The U.S. Forest Service has signed off on a controversial plan for major trail expansions near Rabbit Ears Pass in northwest Colorado.

But the long-going debate over the project called Mad Rabbit is not over.

Later this month, the Steamboat Springs City Council is set to reconsider funding of up to $1.6 million for the project. That money was approved late last year, celebrated by advocates who have dreamed of a world-class recreation destination and criticized by others who fear the ruin of elk habitat.

The Forest Service’s final decision notice on Mad Rabbit represented the culmination of an environmental assessment and back-and-forth that spanned the better part of 10 years — what one city councilor recently called “the most contentious trails project in the state, maybe in history.”

More celebration and scorn met the final decision notice.

The city’s funding came in December after the state’s Department of Natural Resources and Colorado Parks and Wildlife pulled back an objection to the Forest Service’s plan that cited concerns over wildlife habitat. It seemed the state and Forest Service had resolved differences through a so-called adaptive management plan, outlining how trails would be built while elk would be monitored.

Now the Department of Natural Resources has “reinstated” its objection.

A letter signed by DNR Executive Director Dan Gibbs alleged “last-minute alterations to the Adaptive Management Plan” that are “significant and unacceptable to Colorado.”

The letter claims a wildlife study has been removed, along with “language that described the importance and necessity of collaboration between the (Forest Service) and the State of Colorado.”

Collaboration was pledged by the Forest Service during a presentation to Steamboat’s City Council ahead of approved funding, Larry Desjardin observed. He’s the president of Keep Routt Wild, the local group that has led pushback against Mad Rabbit.

“The Forest Service misled everyone,” Desjardin said. “They misled the state, they misled DNR and CPW, they misled the City Council, and most importantly they misled the public.”

In an email to The Gazette, local Forest Service spokesperson Aaron Voos said the federal agency and state “could not agree on the requirement or timing of a possible elk study.” He said those conversations occurred before and after funding was approved by the City Council.

Voos granted the draft plan from then was different from the final. “Following internal review, that draft could not be made final due to implementation and management authority concerns,” he said.

Laraine Martin, executive director of mountain biking group Routt County Riders, called the state’s objection “performative and political.”

“They just want everyone to know they basically didn’t get all of their demands met. They want to let everyone know, after it’s all said and done, they didn’t get to have the final say of how the project would look,” Martin said.

It was ultimately the Forest Service’s land to manage, she said. Across 127,124 acres of Routt National Forest, the plan calls for about 36 miles of unauthorized, damaging trails to be closed, with about 49 miles to be built and subject to seasonal wildlife closures.

Mad Rabbit’s scope has been scaled back over the years — at one point about 80 trail miles were envisioned — amid what Martin saw as compromises. Land managers “were getting the impression that nothing was really going to satisfy CPW,” she said. “The goal posts were continually being moved.”

But the final decision notice represented “apparent bad faith,” the objection letter reads. Another “last-minute” change listed: phased trail construction between elk monitoring.

“This thing now has fewer protections for wildlife and habitat because of the phasing changes, because of the lack of delay between phases, and the lack of cooperation with CPW,” Desjardin said.

And another concern remains: Keep Routt Wild and other critics have seen the plan overstepping the legal bounds of Colorado Roadless Areas.

Still, Keep Routt Wild previously expressed a level of support for the adaptive management plan. Adaptive management “offered a promising method to deal with controversial trail projects” beyond Routt County, Desjardin said.

This was the “more important issue” of Mad Rabbit’s final decision notice, Desjardin said: “The precedent this sets for the entire state. Can you trust the Forest Service to comply with an adaptive management plan that they negotiated, in this case, with DNR and CPW?”

Collaboration would continue, Voos said in an email, “including utilizing CPW data and expertise on elk.” 

Voos added: “A collaborative process provides an environment to increase the probability of agreement through problem solving and communication of interests and beliefs, however it does not guarantee 100% agreement nor deference of decision-making authority.”

Now attention turns to Steamboat’s City Council, which is expected to debate during a June 17 meeting.

“It’s not the same plan that we agreed to fund,” one city councilor, Dakotah McGinlay, said at a meeting last month.

Some councilors wished for a resolution between the state and Forest Service. That was unnecessary, Amy Dickson said.

“It is not our role as city council to ask government agencies to get along. If we think we can do that and make a change, we are highly mistaken,” Dickson said.