National forest visitors left behind mountains of trash and unattended fires in Eagle County in 2024. The Front Country Rangers helped clean it all up
Work in 2024 included meeting with visitors, putting out fires and picking up mountains of garbage

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In the several years of the local Front Country Ranger program, local governments and the U.S. Forest Service have found ways to cooperate to make the nation’s most-visited national forest a better place.
A Forest Service team on Tuesday provided an update on the 2024 Front Country Ranger program to the Eagle County Board of Commissioners. Recreation specialist Trish Barre told the commissioners that the program in 2024 was fully staffed with 11 crew members. Those people, funded in part by local governments, got a lot of seasonal work done in the White River National Forest.
A big part of the job is contacting visitors on trails and at dispersed and organized campgrounds. Most of those contacts came in the Homestake and East Vail areas.
The work also involved cleaning up after visitors. Barre noted that the crew extinguished 32 unattended campfires. It wouldn’t take much for one of those fires to blow up into something far more serious.
In addition to that work, the crew also cleaned up a lot of garbage. Barre noted that the more than 5,000 pounds of trash cleaned up in 2024 included scattered nails, enough to fill three five-gallon buckets.

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The crew also worked to clean up scores of dispersed camping sites, primarily in the Homestake Creek area. There, crews installed 50 metal fire rings and closed several other sites. The crews also installed new signs.
A second improvement phase, set for this year, will put picnic tables at those dispersed sites and implement a sign plan, with signs in both English and Spanish.
In 2024, Front Country Rangers:
- Removed 5,127 pounds of garbage
- Cleaned out seven pieces of abandoned property
- Extinguished 32 abandoned campfires
- Mitigated 234 human waste piles
Working with the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, the crew helped take out several standing dead trees. In some areas, those trees were de-limbed, and the trunks were used to replace fences.
In the Piney Lake area, downed fences that had allowed motorized access to closed areas were replaced with boulders.
Eagle County Director of Open Space and Natural Resources Marcia Gilles said the program shows the “power of the partnership” between the federal and local agencies.
District Ranger Leanne Veldhuis agreed, adding she’s happy to show Tuesday’s presentation to anyone who’d like to see it.
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“I couldn’t be prouder of this program,” County Manager Jeff Shroll said, adding that Tuesday’s slide show “doesn’t do it justice.”
Shroll thanked the county’s municipal partners for their cooperation, and the Front Country Rangers for their work, especially for fires nipped in the bud.
And Shroll reminded visitors, “It’s not a landfill … this is our home.”