Higher fees could turn one of Colorado’s most visited public lands into a place only some people can afford
Managing heavy visitation has always been a challenge at the Maroon Bells, and the area currently relies on shuttles, timed-entry, and limited parking reservations to keep crowds from overwhelming the landscape. Hiking the Maroon Bells is already a costly endeavor that requires visitors to pay for parking in Aspen and for the shuttle ride to the trailhead. The Forest Service currently oversees these operations at a nearly $300,000 annual deficit.
Maroon Bells Shuttle at the Maroon Lake parking area. Pitkin County
Earlier this month, after the Forest Service stated it can no longer afford to manage the area, Pitkin County applied for a special use permit to take over operations beginning in the 2027 season. Any fee structure the county proposes must still be approved by the Forest Service, and the county will collect public input before the county commission makes a final decision regarding fees. But the direction is clear: the Pitkin County Open Space and Trails director told county commissioners the county’s general fund will not subsidize Maroon Bells operations, and that it will increase fees to cover costs.
This may seem like an isolated case, but it’s a canary in a coal mine. The Trump administration and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have made it clear they intend to manage public lands like assets on a balance sheet, and offloading management costs to local governments is a consequence of that approach. The result is a pay-to-play system where access to public lands becomes more expensive. It will make it harder, if not impossible, for entire segments of the public to visit the public lands that they should, by right, have access to.
Public lands are not a business
Pitkin County has the third-highest per-capita personal income in the United States. Its Open Space and Trails program is funded through 2040 by a dedicated property tax, and it currently manages 30,000 acres and maintains 86 miles of trails. If any county were positioned to absorb the cost of managing the Maroon Bells, it’s this one.
But the case for the management transfer has been framed almost entirely in business terms. The Aspen Daily News reported that staffing, maintenance, and operations cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the White River National Forest collects in revenue from the site, and that the Forest Service has been “operating in the red” at Maroon Bells. Kendra Head, recreation manager for the White River National Forest, explained that “the White River National Forest has been subsidizing the Bells for years.” Pitkin County Commissioner Greg Poschman stated at a May 12 meeting that the Maroon Bells would “need to make sure it’s paying its way.” Accepting the premise that national public lands must operate in the black is accepting an argument that would justify privatizing nearly every park, forest, and wilderness area in the country. Few pieces of public land in America turn a profit, and that is not their purpose.
Maroon Creek. Abhijit Kamerkar, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Even if they aren’t directly profitable through revenue, public lands provide a significant return on investment. Outdoor recreation on federal public lands contributes $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy each year. In Colorado alone, the total economic output associated with outdoor recreation by Colorado residents amounts to $65.8 billion dollars, resulting in $11.2 billion in local, state, and federal tax revenue. Public lands don’t exist to generate revenue (despite Interior Secretary Burgum’s continual references to public lands as “America’s balance sheet”), they exist to accommodate multiple uses, including recreation, conservation, and open access to all Americans, now and for future generations.
The Maroon Bells situation is in part a result of underfunding by Congress, a problem that has been building for years and has accelerated under the Trump administration. Polling shows that 86 percent of Western voters say funding cuts to public lands are a serious problem, and the Trump administration’s budget cuts and proposed reorganization of the Forest Service could exacerbate the issue. Budget cuts and understaffing create dysfunction, and the Trump administration is using this dysfunction to justify handing management of federal public lands to local entities with ulterior motives and funding challenges of their own.
Laying the groundwork for privatization
Transferring management of the Maroon Bells to Pitkin County is in some ways the least-bad scenario for a transfer of federal public land to local management. Pitkin County has financial resources and a standing partnership with the Forest Service at the Maroon Bells. The county’s Open Space and Trails director stated that the land will remain in federal ownership, that all revenue will go back into the site, and that the county is not looking to turn a profit. But visitors to public lands near Aspen already pay a premium that is beyond what many can afford, and charging higher fees locks a large portion of the public out of their public lands — and the consequences could be much worse for other places.
If the county doesn’t finalize a special use permit by this fall, the Forest Service’s plan is to find a private concessionaire to take over operations. This would mean commercializing the outdoor experience and relying on a private company with a profit motive and no mandate to prioritize conservation, equitable access, or long-term stewardship of the land.
Maroon Bells shuttle. Roaring Fork Transit Authority Instagram account, @ride_rfta
Across the West, the Forest Service manages plenty of sites that are operating under the same visitation and budget pressures as the White River National Forest, and many of them aren’t in a county like Pitkin that is ready to take over operations. For those places, the only option—if the Forest Service chooses to abdicate its responsibility to the public—may be a private operator looking to turn a profit on public lands, or worse, the outright sale of public lands.
This is part of a Trump administration strategy to defund land management agencies in order to increase dysfunction, and then to present privatization as the solution. The Maroon Bells are well known and visible enough to draw scrutiny and generate outrage, but lesser-known areas won’t be so lucky.
Public lands belong to the public
The Maroon Bells Scenic Area doesn’t need to charge visitors more; it just needs the Forest Service to be adequately funded and committed to providing access for all Americans. The tools for managing popular recreation areas without pricing people out already exist and are already in use at the Maroon Bells and other areas with timed-entry reservations, mandatory shuttles, permit systems, and more. These are proven ways to protect a landscape from overuse without making access a privilege for only the wealthy to enjoy.
Pitkin County has approved pursuing a special use permit, but there will be a public input process before the county commissioners make a final decision. Everyone who cares about being able to access places like the Maroon Bells in the future should make their voices heard and ask important questions about how the county plans to maintain affordable public access.
Public lands belong to all Americans, not just the ultra-wealthy. The Maroon Bells are a warning shot—access to our country’s most beautiful landscapes is at risk if the federal government continues to shirk its responsibility to equitably manage our public lands.