Remember that Joni Mitchell song: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot?” We’ve come a long way since the 1970s with the exception of the city of Durango’s surprisingly retro plans to develop and pave up to 6 acres of Oxbow Park and Preserve’s critical wildlife habitat and riparian buffer to service the commercial boating industry. The Parks and Rec staff is bulldozing ahead with complete disregard for the ensuing environmental damage to irreplaceable and much-needed wildlife habitat, wrecking a neighborhood and angering landowners up and downstream to build a commercial put-in on this calm flatwater section of the Animas.

The Colorado Department of Parks and Wildlife has expressed concerns to the city about its plans for commercial development at Oxbow. The Oxbow property is a spring and summer home to migratory birds as well as a year-round home to wildlife.

Despite this, Durango Parks and Rec told the City Council that it considers this GOCO-funded open space one of three “primary river access points.” (The other two are off East Third Avenue, at 33rd Street and 29th Street.) Development of commercial access translates into a wide two-lane road, turnaround and paved parking lots. Visit Dallabetta Park, across from Home Depot, and envision the beautiful Oxbow scraped and paved.

Oxbow is different from other city-owned parcels and deserves a different blueprint. Oxbow is a big piece of the dwindling 1 percent of riparian land remaining in the county. If managed for city of Durango conservation values, with care given to the type and volume of access allowed, Oxbow can offer an opportunity for people to experience serenity, some peace and quiet, and privacy, even the chance to view wildlife and birds. That attraction is beyond valuation, but it will contribute to the city’s economic and environmental value. We’re not selling a Disneyland experience, right?

Can the city figure out how to provide for conservation and wildlife while allowing limited river access for private parties engaged in paddle boarding, canoeing and kayaking? “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”

Susan Ulery and Linda Whaley

Durango

Anne Parker

Sante Fe