Pitkin County releases visitor-use study and ecological peer review for North Star Nature Preserve

Pitkin County Open Space and Trails on Thursday presented results of a 2024 on-site visitor-use study and an external peer review of ecological monitoring for the North Star Nature Preserve, laying out data the county says will inform the 2025 update to the North Star Nature Preserve Management Plan.

Liza (Open Space and Trails staff, Pitkin County Open Space and Trails) opened the webinar by saying, “And today marks the true beginning of our public engagement process as we update this management plan for Northstar.” The presentation combined findings from a DJ&A visitor-use study conducted June 22–July 28, 2024, and an independent ecological review led by recreation ecologist Chris Mons.

The visitor-use study, led by Steve Lawson, senior project manager at DJ&A, measured on-river crowding using a people-per-viewscape (PPV) photographic metric, conducted hourly parking counts at multiple lots, deployed an automated traffic counter on Wildwood Lane, and surveyed river users at the North Star pedestrian-bridge takeout. Lawson said the county’s long-term data show “since 2018, there's been a 50% increase in overall annual river use, to 2024. And in that same time period, there's been a doubling of commercial use.”

Survey and observational highlights: a majority of respondents (about three quarters) reported launching from Wildwood; most used personal vehicles and about one in five used commercial shuttles. About two-thirds of surveyed groups floated for roughly one to two hours (mean ≈ 1.5 hours). The team classified about two-thirds of respondents as first-time or infrequent users in the prior 12 months, with roughly one-third as moderate or regular users and about 5% reporting 20+ trips in 12 months.

The PPV crowding analysis paired respondents’ answers to five photo simulations with continuous camera-based counts at a representative viewscape. Lawson summarized the PPV findings: “When there are three or fewer people in the viewscape respondents very few reported that they would feel crowded. At 4 PPV you start to get a notable crowding response… at 8 PPV you start to see a majority saying, ‘yeah, I'd feel crowded.’” Using game-camera counts during peak hours, the study found most snapshots recorded 0 PPV, about one-third of weekend counts were 1–2 PPV, 3–4 PPV occurred in roughly 10% of weekend counts, and 5+ PPV in about 6% of weekend counts.

Parking and traffic monitoring focused on Wildwood Lane and nearby lots. The automated traffic counter showed pronounced weekend peaks and days with inbound volumes above 100 vehicles during the 9 a.m.–7 p.m. period. Hourly parking counts recorded occasional exceedances of Wildwood lot capacity on some sample days; the team observed maximum parked vehicles at Wildwood during the study far lower than a 2019 photograph used in the 2020 plan (study max observed = 6 vehicles versus 30–40 vehicles in 2019). Lawson noted this change and that Pitkin County’s earlier actions appear to have reduced extreme parking concentrations.

Respondents expressed majority support for current management measures such as limits on commercial group size and the number of commercial groups, mandatory low-impact education for commercial operators, and managing use through parking availability. Lawson said the public’s support for potentially new or more restrictive strategies was weaker than for existing measures.

Chris Mons, the peer reviewer, assessed roughly 17 ecological monitoring protocols developed over the preserve’s monitoring history and concluded the monitoring program is “robust and rigorous” and integrated into an adaptive-management framework. Mons recommended clarifying publicly stated desired conditions and developing clearer triggers and thresholds that would indicate when ecological indicators require management action. He emphasized that indicator-based thresholds improve the ability to connect monitoring results to specific management responses.

County staff and consultants framed the study as informational, not prescriptive. Melissa Bade, community engagement specialist with CDR Associates, reminded attendees, “No decisions have been made on what this means for the 2025 management plan update.” County staff described next steps as: convening a working group that includes neighbors, land managers, commercial operators, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and other partners; holding facilitated focus groups; running a broader public survey; and producing a draft management plan informed by the study and public input.

The consultants and county staff fielded questions about study scope and limitations. They confirmed the on-site study focused on floating river use (paddleboarding represented most floating activity according to the team), sampled the high-use summer season, and noted a nonresponse-bias analysis showed nonrespondents were statistically more likely to report feeling crowded than survey respondents. County staff also confirmed Colorado Parks and Wildlife coordinates on fisheries and that rangers enforce regulations such as the county's prohibition on drones over open-space properties. No formal policy changes or votes were taken during the webinar.

The county posted the existing ecological reports on its website and said a written study report will be made available alongside final slides. County staff encouraged stakeholders to use the Q&A and upcoming public meetings to raise specific issues—commercial permitting, wildlife interactions, nuisance or safety behaviors, and suggested management measures will be examined in the working-group and public-engagement phases.

For now, the study provides a baseline of visitor behavior, crowding tolerance, and ecological monitoring status to inform the 2025 North Star Management Plan update; the county said it will combine these data with public input before proposing changes to management or operations.