A quiet but significant campaign is underway in Aspen, Colorado. Environmental psychologist and Aspen Times columnist Lindsay Branham is asking local elected officials to recognize that the Roaring Fork River and its tributaries have inherent rights — the right to exist, to flow, to maintain ecological health — and that government has a responsibility to uphold them.
It is exactly the kind of local, community-rooted effort that the rights of nature movement depends on to grow. And as Aspen Journalism reported this month, it is gaining traction.
Why the Roaring Fork, Why Now
The Roaring Fork is one of the most storied rivers in the American West, a major tributary of the Colorado River running 70 miles from the Continental Divide through Aspen and Glenwood Springs before joining the Colorado near Glenwood Canyon. It is a trout fishery, a rafting destination, a community lifeline, and an ecosystem under increasing stress from drought, low snowpack, and the competing demands of a water-scarce region.
This winter has been among the hottest and driest on record for the Roaring Fork Valley. Snowpack has broken previous lows. The Colorado River basin, of which the Roaring Fork is a part, remains in a state of long-term crisis. In this context, the question Branham is raising feels less like philosophy and more like urgency: What if the river itself had legal standing? What if protecting it were not optional, but obligatory?
The Framework She’s Proposing
Branham first raised the issue with Aspen City Council in late 2025 and was referred to the Pitkin County Healthy Rivers board. County staff have since met with her and are looking closely at the question. A draft resolution before the Healthy Rivers board would be the first formal step, and if passed, would make Aspen the fourth Colorado community to grant legal rights to a local waterway, following Grand Lake, Ridgway (the Uncompahgre River), and most recently Durango (the Animas River).
Under such a resolution, local government would have a duty to consider the river’s rights through policymaking and land use planning. Officials could also appoint a guardian to represent and speak on behalf of the river, along with producing an annual report on its health.
Grant Wilson, executive director of the Durango-based Earth Law Center, is one of the advocates supporting the effort. He’s clear that this is not primarily a litigation strategy: “What I’ve been advocating for is a softer, more cultural movement toward the rights of nature that’s not litigious. This movement is really a way to hold a mirror up to community values and how we treat nature.”
That framing matters. Rights of nature resolutions in Colorado have generally been non-binding, symbolic in the strict legal sense, but powerful as expressions of community intention and as guides for decision-making. The Ridgway resolution, for example, grants the Uncompahgre five inalienable rights, including the right to maintain native biodiversity and the right to restoration and preservation of ecosystem health, and calls on the town to oppose activities that would violate those rights.
What Colorado’s Track Record Shows
The experience of Colorado communities that have already passed rights of nature resolutions is instructive, both encouraging and honest about the limits.
Ridgway’s resolution, passed in 2021, remains untested four years later. No development proposals have yet triggered its enforcement. The town has not yet appointed a guardian for the river. Mayor John Clark acknowledges that some residents wanted more teeth in the resolution, and his response captures the essence of where this movement is right now: “It’s a start. You’ve got to start somewhere.”
Nederland’s experience offers a cautionary note. The town granted rights to Boulder Creek and appointed guardians, then repealed the resolution when it needed to support building a dam on a tributary. The resolution, in that case, could not survive a direct conflict with water infrastructure needs. It’s a reminder that symbolic commitments require ongoing political will to mean anything.
And yet the movement continues to grow. The Colorado River Indian Tribes granted legal rights to the Colorado River through their tribal lands in late 2025, recognizing the river as a living being and affirming a sacred obligation to protect it. Durango’s resolution for the Animas followed. The pattern is clear: community by community, river by river, a different relationship with water is being codified.
The Deeper Shift Being Proposed
What Branham and advocates like Wilson are ultimately asking for is something more fundamental than a policy change. They are asking communities to stop treating rivers as infrastructure, as systems that “convey water for human purposes,” as the Aspen Journalism article puts it, and start treating them as entities with their own claim on existence.
This is not a novel idea. Indigenous communities across the West have held this understanding for centuries. The Ute, the Diné, and the tribes of the Colorado River basin have always understood their rivers as living relatives, not resources. What the rights of nature movement does is translate that understanding into the language of Western law, imperfectly and partially, but meaningfully.
As Branham puts it: “This movement invites people to really change the way they see nature altogether and removes the resource/object/othering language and framework, and invites this personhood.”
That invitation is open to Aspen. It is open to every community with a river running through it.
Standing for Nature’s Perspective
We watch this development closely and with genuine enthusiasm. The Roaring Fork is a visible, beloved, ecologically critical waterway, exactly the kind of place where a rights of nature resolution can shift the conversation, build community commitment, and lay the groundwork for stronger protections over time.
Community resolutions like the one Branham is proposing are real and meaningful progress. They change how communities talk about nature, how they plan, and how they make decisions. They are also how movements grow, one community at a time, one river at a time, building the culture and political will that makes broader legal change possible.
Standing for Nature is actively working with communities on resolutions of this kind, and we know firsthand how powerful that process can be. At the same time, we continue to pursue rights of nature at the initiative level, work that remains on appeal and that we believe will ultimately provide rivers and ecosystems with the enforceable legal standing they deserve.
The Roaring Fork campaign is a genuine step forward. We hope Aspen’s elected officials take it seriously, and we’ll be watching what happens next.
Read the full Aspen Journalism article here: Aspen activist wants ‘rights of nature’ for the Roaring Fork River.
Standing for Nature is a 501(c)(3) organization advancing the legal rights of natural entities and ecosystems. Learn more at standingfornature.org.
