Access

• The public can access this land for recreational purposes such as camping, hunting and fishing, and it may also be used for commercial purposes, including grazing livestock and harvesting timber and minerals. Being so vast, it can be difficult to define where public land stops and private land starts, but the Colorado Public Lands Information Center provides detailed information about all of the public lands in the state, regardless of who it is managed by.
  
  

Wilderness

• The Wilderness Act of 1964 created the Wilderness Preservation System to protect and conserve some of the nation's most spectacular land. More than 200,000 acres are protected in Colorado in five areas: Gunnison Gorge, Dominguez Escalante, Uncompahgre Wilderness, Black Ridge Canyons and Powderhorn Wilderness. The BLM ensures "these special places have little to no human-made improvements and are managed to maintain their primitive character."
  
  

National Parks

• Colorado's four national parks contain widely varying landscapes from the nation's tallest sand dunes of Great Sand Dunes National Park to the alpine majesty of the Rocky Mountain National Park. Outdoor lovers can participate in an array of activities, including sand boarding the dunes, kayaking the largest natural lake in Colorado at Grand Lake and climbing The Joker.
  
  

Forests

• Colorado's tourism industry and economy rely upon its protected roadless areas. With seven National Forests, these lands are home to many endangered species, such as the Canada lynx, northern goshawk and cutthroat trout. Logging in Colorado began 150 years ago, and harvest levels increased rapidly, peaking at production of more than 400 million board feet per year in the 1980s. Following lawsuits from environmental organizations that challenged most large timber sales, harvests started decreasing and have remained steady at 40 million board feet per year since the 1990s.
  
  

Mines

• The mining industry plays a crucial part in Colorado's economy, and there are more than 1,700 active mineral operations. The Office of Mined Land Reclamation regulates mining and reclamation activities at coal, metal, aggregate and other minerals mines in Colorado, while the Office of Active and Inactive Mines reclaims and safeguards dangerous, abandoned mines that could pose a threat to the public and the environment.