Our Mission:
Is to protect the wilderness, water, and wildlife of Western Colorado’s public lands.
Our History:
The Aspen Wilderness Workshop (as it was then called) was founded in 1967 and as an all-volunteer group in the 1970s and 1980 secured congressional designation for the Hunter-Fryingpan, Collegiate Peaks, West Elks, and Raggeds Wilderness Areas, and doubled the acreage within the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness Area. Co-founders and “Maroon Belles” Connie Harvey, Joy Caudill, and Dottie Fox, played a pivotal role in bringing about these pieces of legislation, which together secured nearly a half-million acres of wilderness in the White River National Forest.
During the 1970s WW’s advocacy resulted in the establishment of the Maroon Valley Bus Service (1975), which limited private vehicles in the Maroon Valley (to protect it from air pollution) and provided the first interpretive guides on buses; WW – alongside other conservation groups – unsuccessfully fought the Fryingpan–Arkansas (Fry-Ark) water diversion project. Beginning in the mid-1980s, our focus broadened from advocating for new wilderness to defending the ecological integrity of the White River National Forest (WRNF).
In 1984, we started a still-running Wilderness Monitoring Program with the Forest’s Aspen Ranger District and in 1996, won a pivotal Colorado Supreme Court ruling regarding the Snowmass Creek Instream Flow, which established a compromise that balances ecosystem needs and human demand. In 1997, Sloan Shoemaker was hired as WW’s first full-time employee, leading WW’s efforts to ensure ecological values were protected in the WRNF management plan revision (finalized in 2002).
Long-time Executive Director Sloan Shokemaker.
BLM Wildlands, near Dinosaur National Monument, that the Colorado Wildlands Project is working to protect. Photo courtesy Jon Mullen/Ecostock.
Over the next 22 years, Sloan – alongside a growing board and donor base – developed WW into an organization that would, as he said “…deploy a full toolbox to inform, educate, coax, cajole, argue, and when we must, fight through the courts to ensure positive ecological outcomes for beloved wild places.” In 2003 we dropped the word “Aspen” from our name and in 2004 moved our office to Carbondale.
Major projects in the early 2000s included strengthening the Colorado Roadless Rule, launching the forest-wide Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign, reducing habitat fragmentation in the revision of the WRNF Travel Plan, and invalidation of Bush-era management plans for the Roan Plateau. In 2009, WW was a founding member of the Thompson Divide Coalition; 2015 would bring a new Oil and Gas Plan for the WRNF; and in 2016, drawing national attention, the BLM canceled 25 illegally-issued oil and gas leases in the Thompson Divide.
In 2018, WW launched the Defiende Nuestra Tierra (Defend Our Land) Program, Sloan retired and then-Conservation Director Will Roush became Executive Director. Now with a staff of over 10, new endeavors such as the Colorado Wildlands Project, and forward-thinking conservation priorities that drive our decision-making, WW has ensured we’re meeting the opportunities and challenges facing Western Colorado’s public lands in the 21st century.
