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Your Morgan County Daily Newspaper" The Morgan t-ounc 9a i ob4 • Imes DOW buy near Jackson `win -win' By JOHN LA PORTE Times Staff Writer 'This is an opportunity, awin - win situation;' Snyder area resi- dent Gene Peterson said of a Col- orado Division of Wildlife proposal to purchase land near Jackson Lake. Peterson and several other Mor- gan County residents expressed support for the idea at a meeting hosted by the state agency in Wig- gins and attended by about 50 peo- ple Thursday night. Several people at the meeting saw purchase of the land by the state agency as a more acceptable alternative than a 15,000 -acre fed- eral wildlife refuge in the area pro- posed in 1993 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Local residents fear disruption of local farming practices and water rights if the area becomes a federal preserve. The division is considering pos- sible purchase of about 1,800 acres of land adjacent to Jackson Lake state recreation area and owned by John Andrick, Robert Mehl and Digger Smith. The owners, division officials in- dicated, are willing to sell the property. The division has no condemna- tion powers to acquire land if own- ers are unwilling to sell, it was not- ed. The property includes some wa- ter rights From the Riverside ditch and is comprised of pastureland, farmland planted with alfalfa and about 5o small ponds. Wildlife abounds in the area, Tom Kroening, local division wildlife manager in the Fort Mor- gan area, said. Larry Budde of Brush, area wildlife manager for the division, emphasized that no decision would be made at the meeting on whether the division would try to purchase the land. He and other division officials emphasized that any purchase pro- cess would take an extended period of time — up to a year or more. Division interest in the property is not new, Budde said. The area has been evaluated several times, but costs have always been consid- ered prohibitive. Budde outlined three conditions necessary for DOW purchase of the land: — There must be local public and political support. — Partnerships have to be formed with real money available from those entities involved in the partnership. — Part of the money must be placed in a trust fund for opera- tions and maintenance ( Budde said about $50,000 a year would be needed). The purchase would have to be approved by the State Wildlife Commission and possibly by the State Legislature. Some lottery money might be made available for the project if the LOCO (Great Outdoors Colorado) board approves it. David Yocum, who controls nearly 13,000 acres in Weld County west of the area in question, said private landowners did a better job of maintaining and enhancing wildlife habitat than government Same and fish people. He pointed to his own experi- ence bringing in ___ on his propp-- erty and asserted that there are 8; 500 geese there now and deer in his yard nearly every day. Yocum also pointed to problems with hunters, citing a steer with an arrow in it "up to the feathers," two calves killed on his property and a stock tank riddled with bullet holes, and claiming that wildlife of- ficials wanted private property owners to absorb such damages. "We don't want you on our land," he declared. Greg Ehrlich, who has property south of Goodrich, saw the alterna- tives between state and federal land as being "between the devil and the deepp blue sea." He said he did not think local (Continued on Page 5) %,