Jason Blevins
Outdoors/Business Reporter
Sneak Peek of the Week
Outdoor recreation, conservation groups work to maintain momentum after defeating public land sale proposal
The Lunch Loops trails on BLM land adjacent to Grand Junction — seen here in December 2021 — were identified for possible sale to housing developers in a recent federal proposal. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)“It was like a declaration of war.”
— Sen. John Hickenlooper, of the public outcry over a plan to sell federally managed lands
62,000
Emails fielded by Sen. Hickenlooper’s office in the weeks following publication of a plan to mandate land sales by the Forest Service and BLM
At first, Sen. John Hickenlooper didn’t think Sen. Mike Lee’s plan to force the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 3 million acres was real. But he saw the Utah senator’s proposal. And then came the outcry.
More than 62,000 emails and 5,000 calls in the first couple weeks. All but a few in vehement opposition to Lee’s plan.
“We only have eight people working the phones. I should be giving those guys medals,” Hickenlooper said. “People were fired up. It was like a declaration of war.”
The overwhelming cascade of opposition killed Lee’s plan. It was a rare display of unity by a cacophonous and disparate band of recreation and conservation advocates. For years, organizers have labored to harness the passion of that group and turn it into political power. It’s been a task, trying to unite wilderness hikers with motorized users, power boaters with paddlers, hunters with wildlife watchers and preservationists with trail builders.
Now, the challenge is keeping those diverse interests allied in support of public lands.
“We won this fight but the battle goes on,” said Scott Fitzwilliams, who earlier this year resigned from his 15-year post leading the 2.3 million-acre White River National Forest as the Forest Service’s workforce and budget were slashed. “If the actual sale is behind us there is still a lot that needs to be done and voiced as far as continuing the stewardship of these lands if we want them around for future generations. The sale of public lands was a nuclear option but there’s real danger in the long-term neglect of these places.”
In Denver on Wednesday, Aug. 13, a coalition of conservation and outdoor recreation groups will begin a five-stop road show to help keep those passions for public lands inflamed. The Keep Parks Public campaign is meant to stir opposition to a 15% reduction in staff at the Forest Service, an 11% reduction in the Interior Department workforce, proposed cuts to the Land and Water Conservation Fund and an expected return to the plan to start selling public lands.
“These threats are not gonna stop,” Fitzwilliams said. “We need to maintain this enthusiasm not just to prevent the sale of public land but for the long-term investment and stewardship of our 500 million acres of land across the country.”
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In Their Words
Nederland’s Teens Inc. wants more kids to recognize they belong outdoors
Marcus “MJ” Jiner, left, of Denver, and Ella Albrecht, of Gilpin County, laugh while using handsaws to remove dead branches from trees during a fire mitigation project May 18 at Eldorado Canyon State Park organized by Teens Inc. as part of the Outdoor Belonging Project. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)“I got to hear outside nature.”
— Marcus “MJ” Jiner, a 14-year-old from Montbello after an Outdoor Belonging Project camping trip along the Arkansas River
330
Number of applicants for 16 slots in the first Outdoor Belonging Project by Teens Inc. in Nederland
In the spring, they camped in cabins. Then they helped Colorado Parks and Wildlife rangers with a fire mitigation project at a park. They took a Wilderness First Aid course on Lookout Mountain. They rafted, pedaled, rock climbed, paddleboarded, backpacked and cooked over a campfire, spending more than 22 days this summer outside.
The 16 teenagers who participated in the four-month Outdoor Belonging course were from big cities and rural towns. They were the first class of a pilot program designed by Nederland’s Teens Inc., which cultivates leadership skills and fosters confidence by offering outdoor adventures to kids in seventh, eighth and ninth grades. The middle schoolers were challenged and learned how to solve problems as a team as they honed skills that hopefully foster a passion for the outdoors.
“I got to hear the outside nature,” said Marcus “MJ” Jiner, a 14-year-old from Montbello in Denver, who backpacked and rafted along the Arkansas River for the first time with the Outdoor Belonging program.
Teens Inc., started in Nederland in the 1990s as a youth services program in local schools. It evolved with summer employment opportunities and by using the outdoors as a tool for connecting rural and urban kids. Today it works with 700 young people a year in communities along the Peak to Peak corridor between Black Hawk and Estes Park.
