Two planning and management regions have collaborated on a recreation use study for the Central San Juans.
The Region 9 Economic Development District of Southwest Colorado and the Region 10 League for Economic Assistance and Planning Assistance have been working with stakeholders from six counties developing and implementing recommendations from the High Alpine Resiliency and Recovery Roadmap, part of the Colorado Rural Resiliency and Recovery Roadmaps program.
This stakeholder group, which includes the high-alpine portions of Dolores, Hinsdale, San Juan, San Miguel and Ouray counties, began meeting in 2021 to address growing challenges resulting from visitor use of public lands.
The Recreation Use Study report highlights 10 focus areas: Lizard Head Pass; Handies, Sunshine and Redcloud Peaks; Cascade Creek; Blue Lakes and Mount Sneffels; Coal Bank and Molas Pass; Cunningham Gulch; Ophir Pass; South Mineral; Upper Hermosa — Bolam Pass; and the Nellie Creek Trailhead.
These areas were identified because they display a high level of sensitivity to recreation pressure and experience high recreational use.
The study provides a geospatial analysis of recreation use, an assessment of environmental sensitivity to recreation pressure and an aggregation of recreation infrastructure data across the six-county project area.
This information helped identify where recreation pressures are high and may threaten surrounding natural resources, and where infrastructure may need to be inventoried or reassessed to suit the needs of recreation use.
The report is available on both Region 9’s and Region10’s websites at https://region9edd.org/roadmap and https://region10.net/community-resources/community-development/resiliency-recovery-roadmap/.
