The Boulder County Commissioners are researching locations for a designated target shooting range in the western part of Boulder County—either in the national forest or on county or private land—as a "sacrifice zone" to offer the Forest Service, which desires to create numerous designated target shooting ranges in the mountains along the Front Range.

Five locations in Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests have been proposed: West Magnolia Road, Ruby Gulch, Beaver Reservoir Road, Bunce School Road, and the Allenspark Dump. Each site exists close to the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway (Colo. Hwy 72 and 7), which provides access to the treasured and densely used areas of western Boulder County, including the adjacent Indian Peaks Wilderness Area.

Every open-air, target shooting range in the national forest creates a host of permanent risks, harms, and dangers. These include high traffic concentration; forest fire; occasional stray bullets; constant far-reaching (measured in miles, not yards) and anxiety-producing noise; lead and other chemical contamination; trash and sewage accumulation; and major harms to conservation values, including disruption to wildlife migration and mating habitat, degradation of water quality, etc., which Boulder County's Master Plan has committed to protect.

Please join the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway Coalition in telling the Boulder County Commissioners, the Northern Front Range Sport Shooting Partnership, and the U.S. Forest Service that all five locations selected are inappropriate and should be withdrawn from consideration.

Read More:

The Peak to Peak Scenic Byway Coalition's Letter to the Boulder County Commissioners​

Daily Camera: Proposed shooting site an inappropriate location​

Daily Camera: Target shooting criteria ignore local realities