Colorado’s new wildlife area is a premier hunting spot. A rancher who knows elk has concerns. (2024)

PARK COUNTY — Miles of sagebrush-covered ground and a soaring cloud puff-dotted sky dwarfed Gov. Jared Polis and other officials as they addressed a crowd gathered before them July 29 on a sweeping piece of land about 10 miles northeast of Fairplay.

Surrounding them but invisible save for a few droppings was an elk migration corridor. On a plain below a gently sloping hill was Tarryall Creek, a trout fishery and riparian zone favored by moose, elk, deer and beavers, plus hawks, songbirds and the occasional bald eagle. And visible from nearly anywhere they stood were big, beautiful mountains.

The group was there to celebrate the latest land acquisition by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, 1,860 acres of the Collard Ranch 60 miles west of Denver now designated as a protected state wildlife area. In December, CPW joined forces with Great Outdoors Colorado to purchase the land, spending $2 million and $6.5 million, respectively. Or rather, proceeds from the Colorado Lottery paid the $6.5 million and hunters and anglers mostly picked up the remaining $2 million.

GOCO and CPW bought the land from the Western Rivers Conservancy who “jumped at the opportunity” to buy it after Allen Law, their Interior West project manager, fell “in love at first sight” with it in 2022. “Western Rivers’ motto is ‘Sometimes to save a river you have to buy it’ and that’s exactly what we did at the Collard Ranch,” he said.

Now, Polis was hailing it as the next “premier hunting and fishing opportunity for all Coloradans,” added to the 558,000 acres the state says it has acquired for state parks, state wildlife areas and state habitat areas since Polis took office in 2019.

But as history has shown, state wildlife areas aren’t devoid of problems.

Paying for limited play on public lands

Like the other 350 or so state wildlife areas across the state, Collard Ranch was purchased partially with proceeds from CPW’s Habitat Stamp Program.

Since 2006, Habitat Stamp funds have conserved millions of acres of key Colorado habitat. Some of those acres are designated state habitat areas and are off-limits to humans. But on state wildlife areas hunters and anglers are allowed to blast and cast, and each area has different “allowed activities” for nonconsumptive users such as hikers and birdwatchers.

That has suited hunters and anglers who regularly access the state wildlife areas. But a coalition of animal advocacy groups sued CPW last September over regulations they said favored hunters and anglers over other users.

Their complaint: Since 2021, all visitors to state wildlife areas — not just hunters and anglers — have had to pay to play, and nonconsumptive users deserve equal rights. The plaintiffs had a point: Bikes are prohibited, but wheeled carts hunters use to pack their dead game out aren’t. Hunting dogs only, if you don’t mind. And horseback riding is off-limits unless the horse is helping you hunt.

The case is ongoing and Collard Ranch reflects the plaintiffs’ complaint. Although it has been billed as the next big thing for hunters, anglers and recreators, only hunting, fishing and wildlife viewing are allowed per state wildlife area regulations.

CPW is planning a soft opening for hunters only in October while others will have to wait until next spring for access to Collard Ranch, Kara Van Hoose, agency spokesperson, said.

The number of visitors allowed at a time will also be limited by the number of cars that can fit in a parking lot CPW plans to build at the entrance, Mark Lamb, area wildlife manager for the region Collard Ranch sits in, said. CPW offers a limited number of hunting licenses in all of its game management units regardless of whether parts of them are designated state wildlife areas or not, so this new designation won’t increase overall hunter numbers.

But Dave Gottenborg, whose 3,000-acre Eagle Rock Ranch lies near the Collard Ranch and who sits on CPW’s Habitat Stamp Committee, says he has some concerns about the big herds of elk that migrate through the Tarryall Valley bottom throughout the winter looking for forage and refuge.

Do state wildlife areas concentrate hunters?

Gottenborg is one of several ranch owners in Colorado who participate in CPW’s Landowner Preference Program, which encourages private landowners “to provide habitat that increases wildlife populations for the benefit of all hunters,” “discourage the harboring of game animals on private lands during public hunting seasons” and “relieve hunting pressure on public lands by increasing game hunting on private lands.”

Yet, he thinks public access on the formerly private Collard Ranch could put extra pressure on the elk.

Gottenborg is selective about which hunters he allows on his property through the landowner preference program, often giving his allocated number of vouchers to “neighbors, friends, and/or cowboys/cowgirls who come and help with branding, gathering, fence work, manual labor, etc,” he said in an email. He likes to do what he can for those who “may have some trouble putting food on their table at today’s grocery prices,” saying, “this is our way of helping them in return for their help on the ranch.”

He has also installed wildlife-friendly fencing on his land to assist elk in their winter journey that starts in Summit County and heads over Boreas Pass and Georgia Pass into the northern part of South Park near the Cline Ranch State Wildlife Area.

From there, they migrate south across U.S. 285 into such areas as the Collard Ranch and points south, he said. “Elk also come over Kenosha Pass and through the Lost Creek Wilderness into the Tarryall Valley near my place. They seem to favor the bottom land along Tarryall Creek,” along with “‘working lands’ but also across recreational properties and now increasingly CPW-owned land as well,” he wrote in an email.

Overall hunter numbers, which CPW manages, aren’t Gottenborg’s concern, he says. It’s that the state wildlife area designation, with its requisite signage and parking lot, could concentrate more hunters on the newly accessible public land and negatively impact the elk.

Van Hoose said that’s not likely to happen because “this land is 1,860 acres, which is plenty of land for hunters to spread out.”

But Gottenborg worries some hunters will try to “push the elk” he has seen “bedded down on a big piece of private property” and resting from private property onto public property — “entirely legal,” he says, — toward other members of their hunting party within the boundaries. And he says “elk are just running out of places to rest. This is simply my opinion – I’m not stating it as fact. It’s just what I observe here in this valley during the months in which hunting is permitted.”

CPW will discourage that kind of behavior the same way it does on the Cline Ranch State Wildlife Area, Lamb said, by limiting access to the entrance at the parking lot “because we want to prevent people shooting from the highway.”

“What people try to outsmart on this property is predominantly elk,” he added. “So if they saw some elk up on [a] hill, they might try to drop somebody off to try and push them. We didn’t want to have those kinds of issues, so we figured, let’s try only letting people in at the parking lot. We’ve had people get angry about it, but it’s worked really well.”

Van Hoose in an email said CPW’s regional wildlife officers will enforce the rules Lamb mentioned as well as others within the boundaries.

“A major task of the District Wildlife Managers (or Wildlife Officers) is to contact hunters and anglers in the field to ensure they have the proper licenses and tags while recreating. Officers do these daily checks on many types of lands, including SWAs,” she wrote.

And to keep enforcement close, CPW plans to house some of the officers in a building that came with the property, Lamb said.

Letting the new designation play out

Time will tell if turning the Collard Ranch into a state wildlife area will impact the elk that overwinter there one way or another.

But Gottenborg is adopting a “we shall see” stance, saying he thinks CPW has done a great job managing the elk herds he’s familiar with in the past.

“I believe they will continue to do so,” he wrote in an email. “I have nothing but respect and admiration for the job they do. Same goes for the USFS locally. We all work together in this valley, both private landowners and CPW — to protect private lands from overgrazing — and maintain healthy wildlife populations — and their respective migration corridors. We consider it a privilege to work with them — all for the good of Colorado hunters, anglers, and yes, wildlife.”