Public lands advocates are concerned about the U.S. Forest Service giving up management of the Maroon Bells Scenic Area.
Pitkin County announced on May 12 that it’s exploring a permit to take over management of the popular outdoor area near Aspen, which saw nearly 200,000 visitors last summer.
During a meeting that same day, Forest Service officials told the Board of County Commissioners that it’s losing money maintaining the Maroon Bells, and that the county would have more flexibility to raise fees.
“It is a sad state of affairs when the Forest Service is no longer able to manage the Maroon Bells Scenic Area, one of the most iconic, beloved, and heavily visited landscapes in the West,” said Will Roush, executive director of Wilderness Workshop in a written response to the announcement.
Wilderness Workshop is a Carbondale-based nonprofit focused on protecting public lands throughout the Western Slope.
In an interview, Roush said that public lands aren’t meant to function like a business.
“We need to get out of the mode of thinking ‘Well, we can only have these places or manage them if they generate enough revenue,’” Roush said. “That's a really problematic way to think about public lands.”
Public lands are intended to be open and accessible to all Americans, Roush said, and historically, Congress has provided the funding to make that possible.
Roush blamed this latest development on cuts by the Trump Administration, but said Forest Service spending has been tightening for over a decade.
“Certainly, during the Trump Administration, it's been the most marked drop-off, but the number of staff and the budget has been going down for a long time now,” Roush said.
During the May 12 county meeting, Open Space and Trails director Gary Tennenbaum told commissioners that the county’s general fund would not subsidize the prospective Maroon Bells management.
“Next year, what we're going to propose is a fee structure, so fees are going to go up,” Tennenbaum said. “I don't know how much, and I don't know where, but what we're going to show you is a balanced budget. And so whatever fee gets in, the fees are covering all our costs.”
Any level of fees creates inequities, Roush said, meaning that some people won’t be able to afford to visit the public space.
The primary concern of Roush and other advocates, though, is a shift towards privatization.
If the county doesn’t approve terms of the special use permit by this fall, the Forest Service plans to look for a private concessionaire to fill the role.
Roush said the Roaring Fork Valley is fortunate to have a county with the resources, knowledge and willingness to take on the responsibility of Maroon Bells management.
That might not be true in other parts of the country, where the default option may be handing management over to a private company. Those companies are, by design, incentivized by profit margins.
“If that means installing a Disneyland-esque ride there that they can charge people 50 bucks [for], then they might do that, if they think people will pay for that,” Roush said.
In a less extreme scenario, those vendors simply may not be incentivized to protect fundamental aspects of wilderness like clean air and water.
Roush said the federal government needs to fully fund public lands, which he called a wise investment.
A 2025 analysis found that federal lands generate $128 billion in annual economic activity. The Forest Service budget for the 2025 fiscal year was $9.5 billion. The Trump Administration has proposed broad cuts to the agency, and a major reorganization that includes relocating its headquarters.
Outdoor recreation is a growing driver of the American economy, contributing $1.3 trillion by last count. In Colorado alone, the sector generates more than $18 billion.
Surveys show that public lands are widely popular, with 86% of Western voters this year saying that funding cuts are a “serious problem.”
