Harris Sherman

One of the least-publicized aspect of the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic, which has decimated nearly 2 million acres of trees in Colorado, is the threat it poses to the region’s power grid. Whole mountainsides of dead and toppling trees throughout the state raise the specter of disaster on the scale of the great Northeast Blackout of 2003.

Members of Colorado’s environmental community liked the selection Monday by Gov. Bill Ritter of Jim Martin, head of the Department of Public Health and Environment, to take over for Harris Sherman as executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
“Martin’s leadership on the state air commission was essential to cutting mercury pollution 90 [...]

Gov. Bill Ritter Monday announced Jim Martin, head of the Department of Public Health and Environment, will take over for Harris Sherman as executive director of the Department of Natural Resources.
Sherman earlier this month was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment, with oversight of [...]

In what the Pew Environment Group has dubbed “Unofficial Colorado Roadless Week,” opponents of the state’s controversial policy aimed at protecting 4.4 million acres of mostly undeveloped public lands will converge on Denver’s Civic Center Park at noon on Thursday after a three-week road show in 10 Colorado cities.
Towing a 16-foot-long wall covered with snapshots [...]

Water experts are meeting en masse in Denver today and Wednesday to try to figure out how to plan for an expected doubling of Colorado’s population to 10 million people by 2050, according the Durango Herald.
State water officials, in conjunction with the Western States Water Council, are trying to sort out conflicts between growing residential [...]

Some conservationists praised the Obama administration’s nomination Thursday of Harris Sherman to the post of Undersecretary of Natural Resources and Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Others aren’t quite so sure the two-time head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources is the right choice.

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — Marion Wells lives about 10 miles from “ground zero” in Garfield County, the Project Rulison blast site where a 43-kiloton nuclear device was exploded nearly 8,500 feet underground in 1969 in an effort to free up commercially viable natural gas.

Harris Sherman, director of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, is being floated as a possible candidate for a Department of Agriculture undersecretary post that oversees the U.S. Forest Service and the Natural Resources and Conservation Service.

But environmental groups are already casting doubt on the possible pick, questioning Sherman’s role in moving Colorado’s controversial roadless rule forward.