Colorado is considering a sheriff’s proposal to lead backcountry search and rescue

The plan for Colorado Parks and Wildlife to take a larger role in backcountry search and rescue has been paused to consider a new proposal that would put a county sheriff in charge of coordinating large-scale, multiagency missions. 

When Colorado Parks and Wildlife in March announced an overhaul of the state’s backcountry search and rescue management, it was expected that the new program would be rolling by fall. The search for a third-party state coordinator has been ongoing. The 53-year-old, volunteer-led Colorado Search and Rescue Association did not step forward to work under Colorado Parks and Wildlife. 

Now, the County Sheriffs of Colorado has asked the state to pause the search for a new statewide incident manager, saying a county sheriff could fill the role of coordinating multiagency search and rescue missions. The proposal for a Colorado sheriff to take over statewide coordination comes from Larimer County Sheriff John Feyen. 

In a Sept. 29 letter to Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Laura Clellan, Amy Nichols with the County Sheriffs of Colorado said sheriffs “have expressed significant concern” over the plan to shift management of complex search and rescue operations to a nongovernmental third party. 

Handing over the state coordination “risk(s) fracturing local operational coordination and creating operational friction with established sheriff authority,” wrote Nichols, who said Larimer County “has the organizational infrastructure, operational capability, and expertise to execute the scope of work” outlined in Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s search for a statewide coordinator.  

The pause means a longstanding agreement between the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the volunteer-dependent Colorado Search and Rescue Association — which state leaders canceled in March — has been renewed through September of next year. 

The one-year renewal of the canceled memorandum of understanding with the Colorado Search and Rescue Association is meant to sustain coordination of backcountry search and rescue operations for the year, reads an Oct. 20 note to the Colorado Search and Rescue Association from Jim Burack, acting director of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“In the longer term, the extension is designed to provide time and space for a more intensive stakeholder conversation to determine the best path forward for Colorado’s backcountry search and rescue operations,” Burack wrote. 

“We do it in the fire world. Why wouldn’t we do that with search and rescue?”

Bridget O’Rourke, a spokesperson for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, said the extension is “a temporary measure to ensure uninterrupted operational stability.” 

The Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, the County Sheriffs of Colorado, the Colorado National Guard, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Colorado Search and Rescue Association will create a working group to hammer out a framework for future operations and review the proposal from Larimer County, O’Rourke said in an email.

O’Rourke said the idea of a sheriff taking over the role traditionally handled by the Colorado Search and Rescue Association “is an option that many Backcountry Search and Rescue partners are interested in exploring.”

Feyen said his deeply skilled emergency services crews — which include a backcountry search and rescue team, the one-of-a-kind Diamond Peaks Ski Patrol on Cameron Pass, a dive rescue team and a wildland firefighting crew — could handle statewide coordination. 

There are several large sheriff’s offices that could handle management of complex missions, he said, calling his offer to assist “one of many options on the table right now.”

Cooperation across jurisdictions is common among sheriffs, said Feyen, who often calls his neighboring sheriffs for help with wildfires. 

“We do it in the fire world. Why wouldn’t we do that with search and rescue?” he said. “Really, I just want to make sure that the voice of the sheriffs in Colorado is represented in all future discussions.”

Feyen said he appreciates the pause and the chance for stakeholders to discuss the future of search and rescue in the state. 

“This will help make Colorado a preeminent search and rescue operation model in the nation, which is the goal of everyone in this conversation,” he said. 

A new plan for managing Colorado’s volunteer-dependent search and rescue

It’s important to note, O’Rourke said, that any of the proposed changes to search and rescue management will not interrupt missions and anyone who is lost or injured can call 911 and a team of sheriff-led volunteers supported by state funds will respond.

The pause highlights unseen challenges that emerged since March, when Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management joined the County Sheriffs of Colorado to announce a new plan for managing Colorado’s backcountry search and rescue operations. 

The new plan — called an Interagency Agreement — called for Colorado Parks and Wildlife to coordinate search and rescue work directly with county sheriffs, essentially removing the volunteer-led Colorado Search and Rescue Association from its 53-year-old role coordinating large-scale, multiagency search and rescue missions.

The March announcement caught many in Colorado’s search-and-rescue realm off guard. The “more intensive stakeholder conversation” that Burack called for in the Oct. 20 memo did not happen before the March announcement that effectively dismissed the Colorado Search and Rescue Association. 

“It’s always better to have all the players at the table before dealing the cards,” said a nearly 50-year search and rescue volunteer who asked that his name not be used because he had not been authorized to speak by the sheriff in his county who administers search and rescue operations. 

As part of that new agreement announced in March, Kevin Klein, director of the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, sent a note to Jeff Sparhawk at the Colorado Search and Rescue Association to say the memorandum of understanding between the groups would end in June. 

The new agreement announced in March — set to start Aug. 1 and run through July 2031 — was pitched by state officials as a tidying up of the cooperative processes involved in search and rescue management. Colorado Parks and Wildlife would take over the Colorado Search and Rescue Association’s oversight of training and credentialing for the state’s more than 3,000 search and rescue volunteers. The Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management would “monitor, facilitate and promote” backcountry search and rescue programs in the state. 

Helicopter missions with the Colorado National Guard reach a record in 2026

The Colorado Search and Rescue Association did not apply. Colorado Parks and Wildlife does not disclose bids when its request for proposal process is ongoing, but O’Rourke said the agency received “viable candidates … who could handle incident management,” which includes coordinating helicopter hoist rescues with the Colorado National Guard’s High-Altitude Aviation Training Site in Gypsum. 

Colorado’s search and rescue volunteers have conducted a record number of hoist rescues this year — more than 50 — with the Colorado National Guard, without a formal agreement with the Colorado Search and Rescue Association for managing and coordinating those aviation rescues. Last year the Colorado National Guard conducted 36 search and rescue missions with Colorado Search and Rescue Association volunteers, flying helicopters for 96 hours in missions that saved 37 lives. 

The Colorado Search and Rescue Association has spent decades training and staffing 22 volunteer state coordinators who work eight, three-day, round-the-clock shifts every year. This week those Colorado Search and Rescue Association coordinators worked with the Colorado Army National Guard on three operations: rescues of 40 people and 16 dogs in flooded southwestern Colorado, recovery of three people killed in a plane crash in Gunnison County and the Chaffee County search for the missing Colorado Mountain College students caught in a snowstorm last weekend.  

In July 2025, days after a team from the High-Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site conducted the highest-ever hoist mission in the state to rescue hikers who had been struck by lightning atop the 14,267-foot Torreys Peak, State Army Aviation Officer for Colorado Lt. Col. Scott Tucker issued a memo requiring all requests for military aviation assets to go through the Colorado Search and Rescue Association. Tucker said requests through the association’s incident commanders had reduced the guard’s initial assessment, assignments and approval for military helicopters from 60 minutes to 15 minutes. 

“This is a result of flattening communications to enable all personnel essential to the review, approval and support of incidents to receive information at the same time, allowing multiple partners to act quickly and in parallel,” Tucker wrote in the July 25, 2025, memo. 

The association has declined to comment on the new plan since it was announced in the spring, with Sparhawk, the director of the association, only saying that the situation was “dynamic and complex.”