Following an accidental shooting last July, the Forest Service closed the very popular and heavily used Rampart Shooting Range in the Pike National Forest. In its nearly 20-year history, Rampart had never before experienced a shooting-related injury or fatality. Rampart is the only free public range in El Paso County, Colo., and receives 40,000 visitors a year. The Service called the closure a "time-out" in order to assess whether the design of the range was a factor; an investigation determined that it was not. Safety experts have said that the accident could have happened at any range. But after it closed Rampart, the Forest Service devised a scheme to keep the range closed permanently.
The Forest Service has established requirements that must be met before it will re-open Rampart. There is no schedule for meeting these requirements and likely no money to cover costs. The most significant issue is the requirement of full-time supervision. Most ranges on federal lands operate without supervision, and this requirement could place all such ranges in jeopardy. Rampart Range is in need of improvements which were identified more than two years ago. But such improvements can be addressed and implemented with the range re-opened. The Forest Service has said that it could take up to five years before Rampart is re-opened, but there is no guarantee that it would re-open even in that timeframe or at any time in the future.
Rampart is unfortunately just one example of how recreational shooting in general is being treated by federal agencies. Many in the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management view it as an inherently dangerous activity.
Yet, recreational shooting (let alone hunting) ranks as having one of the lowest injury and death rates, certainly far below off-highway vehicle use, river rafting, rock climbing, horseback riding...practically any activity you can name.
Shooting ranges on public lands are few and far between in Colorado. In addition to the closure of Rampart, the Forest Service has closed its lands to recreational shooting near Boulder and on the Pawnee Grasslands, and large acreage closures have occurred west of Sedalia. The Forest Service is not planning for recreational shooting. Closures are imposed without opening new areas and needed improvements to existing areas including the Rampart Shooting Range have not been made. Recreational shooting is not being treated by the Forest Service in Colorado as a legitimate and valued recreational activity on forest lands.
“The Forest Service needs to manage recreational shooting in a manner commensurate with other recreational activities,” said Susan Recce, NRA’s Director of Conservation, Wildlife and Natural Resources. “In the case of Rampart, they've known for a long time that the range's size and location cannot handle the volume of recreational shooters who use it. The Forest Service often waits until a situation becomes a crisis before responding, and the response is more often than not to close the range or shooting area.”
The closure also appears to be very selective. When has a death or injury closed river rafting, campgrounds, ski resorts, or hiking, biking, and horseback/trails? Furthermore, when have these areas required full-time supervision to stay open following an injury or fatality?
“The Forest Service in the case of Rampart is managing for closure of forest lands to recreational shooters,” said Recce. “There certainly are Forest Service staff and national forests where the opposite is true. Although efforts have been made to keep forests open to recreational shooting, they are few and far between.”
NRA has been working to get Rampart Range re-opened since the day it was closed, but we need the help of Colorado hunters and shooters to show the Forest Service and your elected officials that the federal government cannot continue to close public lands to recreational shooting, and certainly not without replacing those areas lost with other areas of the same or greater value. Rampart Shooting Range is an important resource for the shooting community along the Front Range. There is no incentive for the Forest Service to reopen Rampart unless the shooting sports community demands it!
Please send a letter of support for the immediate re-opening of Rampart to: Tom Tidwell, Chief of the Forest Service, at ttidwell@fs.fed.us, and copy your letter to Sen. Mark Udall at senator_mark_udall@markudall.senate.gov, Sen. Michael Bennet at http://bennet.senate.gov/contact/, Rep. Doug Lamborn at CO05ima@mail.house.gov, and Gov. Bill Ritter by clicking here.
Please stress that keeping the range closed is not supportable by the investigative report; that the closure has robbed the shooting community of a valuable resource; and that needed improvements to the range can be planned and implemented without closure.
