With weeks still to go in the busy — and extremely dry — summer camping season, volunteer rangers have already dismantled more than three times as many illegal campfire rings as they typically do in an entire season.
Volunteers with the Forest Conservancy, which was formed in 2001 to lend a hand to federal staff on the White River National Forest amid budget cuts, have removed 35 illegal rings as of mid-August. For the past three years, that number was between six and 10 for the entire summer.
Nine of the 35 rings had active embers when the volunteer rangers found them, “so they had to also put out minor fire situations,” said Marcia Johnson, executive director of the Forest Conservancy. “They’ve really been doing a good job of mitigating the risk of fire within the community.”
The White River National Forest has lost more than one-third of its workforce and seen drastic budget cuts in the last year; volunteer groups, nonprofits and local governments have gathered in response and focused attention on stewarding local federal lands and increasing communication across organizations to identify and fill gaps.
The Public Lands and Water Forum first convened in May to start a community conversation about how to understand and respond to “the multiple attacks on and threats to our public lands and waters and the agencies and staff who manage, steward and protect them,” according to the meeting agenda.
Volunteers answer the call
In the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness this summer, the wilderness crew is down to two staff members. Last summer, there were six. There are only three people on the trails crew, which maintains 500 miles of trails in the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District of the White River National Forest.
The White River National Forest has relied on volunteer wilderness rangers and forest ambassadors through the Forest Conservancy for decades before the most recent staffing reduction. They wear official U.S. Forest Service uniforms — with a patch that designates them as volunteers — and work across the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District, greeting and educating visitors at the Maroon Bells Scenic Area and along the hundreds of miles of backcountry trails. They also haul away litter, deal with unburied human waste and perform trail maintenance.
Volunteer rangers with the Forest Conservancy must go through a training process that includes tests and continuing education, and they work closely with local Forest Service personnel.
Given the moment’s urgency, the Forest Conservancy is seeing record levels of staffing, recruitment, total hours and in-kind value. Through Aug. 17, volunteers with Forest Conservancy have worked more than 8,800 service hours, which Johnson said represents an in-kind contribution value of more than $340,000, or the equivalent of 10 to 12 seasonal employees. That calculation is based on a 2024 valuation of volunteer time in Colorado by Independent Sector, a national organization for philanthropy and nonprofits.
The Forest Conservancy has 140 volunteer rangers this summer, the most in the organization’s history. The conservancy also added 15 new volunteers, a 50% increase from a typical season, Johnson said, because the scope and dramatic manner in which federal cutbacks occurred signaled a need for extra help.
“The forest lands need our public’s help in order to sustain it for the future,” Johnson said.
Drought danger, fire focus
The confluence of a drastically reduced federal workforce and extreme drought are particularly concerning for local groups. The National Integrated Drought Information System (drought.gov) reports that, as of Aug. 19, 79% of Pitkin County is in “extreme” drought, with the remaining 21% in “exceptional” drought, the most severe category.
The Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Garfield, Pitkin and Eagle counties all implemented Stage 2 fire restrictions between July 17 and Aug. 6; those restrictions prohibit all campfires, but many campers are not adhering to the ban.
“One ranger spotted seven in a single morning near Lincoln Creek,” David Boyd, public affairs officer for the White River National Forest, wrote in an email.
Officials with the Forest Service did not provide data on how many illegal campfires have been found this summer. A fire may fall into the nonpermitted category if it is built in an area where fires are always prohibited, or if a fire is built anywhere when a fire ban is in effect.
Local governments are working to increase their presence on public lands and to track data more closely as less is available from the federal level.
The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office has a dedicated backcountry community response officer working on National Forest lands five days a week, with other deputies patrolling an additional day. The backcountry officer, Lynn Sanson, tracks contacts with the public.
Between July 1 and Aug. 17, Sanson logged 60 contacts with groups or individuals for “fire restriction education” and an additional 94 contacts tied to education on other fire-related topics. He said he’s working to proactively discuss fire restrictions with campers before they set up camp. Most, he said, have been receptive and cooperative.
“The majority of people are very aware,” Sanson said. “It’s a pretty small percentage of people that are just like kind of stunned that they’re camping and they aren’t supposed to have a fire.”
Just this past weekend, Sanson found an abandoned campfire with burning coals in Lincoln Creek. It took 6 gallons of water to smother the fire.
