Fifteen years ago, I was one of the first Trout Unlimited staffers to do any real organizing on western Colorado’s Roan Plateau. We’d identified the area for a potential oil-and-gas campaign, and we had staff dedicated to it, but, at the time, our early public lands work was so lean that actually getting boots on the ground was tougher than we could have ever expected.  

The Roan Plateau is a high-desert oasis situated north of the Colorado River that stretches about 100 miles or so west and north, starting just above the town of Rifle. It was once part of the country’s Oil Shale Reserve system, but has been managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management for decades now. It is, indeed, home to vast reserves of oil shale (and, more importantly these days, shale gas). In the mid-2000s, plans were afoot to turn the Roan into an industrial pincushion. 

From the perspective of the energy development team at TU, that outcome was untenable. The Roan, despite its desolate appearance from the safe distance of the Interstate 70 corridor, is one of the richest landscapes in all of Colorado when it comes to fish and game resources. Home to one the West’s most prolific elk herds and perhaps the most productive mule deer herd in the nation, the Roan is a public-lands hunting destination. It’s also home to a population of genetically unique Colorado River cutthroat trout—these fish have evolved for eons above a series of waterfalls that have separated them from the lower reaches of Parachute Creek, which is a tributary to the Colorado River.  

 But it’s much more than that. In the half-dozen or so visits I made to the Roan over the course of six years doing communications work for Trout Unlimited, I witnessed first-hand why the Roan is so special.  

The first media tour I led on the Roan we visited with Keith Goddard, a hunting and fishing outfitter in Rifle, and a host of media folks, including reporters from nearby Grand Junction, the Associated Press based in Denver, and a young reporter on assignment from Field & Stream. A colleague and I were in a rented Jeep on that first trip, and the magazine reporter was in the passenger seat as we slowly navigated a bumpy two-track into the East Fork of Parachute Creek, where we were going to fish for introduced brook trout among the grottos and the willow thickets of the canyon bottoms. As we trundled along, a lone mountain lion hopped in front of the rig and jogged for about a hundred yards ahead of us before slinking back into the aspens. 

I was flabbergasted. I’d lived most of my life in the West, in lion country. I’d seen lion sign. I’d seen lion kills. But, until that moment, I’d never actually seen a wild cougar. I looked at the reporter from New York City sitting next to me. She was very excited. 

“I’ve lived in the West my entire life, and I’ve never seen that,” I said. “You’ve been here five minutes, and you’ve checked that off your list.” 

In retrospect, I think that lion sighting was a sign. Over the course of years working on the Roan, which, for me, was largely about promoting its wild assets in the regional and national press in hopes of convincing the Bureau of Land Management and, later, a federal judge, to redo the region’s invasive natural gas drilling plans to protect the plateau’s sensitive water and wildlife resources, I came to realize that I and Trout Unlimited were stewards of one of the wildest places left in the West. 

On subsequent media tours, I came upon the largest inland black bear I’ve ever seen (and I was standing, thankfully, next to an AP reporter when we both saw it). I saw some of the largest bachelor herds of massive bull elk I’d ever seen before and have ever seen since. We encountered countless blue grouse, wild turkeys, mule deer, coyotes, eagles … if there is an indigenous species in the West, save for grizzlies and wolves, it probably still calls the Roan Plateau home. 

 And, after years and years of working with the Bureau of Land Management and through the courts (Trout Unlimited rarely goes to court, choosing instead to collaborate with all stakeholders for acceptable outcomes), Colorado Trout Unlimited put the finishing touches on the campaign in 2016 when the Bureau of Land Management released a final drilling plan that was the product of nearly two years of negotiation. The plan reflected a 2014 settlement that was reached between energy and conservation interests to allow development to proceed in carefully selected and less-sensitive areas. It was a plan that we —and, more importantly, the Roan’s wild and native trout — could live with. Energy companies could lease parcels of the Roan, but drilling in cutthroat trout watersheds was out of the equation.  

The Roan Plateau is still wild today, and it takes some commitment to get to its deeper reaches Lions still lurk among the rimrock, black bears still forage along the creek bottoms and the deer and elk are still there, waiting to confound trophy hunters for years to come.  

Importantly, as part of the  agreement, energy companies  would contribute to the restoration of native cutthroat in the streams atop the Roan—part of the agreement was a mitigation fund that could be used for fish and wildlife habitat improvement, including native trout reintroduction in streams atop the plateau where non-native brookies had taken over. 

 The Roan might be the perfect example of the ideal outcome to a protection campaign. Good media. Solid science. Adept political maneuvering. And, finally, compromise and collaboration. The Roan still stands tall and wild today. I’m proud to have a played a small part in TU’s effort to protect it for generations to come. 

—Chris Hunt

Idaho Falls, Idaho