Barbara Lawlor, Nederland. If the US Forest Service thought that opponents to Eldora Mountain Resort expansion down to Middle Boulder Creek consisted of a handful of Eldora NIMBYs, last Tuesday’s Forest Festival fundraising concert should have changed their minds.

The fundraiser held in the Nederland Community Center auditorium brought in 400 people and enough money, and then some, to pay the attorney who filed formal objections about the expansion.

With local well-known musicians offering their time and talent, it was not only a spectacular musical event, the concert turned out to be reminiscent of the days when just plain folks took it upon themselves to fight large corporations to save pieces of land that were precious to them. Bill Ikler representing the Sierra Club said it was a David and Goliath story.

Vince Herman of Leftover Salmon, Gipsy Moon, Elephant Revival members, Banshee Tree and Julie Davis took the stage, speaking their minds and singing their hearts as the packed house roared its support of saving the Hessie wetlands in Eldora.

Vince Herman opened the concert saying, “This is about a community coming together to control its own destiny.”

Julie Davis, local songwriter and singer, has sung of many journeys into nature and the ecology of living things. She quoted, “For every wild thing on the planet, their future depends on mankind.” She told a story that ended up revealing that the true owners of the land are the animals and vegetation that inhabit it.

“Man is not the owner, but the steward of the land,” she said. “Edges safe magic, the places of wonder and diversity where the wetlands meets a meadow. We have come here tonight as stewards of the land in Hessie.”

After growing up in West Virginia and seeing the mountain tops being sliced off for surface mining, Vince Herman says he knows that money gets in the way of protecting the land. He says that Eldora now has 30 acres of wetlands and they will always ask for more.

He put his own Eldora words to a West Virginia mountain style monster machine song, a cappella, dedicating it to Binx Rugg, an Eldora miner who purchased the property with the intention of “keeping it clean.”

Bill Ikler, said he has been working with the Middle Boulder Creek coalition since 2010, fighting to keep the resort from spreading into the Hessie wetlands, from building a construction/emergency bridge across the creek. He said he would be meeting with the Forest Service on July 1 to negotiate a compromise about the expansion.

“We don’t want it all,” he said. “We just don’t want the ski area to get it all.”

Ikler said he came to Nederland in the early 70s and often hiked to Lost Lake. He is worried that if the resort builds a bridge across the creek, no one knows how far they will go. Both the Town of Nederland and Boulder County have filed objections with the Forest Service and a count of the responses have been 900-100 against the expansion.

Elephant Revival member Bonnie Paine said 90 percent of her songs are inspired by wetlands and rivers and she felt it was an honor to be a part of the Hessie benefit. “I Don’t want to move mountains, I like them just where they are.”

Attorney Mike Chiropolos took the stage to say he is all for developing the resort with infill, not expansion. He described the resort as a spoiled child who wants everything, right now. He described the Forest Service as a girl who can’t say no.

“We are going to give them a fight,” he shouted, raising a list of permits that had been submitted and denied. “Are you listening, Forest Service?”

He said the USFS is not following its own forest plan.  He said the interface with elk and now moose means there is the potential for conflict and danger. He said there should be no expansion in either direction.

Banshee Tree took the stage. The Ward Artists in Residence rocked the house. “Let’s make history and save the wetlands,” they rallied.

At the end of the concert all of the musicians were on stage jamming. The audience rose to its feet and danced and event coordinator Kim Stefane counted the door money and the silent auction money and said they were ready to move forward with the fight to stop the Eldora expansion.