Marble Listening Sessions

Over the past five months, the Lead King Loop stakeholder group has been collaborating to develop management strategies that will alleviate issues associated with increases in recreation-based visitation on the Lead King Loop outside of the Town of Marble. The stakeholder group has worked closely with local and federal government to understand the feasibility of proposed actions, parameters of policy and funding, and the tradeoffs associated with each.

After multiple sessions of workshopping ideas, the group has identified a range of priority actions that could be taken in the short- and long-term to mitigate impacts to the Town of Marble, visitor experiences, and the ecosystem. These ideas will be shared with the community to garner feedback at a public listening session at the Fire Station in Marble, Colorado on Thursday, April 28th at 6:30pm. A separate, virtual listening session will be held through Zoom on Tuesday, May 3rd at 4:30pm. Please email centerforpubliclands@western.edu if you would like to participate in the virtual listening session.

Following the public listening sessions, the stakeholder group will convene in early May to select and revise ideas based on public input received and issue recommendations to the U.S. Forest Service, Gunnison County, and the Towns of Marble and Crystal.

The public listening session held for the Lead King Loop on Wednesday, December 8th, 2021 at the Town of Marble Fire Station. 34 people attended in person and 19 attended virtually through Zoom. People with a variety of backgrounds and interests shared their reasons for loving the Lead King Loop, and patterns of concern began to emerge. A method called Q-methodology was proposed by the Western Colorado University graduate student group to encompass these diverse concerns by representing priorities in 24 words. The Western graduate student team proposed an initial list of 12 words, also called “priorities,” after reading materials about previous Lead King Loop conversations and the ever-evolving history of the area as the recreation volume increases.

Participants in person and online had the opportunity to discuss with folks around them and share initial concepts for priorities. Several themes became apparent during the conversation with the whole group. Participants offered thoughtful insight into what the initial list of 12 meant to them, as well as how it could be improved and expanded. After this first discussion amongst the attendees, different small groups assembled and were prompted to offer priorities that should be on the list or add ideas to be included within the definition of an existing priority. After the listening session, the facilitators were able to condense words and pull themes to create the final list of priorities.