Colorado’s two largest fires on record, the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires, burned hundreds of thousands of acres across some of the state’s most visited landscapes in 2020. The fires scorched trails, campgrounds and beloved ecosystems in and around Rocky Mountain National Park and the Arapahoe and Roosevelt national forests. More than five years later, the scars remain stark: blackened hillsides, closed trails and bare slopes where forests once stood. According to our recent research, which has not yet been peer reviewed, the fires caused significant and lasting declines in visitation at the burned sites. Even after the 2020 fires, Rocky Mountain National Park attracted 4.2 million visitors in 2024, generating US$862 million in economic output in local gateway communities such as Estes Park and Grand Lake. Rocky Mountain National Park is a significant contributor to the nearly 1 billion annual visits and $700 billion in spending that public lands generate nationwide as outdoor recreation continues to grow. It also supports a variety of important social values beyond the economy, including mental health and well-being, cultural and spiritual connection, and the sense of place that binds people to landscapes. But these landscapes are changing fast. Wildfires are affecting our…
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Fire is transforming the US West’s public lands – research shows overlooked cost to recreation
Source: The Conversation Environment — CC BY-ND 4.0