Impact of Front Range growth alarms those who love public lands. A unique collaboration of agencies was formed to protect them.

When an unprecedented collaboration of northern Colorado public lands agencies set out last winter to gauge the depth of public concern over increasingly crowded parks and forests along the Front Range, one thing stood tall, like Longs Peak lit in gold at sunrise.

Surging visitation fueled by Front Range population growth, and its impact on sensitive public lands, is alarming to those who adore Colorado’s outdoors.

Related: “We literally get run over”: Golden Gate Canyon State Park braces for another busy season

“Nobody wants the status quo,” said Steve Coffin, executive director of NoCo Places, a group comprised of representatives from federal, state and county land managers who first came together seven years ago to tackle those challenges. “Everybody wants the future to look different than it does today.”

NoCo, which stands for Northern Colorado, was officially formed in 2019 but members began meeting informally in 2017. Since then, representatives of Rocky Mountain National Park, the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, the northeast region of Colorado Parks and Wildlife and five counties – Jefferson, Larimer, Boulder, Clear Creek and Gilpin – have met monthly.

That huge swath of the state includes four fourteeners (Longs, Mount Blue Sky, Grays and Torreys), Clear Creek Canyon, Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Eldorado Canyon, Red Feather Lakes, Boyd Lake, Brainard Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park, the nation’s fifth busiest with more than 4.1 million visitors in 2023. Members say they believe NoCo is the only collaboration of federal, state and county land management agencies of its kind in the U.S.

NoCo will soon publish a comprehensive “Conservation and Recreation Vision” action plan setting out specific goals. They will include adopting similar approaches across jurisdictions to issues like camping, campsite management and unauthorized trails. It also will educate visitors on the region’s indigenous and cultural history.

“You hear a lot of complaints — people hiking in a conga line up these trails, people going off the trail, impacts to wildlife and the environment,” Coffin said. “We want people outdoors, of course. It’s important for mental health, physical health. It goes to the core of who we are as Coloradans. But we’ve got to do something to manage this differently, to manage it better, in order to protect those things that make this such a special place.”

The population of the northern Colorado urban corridor is expected to hit 6.3 million by 2050, putting additional pressure on already crowded forests, trails, parks and open spaces.

“We’re not making any more wildlife habitat or natural spaces,” said Shannon Schaller, deputy regional manager for the northeast region of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “What we have, we want to do a good job of protecting for the future. We’re going to have more people, more development and more impacts on the natural world. Managing what we have, as best we can, is really important so that in the future we’re not living through the regret of not having done it now.”

NoCo members say collaboration and sharing information are key, because while they administer different jurisdictions, they confront many of the same problems.

“Whether you’re Larimer County or Rocky Mountain National Park, everybody is seeing a boom in outdoor recreation,” said Gary Ingram, superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park. “What does that mean? What are the impacts? This park has been working for five years trying to mitigate those impacts, with this influx in population. NoCo deals not just with that, they’re also dealing with fire, looking at issues that impact gateway communities.”

People prepare for hiking at the parking area of Brainard Lake Recreation Area near Ward, Colorado on Wednesday, July 10, 2024. (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

Impacts include full parking lots, crowded trails, trash and human waste left behind by visitors, among others. In addition, ecosystems are stressed and climate change raises the risk of extreme fire, flood and drought.

“We recognize as a state agency that we share a lot of the same challenges with our county partners and our federal partners,” Schaller said. “Rather than trying to duplicate efforts, we can get a lot more done working together.”

After Rocky Mountain National Park introduced timed-entry reservation requirements in 2020, other agencies considered similar tools. Now reservations are required to access parking lots on Mount Blue Sky, a program that involves the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, Denver Mountain Parks and CDOT. Arapaho and Roosevelt instituted a reservation requirement at heavily used Brainard Lake Recreation Area. Parks and Wildlife implemented a parking reservation requirement for Eldorado Canyon State Park south of Boulder.

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! Pioneer Newz is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.

Leave a Comment