Community

Wilderness Workshop was founded in 1967 as an all-volunteer organization inspired by wilderness and rooted in community.

Today, we’re a double-digit staff protecting public lands and waters throughout Western Colorado, but wilderness and community remain at our core. Over the last 50 years, we’ve grown to protect an expanded geography of public lands and ensure all in our community engage and build connections with these beloved places.

Whether we’re supporting new land and water protections or fighting off oil and gas development, an engaged and active community is key to our work! Through events, outreach, and relationship-building, we empower and inspire our community and elected officials to effectively advocate for the protection of public lands.

For example, the success we’ve had with our “Unified for Thompson Divide” campaign has been because of the amazingly wide array of ranchers, hunters, elected officials, local business owners, and conservation partners who have joined together. We’re proud to support locally-driven efforts to protect places like the Crystal River (which is eligible for Wild and Scenic River designation) and the ecologically significant, but threatened, Homestake Valley, where we conducted a Community Science Project. Our annual Community Party – held the first Friday of June in Carbondale’s Sopris Park – is a chance to share our work and celebrate with so many of the incredible folks who make it possible!

WW is committed to the equitable management and use of our public lands.

In 2018, we launched our Defiende Nuestra Tierra program to partner with our region’s Latinx community. Defiende works to increase the baseline knowledge of public lands and the importance of protecting them, build and expand upon a conservation ethos, and like our other community-focused work, inspire and support advocates.

Annual events like Latino Conservation Week and our Posada and Christmas Tree Cutting in the White River National Forest builds and grows support for public lands and their protection in the Latinx Community.

Want to stay up to date with WW? Be sure you’re on our email list and that your membership is update-to-date! Check out our events page for upcoming opportunities or learn how to take action.