{"id":47874,"date":"2021-03-18T18:18:24","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T00:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/grant-to-help-with-deluge-of-visitors-to-san-juan-mountains\/"},"modified":"2021-03-19T00:18:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T00:18:24","slug":"grant-to-help-with-deluge-of-visitors-to-san-juan-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/grant-to-help-with-deluge-of-visitors-to-san-juan-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Grant to help with deluge of visitors to San Juan Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Ice Lakes Trail saw unprecedented use in 2020. An average of 500 to 650 people hit the trail on any given day.<\/span>Courtesy of San Juan Mountains Association<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

San Juan County has been awarded more than $250,000 to help address the impacts of increasing outdoor recreation in its backcountry.<\/p>\n

Great Outdoors Colorado, which receives money from the state\u2019s lottery, granted San Juan County $260,000 to \u201cadvance outdoor recreation, stewardship and land protection\u201d to meet \u201curgent needs and priorities\u201d in the San Juan Mountains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recreation pressure in this area combined with the demonstrated impacts of unmanaged recreation make this a compelling request,\u201d GOCO said in a statement. \u201cThis proposal provides an intriguing balance of employment, public education, science and stewardship.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effort, called the San Juan Stewardship Project, is a partnership with Mountain Studies Institute, the Silverton Chamber of Commerce and the San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

Visitation to the San Juan Mountains was already increasing in recent years, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed more people toward the outdoors, resulting in unprecedented numbers of visitors in 2020.<\/p>\n

At the popular Ice Lakes Trail, for instance, about 200 hikers a day used to make the trek to the turquoise-tinted lakes. In 2020, however, an average of 500 to 650 people hit the trail on any given day.<\/p>\n

Over the busy Labor Day weekend, nearly 2,000 hikers and more than 200 overnight backpackers were seen at Ice Lakes.<\/p>\n

It all culminated this fall when a wildfire, believed to be human-caused, broke out off the trail to Ice Lake, threatening the town of Silverton and requiring the emergency evacuation of more than 20 hikers who were in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, these growing crowds have damaged the trail and contaminated the watershed with human waste, trash and toilet paper,\u201d MSI said in a statement. \u201cThis trend has been noted across numerous popular destinations in the San Juan Mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

The San Juan Stewardship Project seeks to help on several fronts.<\/p>\n

Money will be directed to support the Alpine Ranger Program, which will provide a public safety and education presence at outdoor recreation hot spots throughout San Juan County.<\/p>\n

Money will be also be used to support several seasonal alpine rangers, as well as provide funding for vehicle maintenance and fuel.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, alpine rangers patrol the Alpine Loop and other parts of the backcountry during the high-traffic summer season, but the program has been reduced over the past few years due to funding limitations,\u201d MSI said.<\/p>\n

Also, a visitor outreach and education campaign will attempt to reach visitors and talk best practices in the backcountry.<\/p>\n

San Juan Mountains Association will continue to host an \u201ceducation base camp\u201d at the Ice Lakes trailhead, which has been seen as effective in years past. The effort hopes to expand to other popular destinations, such as Highland Mary Lakes and Molas Pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Forest Ambassador program will target trailheads to talk with visitors about Leave No Trace principles,\u201d MSI said. \u201cA series of videos and outreach materials will be produced for online and in-person outreach.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the continuing high fire danger that\u2019s been seen in the past few summers, the Wildfire Safety Education Plan and Exhibit will try to educate outdoor visitors about fire regulations and best practices.<\/p>\n

And, a citizen science water-quality monitoring program will launch to engage community members to learn more about the impacts of recreation on local watersheds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will be trained to take water samples that will then be analyzed for E. coli,\u201d MSI said. \u201cThe data collected will be put into outreach materials, which will then be used by (members of the project).\u201d<\/p>\n

Public land agencies have said in the past few months they expect another busy summer season this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe San Juan Stewardship Project is our community\u2019s best chance at stemming the tide of recreation-related resource damage that has spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d MSI said.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

$250,000 will be spent on education about best backcountry practices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[738,13,28,976,1562,199],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-environmental-issue","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-outdoor-recreation","tag-san-juan-county-colorado","tag-san-juan-national-forest"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47874"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}