225K acres of forests may close to shooters
U.S. Forest Service officials this week released the draft decision of a proposed recreational sport shooting management plan that would close about a quarter million acres of the 1.4 millionacre Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests to such activity.
Those closures will not take effect in Boulder County or into southern Larimer County until a public shooting range of at least 25 shooting lanes has been opened. The process of establishing such a facility is ongoing, however, and unlikely to come to fruition before 2020.
Additionally, because the plan released Thursday by the Arapahoe and Roosevelt National Forests is at this stage only a draft, it opens a 45day objection period. During that window, only those who have previously provided comments during the formal comment period have standing to object. It is not expected to be finalized until late this year or early in 2019.
Boulder County Commissioner Deb Gardner took part in a conference call, along with officials from the forest service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, to announce the plan that culminated about a fiveyear process.
“Starting five or six years ago, we were getting from our constituents a lot of phone calls about concerns with recreational shooting and dispersed shooting in the forests. Either they were hiking or biking, and there was shooting going across the trails, or there were residents out there who had conflicts” with shooting endangering their property, Gardner said. “We all knew that we couldn’t solve this problem by ourselves.”
Boulder and Larimer counties both entered into what is known as the Northern Front Range Recreational Sport Shooting Management Partnership, a multiagency effort to provide sport shooting opportunities, while mitigating conflicts with area residents. Also participating in that partnership are Clear Creek and Gilpin counties, as well as the forest service and CPW.
“The focus since the beginning has been to protect the rights of all the users of the national forest here, including sports shooters, hikers, mountain bikers, horseback riders and campers,” Larimer County Commissioner Tom Donnelly, a member of the sport shooting management partnership, said in an interview.
“We all live here together.”
Forest Supervisor Monte Williams on Thursday said the draft decision “reflects the ideas and thoughts and concerns of all of those folks out on the ground, as they looked at their counties, or at the larger area as a whole.
“It’s not a perfect decision, but as a whole, when you look at it. I think it’s a really fair decision.”
Of the 1.4 million acres under the jurisdiction of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, the draft decision would restrict recreational sport shooting on 225,574 acres.