Abandoned and illegal campfires pose a significant risk of developing into a wildfire, especially given this year’s extreme drought conditions.
On the White River National Forest alone, there have been eight human-caused fires, most of which were small and quickly put out. Officials also determined that the Yellowjacket fire, which ignited Aug. 14 and burned 29 acres northeast of Meeker, was human-caused.
Fires caused by lightning are also taking a toll.
On Aug. 17, smoke jumpers responded to the Derby fire on rugged, steep terrain about 15 miles north of Dotsero near the Flattops Wilderness. That fire, which was caused by lightning, has continued to grow quickly and was estimated at 2,624 acres Thursday morning.
Officials reported five other lighting-caused fires on the WRNF totaling a half-acre.
In many cases, a quick response to a small ignition is key. A visitor to Independence Ghost Town, located 16 miles east of Aspen on Forest Service land, noticed a small fire burning in a pile of wood from a collapsed building July 27.
According to Aspen Historical Society President and CEO Kelly Murphy, the guest, who was visiting from Kentucky, alerted a docent from the historical society, which operates and funds the townsite under a permit from the Forest Service. Together, they used water bottles and a cooler filled with river water to douse the flames.
“We were really fortunate that we: a) had someone on site and b) had a guest who saw it and acted on it and they were able to put it out,” Murphy said.
The Aspen Historical Society is part of the Public Lands and Water Forum; the historic townsites of Independence and Ashcroft sit on White River National Forest land and are stewarded by the society through a permit with the federal government.
“We’re trying to get the message across that it’s up to all of us, especially when there are fewer professionals out on the ground,” Murphy said.
Surge response
There are significantly fewer qualified staff working at the White River National Forest to respond to and support firefighting efforts. The Forest Service has an Incident Qualification Card, commonly known as a red card, that qualifies staff to support wildfire response and fight wildfires.
The loss of red-card carrying staff has raised alarm for months; in April, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and other Colorado lawmakers wrote a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins calling for the return of the nearly 3,000 red-card carrying staff that had left the agency nationwide.
Locally, former White River National Forest Supervisor Scott FItzwilliams knows of 28 red-card carrying staff who have left the agency since January. He is one of them, as he accepted an offer for early retirement under the Trump administration’s deferred retirement program.
Aspen Journalism is awaiting response on requests through the Freedom of Information Act filed in April and August to confirm staff shortages.
Despite the local and national exodus of qualified and experienced staff, officials with the Forest Service say the agency is equipped to respond to wildfires.
“While the forest itself has fewer support staff this year following voluntary departures, protecting people and communities from the threat of wildfire is the Forest Service’s highest priority,” Boyd wrote in an email. “The agency is deploying its fire-qualified personnel wherever they’re needed most, backed by emergency authorities, surge staffing and strategic reassignments.”
The agency has long relied on moving around resources, including personnel, from across the region and the country during wildfire season to where they are needed most. The logistics of that process are even more critical now because the Forest Service did not conduct any hiring from outside the agency going into the summer.
Because western Colorado has been one of the most active fire regions in the country for weeks, additional resources are on the ground, going back at least to the response to the Turner Gulch fire in Mesa County.
In the Roaring Fork Valley, when a wildland fire starts, it is typical for multiple agencies — including local fire districts and federal land managers — to coordinate the response.
“The partnership is very strong and really supportive,” said Aspen Fire Chief Jake Andersen.
But as the fire season continues to heat up across Colorado and the West, there’s a finite number of people available to respond to emerging situations.
“As these fires become more frequent and more severe, unfortunately, then the resources get spread thinner,” Andersen said. “You can’t always rely on that robust response.”
This year’s drought and the impact on vegetation — which becomes fuel for wildfires — is highly concerning for fire danger.
“Look around,” Andersen said. “It looks like it’s fall, but it’s not. Our brush is already changing colors, and that is an indicator of exceptional drought. This vegetation is so stressed, it’s essentially going dormant months early.”
The caption with the lead photo on this article showing Forest Conservancy volunteers removing a fire ring was updated to reflect that the image was taken near American Lake, not Avalanche Lake.
This story, and Aspen Journalism’s ongoing coverage of challenges facing local public lands, is supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This story was published in the August 22 edition of Aspen Daily News.