The Chaffee County commissioners hear a June 9 conditional use permit application from venture-backed Ramble Outdoors to build a 36-site campground on State Land Board trust land at Pine Creek. The parcel is confirmed Highest Quality wildlife habitat. The mandatory 300-foot stream setback is being bypassed. No 1041 analysis appears in the 506-page hearing packet. Public comment deadline is June 4.
CHAFFEE COUNTY — The Chaffee County Board of County Commissioners will hear a conditional use permit application June 9 from Ramble Outdoors, Inc. to operate a 36-site commercial campground on Colorado State Land Board trust land at the mouth of Pine Creek canyon. The parcel sits on ground the county’s own Planning for Wildlife Map classifies as Highest Quality habitat, directly adjacent to the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness boundary and less than a mile from the Pine Creek Trailhead. The public hearing notice lists only a CUP proceeding. It contains no mention of a Chapter 9 threshold determination under the county’s 1041 regulations.
Chapter 9 of Chaffee County’s 1041 regulations governs development in areas containing or having a significant impact on natural resources of statewide importance — a category that includes significant wildlife habitat. The regulations require the county to determine whether a proposed development crosses the threshold that triggers a full 1041 permit. Ramble’s hired environmental consultant confirmed in writing that the entire project area is Highest Quality habitat on the county’s own map. Eight separate Colorado Parks and Wildlife High Priority Habitat designations overlap the project area simultaneously. The 506-page draft packet for the June 9 hearing contains no county staff analysis, no recommended conditions of approval, and no record of a Chapter 9 threshold determination.
The public comment deadline is noon, June 4, 2026.
The 1041 Question
The Planning for Wildlife Map — adopted January 1, 2025 as Appendix K to the Chaffee County Land Use Code, built with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management — is a required consultation document for all development permits in unincorporated Chaffee County. HCA downloaded and reviewed the map. The Pine Creek parcel on County Road 388, approximately ten miles north of Buena Vista, falls within Highest Quality habitat. Undisturbed Highest Quality habitat continues immediately to the west, toward the Wilderness boundary.
The county has applied the 1041 threshold question to campground applications before. In 2020 and 2021, when a campground was proposed along the Arkansas River near County Road 190, the BoCC conducted a threshold review and found no significant wildlife impact, waiving the Chapter 9 requirement. That site was on an already-developed river corridor. Pine Creek is confirmed undisturbed Highest Quality terrain at the entry to federal Wilderness, a documented elk calving zone, and a migration corridor.
At the November 2024 public hearing on the Land Use Code, Commissioner Greg Felt acknowledged publicly that the Planning for Wildlife Map may not have been drawn at the parcel level, responding to a landowner whose acreage carried a Highest Quality designation despite little observed wildlife use. That landowner had tried to place the land in a conservation easement — the application was declined because surrounding development already impedes wildlife movement. The Pine Creek parcel presents the opposite condition: undisturbed terrain with no surrounding development to its west, abutting Wilderness.
The same June 9 agenda includes two intergovernmental agreements substituting for 1041 permits — one with the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District for the Cottonwood Dam improvement project, one with Pueblo Water for the Clear Creek Dam safety project. The county is managing 1041 obligations case by case on the same day it hears this application.
HCA asks: Did the county conduct a Chapter 9 threshold determination for this application? If so, what was the finding? If not, why not?
Who Is Ramble
Ramble Outdoors, Inc. is a Golden-based, venture-backed company founded in 2021 by CEO Matt Oesterle. It currently operates Ramble at Great Sand Dunes, opened in 2023, and Ramble at Mesa Verde, which completed its first full season in 2025. Its investor materials describe entitling its first two campground properties in under four months “without community or commissioner pushback” at “2% or less of project budget.” The company is raising Ramble Fund I, targeting 10 to 12 campground locations, and works with what it describes as “both private and institutionalized landowners to lease parcels.”
This is not Ramble’s first attempt in Chaffee County. In August 2024, a Ramble Outdoors application for an RV park and commercial campground was pulled from the BoCC agenda before commissioners could consider it, according to the Ark Valley Voice. That earlier application sought an exception to the county’s temporary moratorium on land use applications. In September 2023, Montezuma County commissioners denied Ramble’s Commercial Planned Unit Development application near Phil’s World North Trailhead. All three commissioners voted no. Ramble reapplied under a different track and ultimately prevailed. The Mesa Verde campground is now operating on Montezuma County Road M.
The applicant contact on the Chaffee County CUP application is Dieter Erdmann, Ramble’s Vice President for Land and Entitlements. Erdmann has 27 years in land acquisition and conservation, with prior positions at Western Rivers Conservancy and Colorado Open Lands. In April 2025, Ramble VP of Operations Emma Sheade told the Durango Telegraph that the Salida and Buena Vista area was among Colorado locations under active consideration for expansion.
