NEPA--Environmental Assessment
NEPA--Environmental Assessment
NEPA--Environmental Assessment
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administered with shared facilities, personnel, and management guidance. For this reason, this<br />
analysis encompasses both agencies’ lands within the boundary of the analysis area.<br />
The majority of the project area is located just west and north of the Continental Divide, in<br />
extremely rugged and colorful volcanic mountains, with elevations ranging from approximately<br />
7,700 feet to 14,200 feet. The Animas River has its headwaters in the project area. The project area<br />
is principally alpine tundra, mountain grasslands, and spruce-fir forest. There are smaller areas of<br />
aspen, mixed conifer, ponderosa pine, and mountain shrub communities. Cirques and talus-covered<br />
slopes, along with numerous streams and lakes add diversity to the rugged landscape.<br />
Livestock grazing is just one of many activities that occur on the Silverton landscape. Livestock<br />
grazing has been occurring on many of these allotments since the 1880’s or early 1900’s, and was a<br />
traditional use of the area prior to establishment of the San Juan National Forest in 1905 or the BLM<br />
in 1946. Livestock grazing has been authorized and documented by the FS/BLM since the first half<br />
of the twentieth century, depending on the allotment.<br />
The project area has increasingly become a destination for recreation with over 600,000 visitor days<br />
each year (Virden 1999). Primary recreation activities include sightseeing and motorized recreation<br />
along the Alpine Loop Backcountry Byway, hiking and backpacking, viewing wildlife, fishing,<br />
whitewater boating, touring historic sites, snowmobiling, and backcountry skiing. BLM permits a<br />
developed expert ski area, Silverton Mountain, in the project area. There are two developed Forest<br />
Service campgrounds and several day-use areas in the landscape. Both the Continental Divide Trail<br />
and the Colorado Trail pass through the landscape. A large portion of the landscape is included in the<br />
Weminuche Wilderness.<br />
The Silverton area is well-know for its rich historical heritage. The early settlement of the Silverton<br />
area is closely linked with the discovery of gold and the subsequent boom-bust cycles of the mining<br />
industry. The area's mining history follows the general pattern of mining development in the San<br />
Juan Mountains. Exploration began in the early 1860s, soon after the discovery of gold in Colorado.<br />
Silverton became established as one of the early mining centers of the region (USDI 2004). Limited<br />
mining continued at one site until about 1994, but currently there is little or no active mining. Today,<br />
the area is known for its abundance of historical structures, mining routes, and other mining artifacts.<br />
Allotment Summaries<br />
Descriptions of each allotment in this landscape follow, including summaries of past grazing use, in<br />
order to put the proposed action in context with the intensity of historical use of the landscape for<br />
grazing.<br />
Deer Park Allotment<br />
This allotment is located directly southeast of Silverton, Colorado. Elevations vary from around<br />
9,500 feet to just over 13,400 feet. The northern half of the allotment, containing about 5,300 acres<br />
is administered by the Bureau of Land Management, and the southern half, containing about 7,300<br />
acres is administered by the Forest Service and is within the Weminuche Wilderness. About 800<br />
acres of private land is within the allotment, for a total of about 13,400 acres on the Deer Park<br />
Allotment. The terrain consists of high ridges and steep slopes with canyons throughout rugged<br />
mountains and some rolling to flat alpine meadows. The cover type on the allotment consists of<br />
some subalpine vegetation with Engelmann Spruce and subalpine fir plant communities, mountain<br />
meadows, and mostly alpine meadows dominated by numerous grasses and forbs.<br />
Recreational use of this allotment is significant due to most of it being within the Weminuche<br />
Wilderness and having the Continental Divide Trail bordering the entire east boundary of the<br />
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