“We Can’t Keep Going Like This”
Former White River National Forest Supervisor, Scott Fitzwilliams, on the state of the forest
This article first appeared in the Summer 2025 edition of Wild Works.
Scott Fitzwilliams was the Forest Supervisor of the 2.4-million-acre White River National Forest in Colorado, starting in 2009. Previously, he was Deputy Forest Supervisor of the Willamette National Forest in Eugene, OR.
Why is selling off public lands a bad idea?
The public land system in America is, in my opinion, one of the greatest experiments in democracy the world has ever seen. It is uniquely American.
It is a uniquely American ideal that we’re going to set aside a percent of the land base, and then it’s going to be managed in the public trust, owned by everyone. That is such a great democratic ideal. And if we lose our public land, I think we lose one of the greatest strengths of our American economy.
What does the White River National Forest need to manage recreation properly?
You have to have sophisticated recreation planning. Take for example Hanging Lake and the Maroon Bells. Those plans took five years of data gathering, collaboration, analysis, public engagement and alternatives. Then we need boots on the ground to implement the plan.
But we can’t keep going like this. There has to be a realization that there’s a limit to how many people we can handle if we want the ecological benefits to continue. We want wildlife populations. We want ecological function. We can turn this place into Disneyland, no problem.
But people want both, and if you want both, there has to be a realization that there is a limit to what is sustainable. And in my opinion, we’re hitting some of those limits in many areas of the forest.
What do you worry about the most?
I’m worried about the dismantling of the public land system by the Trump administration. That’s my life worry right now. You look at the President’s budget proposal for 2026 and there’s no mistaking the intent here, in my opinion.
They want to dismantle it. I don’t know if that means get rid of public lands, but certainly massively change the public land system, because with what’s being proposed, there will be no one to steward and manage. That is unequivocally true. We have a big military and all that stuff, but our public land system is part of what makes America great.
What are the less obvious impacts of staffing cuts to the White River National Forest?
These cuts and retirements will have a generational effect. We are losing a lot of really experienced people who are teachers and mentors and we’re losing our best and brightest young people. I don’t know how we’re going to recover from this.
It’s is going to be a long process, because we lost so much. The people we lost know the land, they know the people, they know the culture. How is that going to be replaced? It’s going to take a long time and that’s why this dismantling is so disturbing.
Any advice for locals who are not liking what they see?
First, we need to listen. We need to open our ears and our minds to say, how did we get here? Are there things that maybe we need to reflect on to not put this public land experiment in danger.
We still live in a democracy, and we have elected representatives that are paid to listen, even if they don’t want to, and we need to make it clear how vital these lands are to us, to our economies, to our businesses, to our well being.
Don’t ever lose your voice because if you give up your voice you are giving up on democracy.
