4202

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 4202
• Author: Wilkinson, C. F.
• Title: Colorado Water and the Lords of Yesterday.
• USFW Year: 1987.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

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how -- with all our frailty and inadequacies -- to struggle back
into deep time, back to when the mountains were formed, back even
before then. Human arrogance shrinks way down in that long hori-
zon and the desire to conquer nature dissipates. The needs of
today take on a different cast when they are stacked up against
the millenia that it took the mountains to grow. Thinking like a
mountain comes closer to reality.
Through all of these societal changes, ideas, and many
other things, we began to realize that sound resource policy must
be more than the aggregation of individual private rights. The
many common pool resources called for a different approach as the
amount of private uses in the pools burgeoned. The idea grew
that private uses had to comport with the public interest.
Importantly, when used in a principled sense, the public interest
includes far more than diffuse interests, such as recreation and
beauty. The public interest also includes the obligation of one
private user to other private users, to communities, and, in a
larger sense, to a smoothly operating market.
By the late 20th century, a consensus has emerged as to the
root principles that should guide the West's land and resources.
These are not just my, or any single group's, ideas but rather
are broadly-stated precepts held by the vast majority of persons
concerned with the American West. The consensus -- a mix of
national policies, local prerogatives, market economics, social
concerns, and environmental protection -- encompasses these
ideas:
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