Aspen One Statement on the U.S. Forest Service Reorganization
The White River National Forest is the land we operate on. What happens to it matters to us — and we have something to say about what’s happening now.
The White River National Forest — the most visited national forest in the country, with more than 18 million annual visits and $1.59 billion in annual economic impact — is the land on which Aspen One operates our ski areas.
The broader network of trails, the watershed, and the landscapes that define Aspen exist within that forestland and depend on it being well-managed. An under-resourced White River National Forest is a threat to the greater Aspen community and the businesses that call it home, ours included.
The men and women who manage our national forests are already doing more with less. Years of budget pressures and workforce reductions have had a real impact on Forest Service staff, especially those in the field and in visitor-facing positions, and yet they continue to show up for the lands and the communities that depend on them.
The restructuring of the Forest Service that was announced on March 31 accomplishes nothing to help those public servants. It does not give them more resources or more support. Instead, it gives them more disruption — closing the regional offices that coordinate their work, eliminating research infrastructure that informs their decisions, and forcing an institutional reorganization at the exact moment their capacity to absorb it is at its lowest.
Adding to our concerns, this reorganization is coming at a time of extremely high wildfire risk throughout much of the West — driven by record-low snowpack and severe drought conditions. Closing 57 of 77 research stations disrupts the place-based, ongoing, and historically informed scientific understanding that shapes fuel mitigation strategy. And reorganizing the agency midyear forces the people responsible for that work to absorb institutional change at exactly the moment their focus should be on the landscape in front of them.
We are particularly troubled by what these changes mean for the White River National Forest. Closing all nine regional offices eliminates decades of institutional knowledge and local relationships that cannot be rebuilt overnight. And moving the USFS headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City distances agency leadership from the congressional offices and federal partners who control Forest Service funding and policy — at the exact moment that funding is already under threat.
Disrupting the structures and relationships that allow people to do their jobs doesn’t create efficiency. It creates confusion. Forest restoration, wildfire mitigation, and the recreation management that communities like ours depend on will all be slower and harder as a result.
As a response to what is transpiring, We have joined The Conservation Alliance's Brands for Public Lands, a coalition of businesses united to protect forests and natural places nationwide. We intend to make our voice heard through the congressional appropriations process, where the future of the Forest Service will ultimately be decided.
If your business depends on well-managed public lands — and in Colorado, many do — we urge you to say so publicly and consider joining other companies and brands taking action.
And if you simply love these lands, we invite you to join us, too.