NEPA--Environmental Assessment

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