- Club 20 group says Colorado may need more sales tax.
- Wolverines may be listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Colorado may need more sales tax. That’s the opinion of Club 20, which represents Western Slope interests. Montezuma County Commissioner James Lambert, who attended the group’s recent spring meeting in Grand Junction, reported Monday that it supports a legislative proposal to raise the tax as much as three-quarters of one cent. The current rate is 2.9 cents per dollar. If it passes the legislature, the measure will go to voters in November. Lambert said Club 20 is concerned about highway maintenance funds.
Wolverines may be listed under the Endangered Species Act after all. A federal district judge in Montana ruled Monday that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acted improperly in 2014 in denying protection to the large weasels in the lower 48 states, where they number just 250 to 300. The service had proposed listing them as threatened because climate change is shrinking the deep snows they need, but the agency backed off. In his ruling, Judge Dana Christensen wrote, “No greater level of certainty is needed to see the writing on the wall for this snow-dependent species standing squarely in the path of global climate change.” Wolverines are native to Colorado but were extirpated here by 1920. Colorado Parks and Wildlife considered reintroducing the animals, but held off when they were not listed.
