Where We Roam: A Show For Public Lands Opening Reception, Jul. 3:

The NoBo Art District opens a new exhibition, Where We Roam: A Show For Public Lands, with a reception on Friday, Jul. 3 at 6 PM. The exhibition, curated by Robin van Wageningen, features 20 Coloradan landscape artists whose work advocates for the connection, memories, and recreation fostered by shared public lands. Where We Roam: A Show For Public Lands will be on display at the Bus Stop Gallery from Jul. 3-25.

Where We Roam: A Show For Public Lands Opening Reception | Jul. 3 • Bus Stop Gallery, Boulder

Canyon Collective’s Psychedelic Hoedown with River Spell, Jul. 3:

Canyon Collective’s coming to Ned General for a special Jul. 3rd hoedown, celebrating the struggle against injustice that came before independence. This unforgettable night will feature live funk and psychedelic tunes from Canyon Collective and River Spell, a special dinner menu, and vendors, all wrapped up in the spirit of anti-imperialism.

Canyon Collective’s Psychedelic Hoedown with River Spell | Jul. 3 • Ned General, Nederland

City of Louisville: Fourth of July Fireworks, Jul. 4th 

Bring your friends and family to Coal Creek Golf Course in Louisville on Jul. 4th for the ultimate 4th of July celebration. Enjoy live music, delicious food, and epic fireworks behind the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. Parking fills up fast, so make sure to get there early! Hope to see you there from 6 to 10!

City of Louisville: Fourth of July Fireworks| Jul. 4th • Coal Creek Golf Course, Louisville

Street Faire: North Mississippi Allstars, Jul. 10

Enjoy contemporary blues and rock sensation North Mississippi Allstars at the Jul. 10th Louisville Street Faire. The four-time GRAMMY-nominated quartet is hitting the road after releasing their latest album, Still Shakin’. Front Street will come to life like never before as the “Allstars” bring their Mississippi charm and improvisation. All the while, friends and family will twirl in the soft fading light of Louisville’s historic downtown.

Photo via Instagram

Street Faire: North Mississippi Allstars | Jul. 10 • Front Street, Louisville

Gimme Gimme Disco, Jul. 11th

Time to prove you are truly the Dancing Queen at this ABBA and classic disco dance party in Denver! Put on your sequined flare jumpsuit and best dancing shoes for a night of the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Cher, and other 70s/80s classics that’ll have you dancing like no one is watching. Bring a friend or have the best solo experience, and be sure not to miss this traveling disco party.

Gimme Gimme Disco | Jul. 11 • Marquis Theater, Denver

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The post Scene Stealers: Week of July 1st appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Protecting our Public Lands

Alex Kelloff for Congress | Colorado’s 3rd District

Western and Southern Colorado (CD3) contains some of our country’s most prestigious public lands. The scenic landscapes provide some of the greatest opportunities for recreation, including hiking, rafting, biking, fishing, hunting, skiing, and much more. These lands are also home to over 900 species of wildlife, including the largest elk herd in the country. Public lands in Western and Southern Colorado not only provide enrichment but are also vital for our economy, providing over $30 billion in revenue annually. This comes from recreation, tourism, and hospitality, driving Western and Southern Colorado’s job market.

I am running to represent one of the most significant public land districts in the country because the increasing threats from the Trump administration are putting at risk the accessibility and existence of these public spaces. Pressures from development, natural resource extraction, and climate change are tremendous risks. More than 20 million acres of national forests, Bureau of Land Management lands, and national parks define our economy, our way of life, and our future. These lands are not just scenic; they are essential. And once they are gone, we will never get them back.

A survey conducted in Colorado by Southwick Associates in partnership with Teel and Bruyere found that economic output in relation to outdoor recreation by Colorado residents amounted to $65.8 billion in 2023, which contributed $36.5 billion to the state’s GDP and $11.2 billion in tax revenue. The outdoor recreation industry also supported more than 404,000 jobs in the state, representing 12% of Colorado’s labor force, and producing $22.2 billion in salaries and wages.