The Outdoor Belonging program launched in April, joining the Teens Inc. TeamWorks program that organizes student crews for trail, forest and watershed projects. The 15-year-old TeamWorks program includes Lincoln Hills Cares, which develops young leaders through a cultural outdoor education program based at the historic Lincoln Hills resort along South Boulder Creek near Rollinsville.
Those kids are critical to the future of the outdoor community. After years of not necessarily focusing on diverse populations, the outdoor recreation community is working to better embrace younger generations from big cities and small towns, hoping to spark the next generation of outdoor advocates amid a distracted demographic of screen-watchers.
That industry focus is working. Kids ages 6 to 12 were among the fastest growing group in the outdoors in 2024, up 5.6% over the previous year, according to the latest participation report from the Outdoor Industry Association. Younger Americans, the association’s survey showed, are increasingly turning to outdoor recreation, stemming a yearslong slide into phones and screens. (Still, 13- to 17-year-olds remain the smallest demographic in outdoor recreation, with a little more than 15 million participants, despite the highest participation in team sports at that age.)
The 2024 numbers also show strong increases in the numbers of Black and Hispanic people playing outdoors. Last year saw a 13% increase in Black people recreating outside and a 12% increase in Hispanics participants in outdoor recreation. And a growing number of those Black and Hispanic participants now qualify as “core” outdoor recreation participants who regularly hike, camp, fish, hunt, paddle and pedal on public lands.
Vanessa Matthews’ son Hendricks participated in the pilot Outdoor Belonging program. She said her son — an eighth grader who moved to Denver from the Pacific Northwest last year — was “motivated and excited for the next thing through the summer.”
“Having the group from the city and the country kids, I think that is absolutely a beautiful blend,” Matthews told Sun reporter Tracy Ross. “They can learn from each other, and not be afraid of each other. There was no, ‘I don’t have to be afraid of you, you’re from the city.’ Or you look different, you act different, or whatever.”
> Click over to The Sun Friday to read Tracy’s story
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Breaking Trail
Atomic angst at Rocky Flats: Should the Cold War nuclear legacy of the weapons plant turned wildlife refuge be buried or bared?
The trailhead to the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is shown in this July 25 photo. The refuge is a former nuclear weapons manufacturing site that’s now widely used by outdoor enthusiasts. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)“The Wildlife Refuge will essentially be contaminated forever.”
— Physicians for Social Responsibility, noting the half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years
70,000
Number of atomic bombs made at the Rocky Flat weapons plant between the 1950s and 1980s
For several decades, the plans for the 5,200-acre Rocky Flats in the shadow of the Flatirons have slowly unfolded. Trails now stretch for miles across the former weapons plant turned national wildlife refuge. On the perimeter of the open space, trails intersect with smooth pavement that winds through metro Denver suburbs and eventually could reach Rocky Mountain National Park.
Health advocates want yellow-and-black signs warning visitors to the sprawling open space south of Superior that they likely will be exposed to radioactive dust alongside other trailside signs detailing “239 species of wildlife.”
“Atomic amnesia, the feeling goes, is not the responsible way to get past atomic anxiety,” writes Sun reporter Mike Booth in his upcoming Colorado Sunday story tracing the atomic history of a weapons factory that made more than 70,000 nuclear bombs — they called the plutonium explosives “buttons” — over a 40-year span. Today, the bomb-making sites remain a Superfund site surrounded by prairie and trails.
The atomic legacy should be amplified, say the ever-vigilant advocates who protested Rocky Flats for decades.
“We believe that there is still a very serious contamination issue, and we’ve studied the range of science. There’s a significant public health risk remaining from nuclear bomb production,” Chris Allred, a member of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder, told Booth.
There’s growing concern among downwind neighbors wary of the Colorado health department’s position that there is no radiation risk for recreational visitors to Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Westminster leaders are mulling signage that gives bike riders and trail hikers approaching from adjacent city open space a clue to the dangerous history of the place they are about to enter.
