Colorado Parks and Wildlife

6/23/2023

Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission approves standardizing regulations for permissible activities on State Wildlife Areas

06/23/23

Travis Duncan
Public Information Supervisor
720-595-8294 / travis.duncan@state.co.us

Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission approves standardizing regulations for permissible activities on State Wildlife Areas

ALAMOSA, Colo. - At its June 22 meeting in Alamosa, the Parks and Wildlife Commission unanimously approved changes to regulations that standardized and clarified language for permissible activities on State Wildlife Areas. This is the next phase of work that began in 2020 to address impacts to State Wildlife Areas due to increased visitation and the impacts to wildlife habitat.

“These revisions will help CPW protect critical wildlife habitat across the state for current and future generations,” said CPW Director Jeff Davis.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife manages about 350 State Wildlife Areas. SWAs are paid for primarily by sportspersons and managed for the benefit of wildlife. These areas may also offer wildlife-related recreation and potentially opportunities for other forms of recreation when not in conflict with wildlife or wildlife recreation.

In December 2019, the Area Wildlife Managers, in consultation with CPW staff managing the SWAs, began analyzing what negative impacts were occurring and coming up with ideas and solutions to these problems.

To help manage increasing recreation at SWAs, CPW began requiring either a valid hunting or fishing license, or an SWA access pass, for anyone 16 or older accessing most SWAs.

Additionally, a working group of CPW staff and stakeholders proposed updates to the SWA general provisions (regulations applicable to all SWAs) and property-specific regulations. General provisions are regulations that are applicable to all SWAs, except for State Trust Lands (or if explicitly allowed or disallowed in property-specific regulations).

The public was also invited to submit comments on the proposed changes before adoption by the Parks and Wildlife Commission. The comment period was open for a six week period from April 12 through May 24, 2023.

You can refer to the regulation changes document to view all of the changes (beginning on page 6) and learn more about how the changes affect SWAs near you (property specific provisions begin on page 13).

While the general provision changes include new restrictions, some restrictions may not apply to all SWAs (e.g., allowing camping at certain properties).

These new regulatory changes will go into effect on August 1, but Lamb said CPW wildlife officers would be implementing an education campaign for the first year to ensure everyone is aware of how new regulations may be affecting their favorite SWA before handing out citations for any violations of new regulations.

“Making these updates to our regulations was the culmination of a lot of hard work by staff, stakeholders and with key input from the public throughout the process,” said Lamb.

The 2023 Colorado State Recreation Lands Brochure has all the updated regulations for SWAs and will be available online and in CPW offices in early August.

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CPW is an enterprise agency, relying primarily on license sales, state parks fees and registration fees to support its operations, including: 42 state parks and more than 350 wildlife areas covering approximately 900,000 acres, management of fishing and hunting, wildlife watching, camping, motorized and non-motorized trails, boating and outdoor education. CPW's work contributes approximately $6 billion in total economic impact annually throughout Colorado.

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Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission approves standardizing regulations for permissible activities on State Wildlife Areas