The Tiger Lily Property
The State Land Board parcel is known as the Tiger Lily property. It straddles both the Arkansas River and US Highway 24 and totals just under 400 acres. Ramble has leased 98.43 acres — the portion south of US Highway 24, accessed by Chaffee County Road 388. Pine Creek flows through the leased property from south to north to its confluence with the Arkansas River. The proposed development would use roughly 30 acres for the 36-site campground, with 1.5 miles of new and existing roads constructed across the site.
The same parcel was flagged at a March 2, 2026 Chaffee County work session as one of three State Land Board parcels identified as county priorities — alongside Maxwell Park and Droney Gulch — by Community Planning and Natural Resources Director Miles Cottom. That work session occurred three months before the CUP application was publicly noticed.
A planning lease — which allows an applicant to pursue local permits but does not authorize development — is in place. The State Land Board’s own Recreation Program Manager, Abe Medina, attended the December 2, 2025 neighborhood meeting on the application. Meeting notes confirm the planning lease costs $1,500 to $2,000 per year. A production lease, which requires a vote by the full State Land Board at a public meeting, has not been issued. The county is being asked to approve a CUP for a $3 million commercial development on state trust land before the State Land Board’s own public process is complete.
The Tiger Lily property falls under the direction of State Land Board Director Nicole Rosmarino, appointed by Governor Polis in June 2025. HCA has covered Rosmarino extensively. She co-founded Southern Plains Land Trust, which used state funds to acquire 60,000 acres in southeastern Colorado with the stated goal of ending livestock grazing. Before that, she served as Wildlife Program Director for WildEarth Guardians, a rewilding advocacy organization. Seventeen bipartisan members of Colorado’s Rural Caucus sent a letter warning her appointment threatened working lands. In January 2026, HCA assessed her first seven months at the State Land Board and awarded her a grade of D, documenting a consistent pattern of conservation prioritization, agricultural lessee displacement, and transparency gaps. The State Land Board is constitutionally required to comply with valid local land use regulations. Its signature on county CUP paperwork, per the Board’s own published materials, is not an endorsement of a project and is not an indication that a production lease will or will not ultimately be issued.
What the Wildlife Map Shows
Ramble retained ERO Resources Corporation to prepare a Habitat, Range, and Migration Corridor Report for the application. ERO’s report, included in the hearing packet, states: “The project area is entirely in a highest-quality habitat area as identified on the Chaffee County Planning for Wildlife Map.”
The same report documents eight separate Colorado Parks and Wildlife High Priority Habitat designations overlapping the project area: Aquatic Gold Medal Waters, Aquatic Sportfish Management Waters, Mule Deer Severe Winter Range, Mule Deer Migration Corridor, Elk Production Area, Elk Migration Corridor, Elk Severe Winter Range, and Pronghorn Migration Corridor.
Additional resources documented within or immediately adjacent to the project area: an active golden eagle nest 0.33 miles from the project boundary, within the federal 0.5-mile buffer zone during which a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Eagle Specific Permit may be required; three additional golden eagle nests within one mile; a documented peregrine falcon nest within one mile; two active osprey nests within one mile; and confirmed suitable habitat for the gray wolf, a federally listed species.
CPW recommended restricting all human activity in the project area from December 1 through April 30 to minimize High Priority Habitat impacts. Ramble proposes closing the campground November 1 through April 30 — one month shorter than CPW’s recommendation on the front end of the sensitive season.
The Stream Setback
Under Land Use Code Section 3.6, impacts to high and highest quality habitat must be avoided wherever possible. The code requires a 300-foot setback from rivers and streams in Highest Quality habitat. Pine Creek runs through the leased property.
ERO’s report acknowledges the conflict directly: “Although the proposed campsite falls within the Code’s required 300-foot setback of streams in highest-quality habitat,” the report states the project is invoking alternate compliance under Land Use Code Section 3.6.2.2, proposing a 100-foot buffer instead.
CPW recommended a 500-foot buffer around Pine Creek. Ramble is proposing 100 feet — one-fifth of CPW’s recommendation and one-third of the Land Use Code baseline. The county has not ruled on whether the alternate compliance request is acceptable.
How to Comment
Public Hearing: Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 9:00 AM
Location: Commissioner’s Meeting Room, 104 Crestone Ave., Salida
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/109079543
Written comment deadline: Noon, Thursday, June 4, 2026
Email: chaffeeplanning@chaffeecounty.org or in person at 104 Crestone Ave., Salida
The public notice states: “It is inappropriate to personally contact individual County Commissioners while an application is pending.”
Whether the county conducted a Chapter 9 threshold determination for this application — and if so, what it found — is not stated in the public notice. The commissioners will decide June 9.
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