• State to increase access to public lands.

Hunters and anglers will have access to 100,000 more acres of Colorado state trust lands starting this fall as part of a multiyear plan to eventually open a total of about 1 million acres to sportsmen and women.

State wildlife commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to add 100,000 acres to 480,000 acres already open to hunting and fishing from September to February. The state land board voted last week to expand the Public Access Program.

The state will continue to seek opportunities to encourage Coloradans to experience, explore and enjoy the outdoors, Dan Gibbs, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, said in a statement.

“I’m thrilled that hunters and anglers will have more access to state trust lands in Colorado this season,” Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Dan Prenzlow said in a statement.

Hunters and anglers help pay for wildlife conservation and programs through license fees and taxes on hunting and fishing gear. Prenzlow said they also make significant contributions to local economies, especially in rural communities.

A state report released in 2018 said fishing, hunting and wildlife watching in Colorado produce about $5 billion in economic benefits annually.

Sportsmen’s groups have campaigned for years to gain access to more of Colorado’s state trust lands. Currently, only about 20 percent of the 2.8 million acres are open to the public, setting it apart from other Western states, according to a recent report by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and onX, a Montana-based digital mapping company.

State trust lands are public lands, but they aren’t managed the same as federal public lands, which are required by law to be open to multiple uses. The federal government granted the trust lands to states when they entered the Union with the mandate that they be used to raise money for schools and other public institutions.

Through the years, states have varied in their management. In some cases, they have sold big chunks or nearly all the land while others have made them more available to the public.

In 1993, Colorado started the Public Access Program, through which Parks and Wildlife pays about $900,000 per year to lease roughly 485,000 acres. Most of that is open to hunting and angling from September to February.

In August, Parks and Wildlife will announce the locations of the new sites that will be opened.

“An expansion of public access on Colorado’s state lands is a surefire way to support new hunters, grow our rural economies and ensure all Colorado hunters and anglers have a place to hunt and fish,” said Tim Brass, a Longmont resident and state policy and field operations director for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.