We’re asking really, really – I don’t know how to express this - but we need the Forest Service's help."
That help would come from Brian Banks, the District Ranger for the South Platte National Forest.
"If I had the resources, I would patrol it more," Banks told FOX31. "But as it stands now, I have a whole other district with other shooting areas on it."
"We have a saying in my office – we spend 90 percent of our time dealing with 5 percent of the population's bad decisions," Banks added.
In the last year, the Forest Service has spent more than $1 million putting out fires started by recreational shooters.
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I'm not sure how I feel about this any more. I'm really tired of the carelessness at the various sporadic (undesignated) shooting ranges up here. One of the pictures on the news of the fire was from my deck people. I've missed a lot of bullets (pun intended) when it comes to surviving wildfires and I've had just about enough of it being because of some mindless human. My immediate neighbor and I were just talking about this last night over beers and he told me that the FS closed the steel gate at the bottom of the road leading into Pike. Although it's "everyone's" forest, I think there's been enough pushback from the locals up here in H.P that the FS folded. Good. If not closed for months, at least keep it closed long enough for it to really sink in. Entitlement be damned, you don't live up here, and even if you do live up in this neighborhood and still want to condone non-locals acting like feral children, t.s, we need to keep it closed awhile.
