaks of the Park and Never Summer ranges and the Medicine Bow and Rabbit Ears mountains is stunning. The area in northern Colorado is also out of the way, about 150 miles northwest of Denver and practically in Wyoming.

But in 2007, I drove to North Park to overnight in Walden (population roughly 650) and woke up early the next day for a visit to a greater sage-grouse lek, or mating ground. The male birds puff out their white-ruffed throat sacs, flare their pointy tails and try to look manly for the females checking them out. Stumbling through the early-morning darkness to the bird blind, the other ecotourists and I got another rare treat when we looked up – a pitch-black sky studded with dazzling, bright stars.

Folks, we’re not in Denver anymore.

You throw in world-class fishing, about 500 moose, thousands of mule deer, elk and pronghorn, thousands of ducks, geese and other birds on the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge south of Walden, and it’s clear why some sportsmen call North Park the Serengeti of Colorado.

Will it also become the Bakken field of Colorado? Oil has been produced there for decades, but new technology and a few high-flowing wells are fueling excitement about tapping the Niobrara formation under parts of Colorado and Wyoming. New wells have been drilled in North Park and more applications are pending.

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