“If you decide that you know enough, and OK, it should be open for anyone who wants to go out there, then isn’t it your responsibility to let people know what happened there, and the possibilities of there still being contamination?” said Len Ackland, a University of Colorado professor who wrote “Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West.”
> Click over to The Sun on Sunday to read Mike’s story
Former Aspen planner launches nonprofit community development plan “to serve the needs of mountain folks.”
The average Aspen home sold for $17.2 million in the first quarter of 2025, marking a sixfold increase in six years. The stratospheric cost of housing in Aspen is threatening the city’s culture. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)“And when I and I leave and all my brethren leave there’ll be no funky culture left.”
— Telluride’s Rasta Stevie in 1988
Phillip Supino spent eight years working as a planner for the city of Aspen, helping to shape the community’s complex land-use code that reined in over-the-top residential construction and the impacts of short-term rentals.
Despite — or because of? — Colorado’s most restrictive policies on building and development, a single-family home in Aspen now sells for around $17.2 million, more than $4,000 per square foot of space and up more than sixfold from 2020. The stratospheric explosion of Aspen home prices has transformed the city, where, as Supino says, “it’s easier to buy a $10,000 purse than a slice of pizza.”
His front-row seat to the hard-to-fathom wealth disparity in Aspen — and the rapidly dissolving culture created over decades by Aspen’s ever dwindling population of full-time residents — has led the city’s former director of community development to build a new tool to protect locals in mountain towns.
Supino’s First Light Community Development — which launched this week — will work to meet the needs of middle-class locals priced out of their mountain communities. The nonprofit community development corporation will aim to acquire existing commercial or light industrial properties and convert them to housing or business spaces for residents. It will create a bank that can offer locals low-interest mortgages and construction loans. It will create its own construction company to help build housing for residents who make nearly triple the median income of the region but still cannot afford a home in the valley where they live and work.
“We are creating an economic entity and a community entity that will serve the needs of mountain folks. Look, the real estate, the banking, the construction sectors in these communities are no longer responding to the needs of locals,” says Supino, who lives in Aspen.
Supino started working as a planner in Crested Butte in the mid 2000s. He’s watched mountain towns grapple with rapid growth for nearly 20 years and endure the most acute growing pains in the last five years.
“Not one of these places is healthier now than it was 20 years ago. And there has not been any meaningful response to helping these places get more healthy. We are trying to do something that makes economic sense and makes cultural sense,” he says. “Culture is the most valuable thing we have and it’s the hardest thing to measure. But when you lose it, these towns then lose their attractiveness to the very people who are consuming these places.”
Supino quotes what Rasta Stevie, a Telluride skier and former town councilman said in the seminal 1988 ski movie “Blizzard of Aahhh’s”: “And when I and I leave and all my brethren leave there’ll be no funky culture left.”
“It’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche because it’s so true,” Supino says.
Supino is headquartering First Light in Aspen but plans to work in mountain communities across the Colorado high country. He’s got an advisory board with diverse business and community-minded residents. He’s enlisting deep-pocketed investors “who understand there is inherent value in place-based mountain culture and that culture needs to have inherent financial power.”
He envisions his group working to advocate for local-focused housing policies financed by backers who see the importance of local culture in mountain towns and are willing to wait for financial returns until community culture is protected. If everything works, his venture will deliver “tangible returns” over time, he says.
Mountain valleys have battled over space for decades. There’s not a lot of room for growth in communities surrounded by public lands. And too often that limited space is provided to wealthier buyers.
“It’s easy to make space for luxury. Creating space for less powerful economic interests is challenging,” Supino says.
Eventually Supino sees his group launching a real estate investment trust with holdings that can be offered to local residents in mountain towns. That way locals who are often limited to deed-restricted homes that do not appreciate at the rate of the neighboring properties — where owners can earn millions in equity every year — “can build wealth based on the wealth that is growing in their own community,” Supino says.
“It’s time to change the conversation around who gets to live in these towns and do business here. These communities are not gold mines. They are not places to be exploited. They are places that need to be protected and this could be a way for locals to engage and fight for their communities in a different way,” Supino says. “It is past time for a different solution. Maybe this is the right one. Maybe it’s not. But it’s a response to forces that could very well kill mountain town culture.”
> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
— j
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