The Colorado Outdoor Principles

When making decisions, determining priorities, and advancing our goals as a collaboration, we utilize and promote Colorado’s Outdoor Principles as a guide. These Principles help us steward and manage Colorado’s most precious resources.

1. Outdoor recreation and conservation require that a diversity of lands and waters be publicly owned, available for public access, and cared for properly.

2. Colorado’s outdoors and its stewardship and recreation communities should be welcoming, inclusive, and accessible environments for visitors whenever possible.

3. Within Colorado’s diversity of land and waters, private land plays a critical role in conserving the ecological integrity of a functional landscape that is necessary for robust and meaningful outdoor recreational experiences.

4. Both outdoor recreation and conservation are needed to sustain Colorado’s quality of life. Both are beneficial to local economic well-being, for personal health, and for sustaining Colorado’s natural resources.

5. All recreation has impacts. Coloradans have an obligation to minimize these impacts across the places they recreate and the larger landscape through ethical outdoor behavior.

6. Proactive management solutions, combined with public education, are necessary to care for land, water, and wildlife, and to provide the protections needed to maintain quality outdoor recreation opportunities.

7. Biological and social science must inform the management of outdoor recreation.

8. Stable, long-term, and diverse funding sources are essential to protect the environment and support outdoor recreation.

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