Colorado’s outdoor future is being actively shaped in the Pikes Peak region. Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Partners in the Outdoors conference emphasized collaboration, access, stewardship, resilience, and broad outdoor engagement. At the same time, the Pikes Peak region recently received a $2.5 million Colorado Outdoor Regional Partnerships Initiative investment through Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) and Colorado Parks and Wildlife to advance projects including Ring the Peak trail expansion, camping infrastructure, recreation management, ambassador programs, and habitat work. These investments may provide meaningful public recreation benefits, but from a hunter’s perspective, they also expose an important strategic imbalance.
The Our Spacious Skies regional visioning report found that the scenic beauty and outdoor opportunities of the Pikes Peak region are central to residents’ quality of life, yet when asked how they actually engage with the outdoors, only 23% identified hunting or fishing, while far larger percentages identified sightseeing, hiking, biking, and park use. That matters because hunters, anglers, and shooting sports participants are not simply one recreational audience among many—they remain one of the most financially important pillars of wildlife conservation through license purchases, habitat stamp revenues, volunteer stewardship, and Pittman-Robertson excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment. If the Pikes Peak region is investing millions to create more outdoor users while doing comparatively little to recruit, retain, and activate the next generation of hunters and anglers, then we are creating appreciation without ensuring sustainability. The real question for conservation leaders is simple: are we building future conservation funders, or simply future consumers of the resource?
