Outdoor recreation in the Roaring Fork Valley saw a huge increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, which continued in the following years.
Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers, which promotes stewardship of public lands by engaging the community in education, restoration and conservation projects, heeded the call and ramped up their services.
Personnel and funding cuts at the national level this year are impacting trail conditions locally, and RFOV is trying to step up and address some of the shortages.
Becca Schild, executive director of RFOV, spoke with reporter Regan Mertz about what staff and volunteers are doing to ensure the backcountry is safe as the nonprofit turns 30 years old.
The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.
Regan Mertz: Could you just talk to me about the history of the organization, and maybe how it's changed in the past 30 years?
Becca Schild: We were officially launched in 1995 in response to increasing recreation use in our valley, and some of our land manager partners, particularly the U.S. Forest Service, needing some help.
So, the Hunter Smuggler Recreation Area, we helped build out a lot of those trails that I think are now kind of a mainstay here. Sky Mountain Park — we helped with the creation of the Maroon Creek Wetlands Area and Schneider Park, and a lot of places in Aspen that are now wonderful open spaces to go to.
Mertz: With cuts at the federal level, at the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies, how has Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers made up for this on our local trails this summer?
Schild: Well, this summer we’re already really scaled up. We've been a partner to the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for our entire 30 years that we've been an organization. We have a trail crew that's spending about 56 days in the backcountry, and then we have another — I want to say — total 100 field days on federal land. We've really been a presence for a long time.
And so what's happening right now is conversations about, “How do we even ramp up even further for next year so that we can continue to support them and, not fill in the gaps necessarily, because I think it's really important that there are trained professionals who know how to do this work, but how can we address some of the most critical priorities that are coming out of these cuts?”
Mertz: And can you talk to me, actually, what's going on on these lands and on these trails?
Schild: My understanding is that within the Forest Service, their field-going staff, so that's backcountry rangers, that's trail crew, law enforcement, those staff have been cut to a third. The people that we partner with most regularly are still at the Forest Service, and those cuts have not prevented us from doing any work.
However, the Forest Service — for example, their staff — they go out and they might prep a project site. So if we're going to install a bunch of timber check steps, which is a tool to increase the sustainability of a trail, they might go out and cut all of the timber in advance of our crews coming out. And so sometimes they are less likely, or less able to be on site, and that's probably the case in the future.
Mertz: Would you say that this summer, citizen volunteerism has increased, decreased or stayed the same?
Schild: I think it's about the same. I haven't seen any notable changes from the past couple of years. I think there's a really big interest, just because some of these issues have been front of mind for a lot of the public. There's an interest in how to get involved.
Mertz: And can you actually talk to me about the federal funding cuts for your organization?
Schild: We have an agreement with the Forest Service through Great American Outdoors Act funding. We have not experienced any funding cuts as of now because that agreement was signed a couple years ago. But my projection moving forward is that we will not see those agreements necessarily renewed. Great American Outdoors Act funding is set to expire this year, and then post that source of funding, I don't think the Forest Service will have a lot of capacity to provide additional funding for RFOV.
Mertz: Do you think that this lack in federal employees or federal funding has impacted outdoor recreation in the valley this summer, or do you see that being a problem going forward?
Schild: What I've heard is, user behavior, because there's less education, less amenities that are open, we might be seeing some more trash in higher-use areas. There's more illegal fires or fire rings that people are noticing. I think we won't really know the full impact until the end of the season and partner groups get together and share notes about what they've observed in terms of the amount of recreation. My sense is that funding cuts have not changed the demand for recreation in this area.
Mertz: Where do you see the organization going in the next 30 years?
Schild: Our focus is more on land health and resilience. We are continuing to build capacity to do ecological restoration work and to do fire mitigation work.
The future is just continuing to focus on those aspects because I think it's really rewarding for volunteers to get involved in restoration and fire mitigation, and it's really needed. And then at the same time, we want to focus on maintaining the trails that already exist here, and not necessarily being involved in new trail builds as much.
Mertz: Thank you so much for talking with me, Becca.
Schild: Thank you so much, Regan.
Support for this Nonprofit Spotlight series comes from the Aspen Community Foundation.
