Every week I think about what has captured my attention over the previous several days. Usually I bring you a cohesive, themed, carefully crafted (heh, right!) essay on a topic that I found of particular interest, be it Colorado politics, nature, photos, personalities or what one can find just wandering around the state. I freely admit it is easier for me to find topics concerning the Front range, considering where that’s where I spend most of my time, but it’s also where most press and media is centered. Today, I’m going to branch out a little bit. You’ll see what I mean a bit farther down the page.
Christmas Trees
One of the items that has never crossed my (or nearly anyone else’s path) is one about Christmas trees. I was spurred into thinking about them when I came across car after car traveling down US 36 with Christmas trees tied to the tops of cars with pride the same way hunters tie deer to the hoods or trunks of cars during hunting season. I also saw many more people in groups plunging over the sides of the steep banks as they sought the perfect trees to harvest and bring up to the roadside for mounting on their cars and trucks. Did they all have permits, or were they poaching trees from Roosevelt National Forest? I’m sure not everyone was being legal, but at least I didn’t see the Griswold family. The (one of my favorite journalism sources) High Country News had a lengthy article on how Christmas trees that aren’t from a national forest come to be on Christmas tree lots across the country for these few weeks of the year. They raised the point that there are very few regulations on Christmas tree plantations, especially with concern for how they’re grown, cared for and how responsible of neighbors they are to the people living next to these plantations.
Tree farmers say the pesticides help keep the industry in business by ensuring that they have a decent crop to get to market. “The reasons that growers are using herbicides are, number one, for seedling survival,” said Chal Landgren, former Oregon State University Extension Service Christmas tree specialist and a longtime Christmas tree farmer. Unlike other agricultural products, which are grown and harvested on an annual cycle, Christmas trees can take up to a decade to grow to a marketable height. Throughout that time, they’re susceptible to insects, fungi and competing species, any of which can hinder growth or ruin a crop altogether. Since trees are also shipped overseas, tree farmers also have to comply with strict rules for pest control related to exported agricultural products; a single moth or beetle can mean that a grower can’t sell their harvest.
And the risks to those working at or living near Christmas tree farms — who may be exposed to much higher chemical doses — haven’t received much scrutiny either. Most conventional Christmas tree farms use aerial spraying, which has a high potential for overspray and drift, exactly the kind of acute exposure that can, and does, result in illness. However, no systemic tracking and little research has been done on the possible health impacts on farmworkers.
There’s some more good things in this article on things that had never occurred to me. I have used artificial trees for many years due to a desire to not kill living trees for a few weeks of pleasure and also because I don’t care for needles dropping all over the room. I’ve used a variety of house plant, a pine, that I’ve had for many years that I have used both in the office and at home as a secondary tree.
Christmas trees have always symbolized certain virtues, and, in modern times, they are a cultural institution. But maybe it’s time to reconsider their ubiquity. After all, there are ways to enjoy the holiday without creating a toxic legacy. And there are greener choices available, too: If you want to skip the pesticides, you can buy a tree from one of the small but growing number of pesticide-free tree growers. Or you can decorate with something else, such as potted trees and metal or wood ornamental displays, and still have yourself a merry little Christmas.
The Park Covering I-70
A second story from the High Country News has to do with the new underpass for I-70 that has recently been mostly completed through north Denver.
A park on top of a busy underground highway was a first for Denver — a first, in fact, for the entire Mountain West. To outsiders, it seemed like a wonderful addition to Globe-ville Elyria-Swansea, or GES, a predominantly Latino community in North Denver. It featured an amphitheater, two soccer fields and a splash pad for overheated kids on hot days, though no splash pads were needed at the ribbon-cutting ceremony last November, when temperatures dipped into the 20s. About 160 freshly planted saplings, their bases powdered with snow, dotted the park’s four acres, and the Rocky Mountains rose dramatically in the distance. Plumes of smoke from the nearby Purina factory marred the view slightly, but overall, it was a peaceful scene, especially considering that 10 lanes of cars were speeding by underneath.
This I-70 story has been going on for a couple of decades. When we held a Saturday morning Kosack meetup at a coffeeshop in north Denver, this occupied a number of meetings as we discussed how extremely expensive, disruptive to the residents, how lucrative it would be for the construction companies that would be winning contracts and generally whether this would, on the whole, benefit or hurt the area that would have this imposed up on the people there. The construction is now mostly done, but there are still many issues being discussed — the increasing land prices found everywhere in Denver have occurred in this neighborhood, displacing longtime residents and businesses. There have been many administrations of Denver and the state government and all of those politicians have had their say in how the project has grown and changed. Peripheral projects have also been affected, including the National Western Center, which has gone through many proposals as people try and figure out what to do with it.
Expanding a site steeped in cowboy mythology in a community long erased by such whitewashed versions of the West was itself controversial. Dispossessing more residents of their homes was even more contentious. By 2021, Hancock had failed to raise sufficient funding, and the full expansion stalled. Now, the coalition wants to get those 42 acres back into community hands.
But the city has not always been helpful. Espino recounted a meeting in late 2017 between coalition members and Erik Soliván, head of an office called Housing and Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE). The coalition asked for funding for Tierra Colectiva, but Soliván was dismissive. “This guy sat there and disrespectfully told mostly women, ‘You’re never gonna see a dime of the city’s dollars,’” recalled Espino. (When asked for comment, a city spokesperson replied that Soliván no longer worked there, and that the HOPE office has since been subsumed into another department.)
But the coalition persisted, and CdeBaca fought for it from City Hall. In 2018, as part of the partial cover’s “environmental justice mitigation measures,” CDOT awarded it $2 million to develop affordable housing. In the years since, the trust has received $5 million more and built or rehabilitated 13 homes. By next year, it hopes to increase the number to 22.
As someone who lived in Denver (not this area) during this time, this was one of the major land-use issues of the time, and it seemed like much of this was being decided from outside the neighborhood and then presented to the residents as decided. I was pleased to see that the residents did have some input on how it would be developed and I look forward to visiting the area when I am able to spend some time driving around Denver — maybe during some long summer days rather than through snowy, short days.
Wolves
My last article has to do with the impending arrival of wolves to our state. The result of a ballot initiative from 2020, passed by a bare minimum, almost entirely by 13 well-populated counties out-voting the 51 mostly rural counties of the state, 50.9% to 40.1%, or by less than 60,000 votes. The wolves must start being introduced by the end of this month. Colorado’s Parks and Wildlife has had some problems getting states to agree to give up some wolves to Colorado, and Wyoming hunters are waiting for any wolves to wander north from Colorado, because the moment they set foot in Wyoming, they are, quite literally, fair game.
The Denver Post had a good summary of how the issue developed and where things stand as the first wolves get set for release in Colorado. So far, CPW has not specified just where the wolves are going to be released and part of the reason is that they believe the wolves will disperse up to 70 miles from where they’re released. The wolves are protected unless they’re found in the act of killing humans (not happened in Colorado) or livestock (including working dogs), but I’m not sure if pets are included in that — somehow I would think they would be considering how people feel about their pets.
The article goes into depth about how ranchers can try and deter wolves, how CPW will react to conflicts between wolves and livestock and how those who support wild carnivores in wilderness can support the livestock and ranchers who have to live in that wilderness as well.
As always, I look forward to your comments on these issues and any other open thread items. The floor is yours...