Ranchers near La Junta, Colorado were in federal court today to try to block the Army’s proposed expansion of their Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. The landowners want the judge “to order the Army to prepare a new environmental impact statement on what they say is one of the largest remaining blocks of native grasslands on the western Plains. They argue it’s a landscape that has been disappearing across the country.”
In related news, Governor Ritter signed a bill yesterday that prohibits the Army from taking any state land for the same training site expansion.