Colorado Parks and Wildlife ranks among the best wildlife agencies in the country — top three in the West per the Center for Western Priorities, fourth among all fifty states for wildlife protection. The track record backs it up: elk rebuilt from about five hundred animals in nineteen ten to nearly three hundred thousand today, the largest herd in the world. Bighorn sheep, lynx, black-footed ferret, and greenback cutthroat trout recoveries all happened here, and Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy is billed as the nation’s first framework tying conservation, recreation, and climate resilience together.
The soft spot is ecosystem status — twenty-first nationally. Not a management failure. Fire concerns and beetles are outrunning the budget. A mountain pine beetle outbreak has hit over seven hundred thousand acres of Front Range ponderosa in two years, with activity expected to triple. Forest treatment runs can cost ten thousand dollars an acre, and this summer over three hundred thousand acres burned statewide at a cost north of a quarter billion dollars. The state spends roughly $16.4 million a year on wildfire mitigation against a shortfall of up to $200 million.
Prop 137 closes that gap. It redirects an estimated one hundred seventy-five million a year in existing sporting goods sales tax — no new taxes — sending about eighty-three million to the Department of Natural Resources and State Forest Service for forest treatment and watershed restoration through existing programs. That’s nearly five times current spending. Peer-reviewed research shows treatment reduces wildfire severity by up to seventy-two percent.
For the Pikes Peak region, the Forest Service just treated seventeen hundred ninety acres near Rampart Reservoir for watershed health — the kind of work 137 would scale. One caveat: the diversion can shrink in tough budget years with the legislature able to determine amounts when revenue has not exceeded the TABOR cap, so that figure isn’t a guaranteed annual check. But CPW built one of America’s best wildlife systems on habitat that fire can and does now destroy. Prop 137 funds the forest work that keeps it standing.
References:
- Center for Western Priorities 2024 scorecard. https://westernpriorities.org/resource/2024-state-conservation-scorecard-home/
- SmileHub 2026 wildlife protection ranking. https://smilehub.org/blog/best-states-for-wildlife-protection/239
- CPW elk page. https://cpw.state.co.us/species/elk
- Colorado Encyclopedia on elk history. https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rocky-mountain-elk
- CPW Outdoors Strategy year-one report. https://cpw.state.co.us/sites/default/files/dam/apqa23dpvq/item.16_cos-one-year-report-digital.pdf
- ABC News on beetle outbreak and $10,000-per-acre mitigation costs. https://abcnews.com/Politics/killer-beetles-tinderbox-forests-climate-change-takes-center/story?id=136871791
- Colorado Newsline on ponderosa mortality projections. https://coloradonewsline.com/2026/10/01/colorado-ponderosa-pines-are-dying/
- Colorado State Forest Service 2025 Forest Health Report. https://csfs.colostate.edu/forest-management/forest-health-report-2025/insects-and-diseases/
- Colorado Sun on summer 2026 burn totals and Prop 137. https://coloradosun.com/2026/10/12/opinion-colorado-prop-137-smart-investment/
- Common Sense Institute on Prop 137 fiscal breakdown. https://commonsenseinstituteus.org/research/proposition-137-sporting-goods-sales-tax-revenue-for-conservation/
- Colorado Sun Prop 137 explainer. https://coloradosun.com/2026/09/30/proposition-137-colorado-conservation-wildfire-funding/
- Nature Conservancy fact check on the 72% severity reduction. https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/colorado-prop-137-facts/
- Forest Service Rampart Reservoir prescribed fire release. https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/psicc/newsroom/releases/rampart-reservoir-area-prescribed-fire-planned-watershed-health-pikes
- Colorado Sun on Prop 137 tax credit interaction. https://coloradosun.com/2026/10/12/proposition-137-colorado-state-budget-impacts/
That’s the full set. The 148% figure lives in the CSFS report link above — worth correcting that one before it goes live.