The public lands in our district are the headwaters of 25 major rivers, providing water to more than 40 million people across seven Western states. That water supports families and communities, ranchers and agricultural producers, and countless cities and industries in the Western United States. Protecting these lands means protecting the water that millions depend on every day.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Recent federal actions have created uncertainty and put pressure on public lands, risking access to recreation and hunting, the stability for ranchers and water users, long-term economic growth, and the future of our outdoor economy. The political extremes have intensified under the Trump administration, which has led to rapid resource extraction, aggressive regulatory rollbacks, and neglected public participation. We cannot implement long-term plans needed to sustain our lands and water if we have major policy swings under every new administration. My goal is to move away from policies that ignore the voices of the communities that live and work on this land. I will seek to strengthen local participation and input, while legislating to provide greater regulatory certainty and transparency.

How will we do this?
We need a new approach to protecting our public lands while supporting the people who depend on them. Decisions about our lands should not come from Washington alone. We must ensure local voices are included in federal decision-making. We also need to work directly with ranchers, sportsmen, small businesses, and community leaders to build policies that reflect real- world needs in CD3.

Water is our most critical resource. We will protect our water by safeguarding watersheds and headwaters. We will support sustainable agriculture and responsible land use, and ensure long-term water security for rural and urban communities.

Public lands should drive opportunity. I will support small businesses tied to outdoor recreation and agriculture. We will do this by building and maintaining critical infrastructure like housing, water, energy, telecommunications, and transportation to enable responsible growth and lower the cost of living. This will help fortify our communities against the risk of wildfire and drought, and create and support good local jobs in the process. We will invest in areas that allow people to live and work locally, and keep more value in our communities, like rancher-owned meat processing facilities, farming co-ops, creative arts centers, and local business incubators.

We don’t have to choose between protecting land and using it responsibly. We need to maintain access for recreation, hunting, and grazing, and protect critical habitats and ecosystems. Also, promoting responsible stewardship for future generations.

My family’s roots in this region go back generations. I understand what these lands mean, not just economically, but personally. This campaign is about making sure our public lands are protected, and our communities are heard. That our local economies remain strong and vibrant, and our way of life is preserved.

Public lands are not just a national asset; they are the foundation of life in Colorado’s Third District. With the right leadership, we will protect our natural resources, strengthen our economy, lower living costs for families, and ensure future generations can enjoy the same opportunities we have today.

Alex Kelloff for Congress

Protecting our land. Strengthening our communities. Building our future.

Congressional Public Lands Score – click to see how members of Congress vote on America’s national parks, national forests, monuments, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges

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The post Op-Ed: Congressional Candidate Alex Kelloff on Protecting Our Public Lands appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This Storyshare, written by Kyle Manley, is republished in whole from The Conversation.

Featured image: Large-scale wildfires seem to turn visitors away, while prescribed burning may have the opposite effect. Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

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 public lands at an accelerating scale and increasing intensity. Yet how fire affects recreation has remained poorly understood.

That’s the question I set out to answer with an interdisciplinary team of researchers. As a scientist who studies the benefits nature provides to people and how those benefits are affected by climate change, I wanted to know whether fire is eroding one of the most recognized and valued benefits of nature: recreation.

The East Troublesome Fire burned nearly 200,000 acres. Years later, the area is still recovering. Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Tracking visitation across burned landscapes

Our first challenge was gathering data about visits to these outdoor areas.

A handful of monitored public lands track visitor counts, but those counts can tell us only so much about how fires affect recreation. Wildfires often cross boundaries, for example, from a national park into a national forest, and span dispersed remote areas where no one is monitoring visitation.

Alternatively, every time someone logs a hike on AllTrails, posts a nature photo to Flickr, reports a bird sighting on eBird, or simply carries a phone into the backcountry, they leave a precise digital trace of where and when they spent time outdoors. We trained a visitation model on the on-site counts that do exist at monitored sites, using millions of these digital traces, alongside other recreation drivers such as weather, land cover, and site characteristics, as predictors.

Across Colorado and California, this approach let us track visitation in burned areas across hundreds of wildfires and prescribed burns for years before and after each fire, even in the remote, unmonitored landscapes where most fires burn. But changes in visitation can have many causes, including weather, broader recreation trends, even pandemic effects. So we statistically paired each burned site with a very similar unburned site elsewhere on public lands. This let us measure not just what happened after each fire, but also what we could expect would have happened without it. The gap between those two is how fire actually affected recreation.

We found that it’s not simply fire itself that drives people away, but a confluence of the type and severity of a fire, the ecosystem that burned, and the social values connected to the fire-impacted landscape.

