To help fund search and rescue teams, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) would like to increase the current Backcountry Search and Rescue (BSAR) surcharge from $0.25 to $1.25, according to a CPW public notice. The proposed increase is to keep pace with inflation and the program’s needs today, and applies to the sale of most wildlife licenses and vessel, snowmobile and off highway vehicle registrations.

“(Backcountry search-and-rescue) volunteers are asked to go out at any time of the day, night, leave their families, leave their jobs to volunteer, and oftentimes, spend their own money doing that,” said Perry Boydstun, CPW’s backcountry search-and-rescue program manager. “And they don’t have the luxuries that some of the other first responders do throughout the state and not wide amount of funding either.”

According to the CPW Backcountry Search and Rescue study, approximately 2,500 active BSAR volunteers respond to approximately 3,600 search-and-rescue incidents each year. And, to stay fit and ready, they spend between $2,000 to $2,500 annually for training and equipment. Further estimates show that BSAR volunteers spend roughly $5 million each year to help those stranded, lost or injured in the backcountry – and that total doesn’t take into other expenses like team operating costs, team vehicles, BSAR equipment, communications equipment and technology. 

Feedback on the proposal has been “widely positive,” said Boydstun, noting that the fee increase applies to invested stakeholders: hunters, anglers, off-highway vehicle users – basically, those who recreate in the backcountry. 

The proposal will be discussed by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission at its August meeting with final adoption considered during the November meeting.