Our relationship with the Colorado Tourism Office (CTO) is one of our most treasured. While every U.S. state has a tourism office, not every state has a tourism office focused on maintaining sustainable travel rather than on casting the widest net possible to attract visitors. Beginning in 2017, CTO became the first to develop a destination stewardship plan to educate travelers about reducing their impacts, and that plan included backcountry safety education for outdoor recreationists. The agency partnered with Leave No Trace to create the Care for Colorado Coalition, which CSAR joined as a stewardship partner in 2022 at CTO’s invitation. We have long made the case that stewarding local resources should include the protection of search and rescue volunteers’ time and effort, and it was a case readily accepted by CTO and the coalition partners. We couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities they give us to contribute to statewide destination stewardship and backcountry safety messaging through their distribution channels.
Recently, CTO invited CSAR to participate in a new project to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) for their Destination Stewardship Strategic Plan Initiative. We hope one of the new KPIs for the plan will be the number of annual rescues of backcountry recreationists in Colorado, which we will track against our education efforts. Stay tuned for more information about this exciting opportunity as we work with CTO to help make our beautiful Colorado backcountry safer for everyone.