A family poses for a selfie in front of the Gore Range overlook in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The park saw 4.2 million visitors in 2024. Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Wildfires that empty trails – and ones that don’t

In Colorado, the average wildfire reduced visitation to burned sites by 8% in the year of the fire. Those declines never recovered to prefire levels for the five-year postfire period we tracked.

As fires grew larger and burned more intensely, recreational losses sharpened. Visitation dropped 15% to 20% at sites burned at higher severity. These declines lasted years. Take the Cameron Peak Fire, for example. The Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests typically see about 8 million visits a year. Our model estimates that the area burned in the Cameron Peak Fire drew nearly 500,000 visits annually before the fire. Applying our 15% to 20% average declines estimated for moderate- to high-severity wildfires, that translates to roughly 70,000 to 100,000 fewer trips annually, losses our analysis finds persist for years.

But these postfire recreational losses were largely concentrated in forested landscapes. Wildfires that occurred in grasslands, such as the southeastern Colorado Cherry Canyon Fire in 2020, by contrast, seemed to barely register with visitors. Visitation at these grassland-dominated burn sites showed essentially no change. This pattern reveals something important. People’s recreational responses to fire are not just about the physical damage and accessibility impacts. They reflect the particular relationships people hold with different landscapes. Grasses recover within a season or two, and the wide-open vistas that draw people to those landscapes remain intact, even after a fire.

Forests are different. The towering canopies, shaded trails, and old-growth character that people value may take decades or centuries to return, if they return at all in a changing climate.

In California, our analysis reveals how these human-nature relationships also vary across regions, with much sharper and more persistent losses than in Colorado. Californian wildfires reduced visitation by 18% in the first year on average, and high-severity forest fires produced losses of 33% that showed no recovery five years after the fire. California’s fires tend to be significantly larger, more severe, and more concentrated in forested landscapes.

However, small fires in California actually increased visitation by 8%. This suggests that after years of megafires, a small burn may barely register. Californians have grown accustomed to a fire-shaped landscape, and a modest fire scar may not be enough to keep them off the trails.

A VOX video on how decades of stopping forest fires made them worse.

Prescribed fire tells a different story

As wildfire intensifies, land managers are responding by expanding prescribed fire programs. They are intentionally setting lower-intensity fires to clear out the dead trees, dry brush, and accumulated debris built up from over a century of fire suppression that can feed catastrophic wildfires.

Current prescribed fire planning tends to focus on reducing fire suppression costs and protecting properties, as well as managing ecosystems by reducing fuel loads and improving wildlife habitat. But managers are scaling up these programs without knowing how prescribed fire affects the recreationists who visit these landscapes, a gap our analysis sets out to fill.

In Colorado, we found that, on average, prescribed fire actually increased visitation by about 8% in the year of the fire. This increase may reflect improved trail conditions, enhanced wildlife habitat that attracts birders and hunters, or positive public perceptions of proactive management.

In California, prescribed fire on average decreased visitation by about 3%. Crucially, in stark contrast to wildfire, impacts were short-lived, with visitation returning to prefire levels within three years in both states.

Beyond their direct effects on recreation, prescribed burns also reduce the likelihood of future extreme fires – the very fires that drive the largest and longest-lasting recreation declines.

Why this matters beyond fire

Some of the Colorado communities that are most dependent economically on recreation experienced the steepest visitation declines in the period we studied. These are towns such as Grand Lake, Durango, and Gunnison, where shops, hotels, restaurants, and seasonal workers rely on a steady flow of visitors, and where sales tax from those visitors funds the infrastructure and daily life of the community. Persistent declines in visitation threaten the long-term viability of these places.

The implications run beyond fire. Calls to consider less tangible benefits of nature, such as recreation, into climate impact assessments, extreme events research, and conservation planning have grown recently. Turning those calls into action requires evidence that can help land managers make decisions. Our work provides some of that evidence for fire and a framework that can be used for other disturbances, such as floods and droughts. Without accounting for these less tangible values of nature, increasingly extreme climate impacts will keep eroding the experiences, livelihoods, and connections that sustain the well-being of millions of Americans.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

The post Fire Is Transforming the US West’s Public Lands – Research Shows Overlooked Cost To Recreation appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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