Greetings from Scullbinder Ranch: Bad news & how the Federal Worker Purge May Affect Four Corners Guides

Dear friends,

I write this to you after spending the day writing letters, emails and making phone calls to President Trump and the State of Colorado’s congressmen and women.

Why? Because I received a phone call this morning from a representative at one of the government agencies that provides us with our public lands permits.

“I am so sorry, but due to so many people being fired, we may not be able to process your permits this year,” they explained. “This means you will not be able to run your courses on public lands.”

Wow… At least they called us to prepare us for what might be to come. Scary. If we cannot get permits approved due to the federal worker purge, we cannot run courses. If we cannot run courses, clearly we will go out of business. And there is a ripple effect to this.

Our Vision: Buy Local

From the beginning, we committed to developing and maintaining strong community ties by sourcing and promoting locally-grown food and beverages, by working with local, regional, women-owned or USA-made companies for other needed resources. That’s actually one of our vision statements.

Subsequently, we buy dehydrated meals from Colorado-based companies, such as Farm to Summit out of Durango, Backpacker’s Pantry out of Boulder, Acli-Mate out of Gunnison. We buy our boats locally from Alpacka Raft. We get most of our other supplies from 4Corners Riversports, Kokopelli Bike & Board, Pineneedle Mountaineering and Durango Outdoor Exchange. We take our Wilderness First Responder courses with Wilderness Medical Associates out of Buena Vista. We buy our glamping tents from Ellis Canvas Tents in Durango, our bread from Food You Will Love, Mancos, our front-country local foods from Zuma National Foods and the P and D Market, our meat from James Ranch and our coffee from 81301 in Durango and Fahrenheit in Mancos.

And we employ a half dozen guides who live between Mancos and Silverton.

What Can You Do About the Federal Worker Purge?

In sum, not only are these government agents I regularly work with losing their jobs, which is painful to watch. But we may lose our ability to run our business and to support other businesses.

This is not a partisan matter. It doesn’t matter who you voted for. Bureau of Land Management, National Forest and National Parks employees are republicans, democrats and independents, as are the people who own the garages that fix our cars and the stores and farms where we buy our food, coffee, beer, etc. Steve and I don’t discriminate when we buy what we need to live. We support our neighbors, whatever their political beliefs. And our neighbors are losing their jobs.

Please call your congressmen and women and ask them to call President Trump to stop the mass firings of our public lands managers. The ripple effect is real.

Best wishes, Lizzy Scully, CEO

Ps. We already have approved permits for all the courses for which YOU signed up for this year. So we are not cancelling any courses at this time. We will keep you posted if anything changes, as the political winds blow through this country.