A sportsmen’s group that found 9.52 million acres of federally managed public lands in the West can’t be accessed by public roads is now looking at state-owned lands. In Colorado, a majority of those are off-limits to the public.

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and onX, a Montana-based digital mapping company, released their findings on Colorado on Wednesday at the Outdoor Retailer, a national outdoor recreation trade show that runs through Thursday in Denver. The Colorado analysis is the first TRCP has unveiled, with reviews of 10 other Western states expected later this summer.

About 16 percent of the roughly 2.8 million acres of state trust lands in Colorado is landlocked, meaning the land can’t be reached by public roads. Another 20 percent of the state lands are open to hunters and anglers from September through February, thanks to leases or easements acquired by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

The majority of the lands, or 64 percent, are closed by the state to recreation. Joel Webster, director of TRCP’s Center for Western Lands, said Colorado is an outlier because other Western states generally allow the public to recreate on state-owned lands.

“We all know the importance of access for the outdoor industry,” Webster said. “The $887 billion (industry) depends on access to public lands.”

RELATED: Large swaths of federal public land in Colorado are inaccessible. Here’s why.

Outdoor recreation generates about $887 billion in spending annually and supports jobs, according to the Outdoor Industry Association.

A state report released in 2018 said fishing, hunting and wildlife watching in Colorado produce about $5 billion in economic contributions annually.

Gov. Jared Polis said Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Colorado State Land Board are working together to open more trust lands to hunting and angling.

“Colorado is arguably the most beautiful state in America, and I’m committed to expanding the public’s access to our treasured federal and state-owned land,” Polis said in a statement. “I’m delighted that Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Public Access Program for sportsmen and women will be growing by more than 100,000 acres in time for the upcoming 2019 hunting season. We will continue looking at more opportunities to increase access in the near future.”

“If we’re serious about recruiting, retaining and reactivating hunters and anglers, we really need to prioritize and simplify public access,” said Liz Rose, a sportswoman and a University of Colorado-Boulder graduate student.

Rose is working with another sportsmen’s group, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, on a study of public recreation on Colorado state trust lands.

Although state trust lands are public lands, they aren’t managed the same as federal public lands. The law requires federal lands, including those overseen by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, to be managed for multiple uses.

A 2018 report by TRCP and onX, known for its hunting app, found that 9.52 million acres of federally managed lands across the West cannot be accessed by public roads. So, the public cannot use them unless they can access them by other means — aircraft or water — or they get permission from surrounding private landowners. In Colorado, 269,000 acres are landlocked.

However, state trust lands are generally managed under a different mandate. Most Western states were granted the trust lands upon statehood with the objective of managing them to raise money for schools and other public institutions.

The approach to managing the lands has varied among the states. In some cases, states have sold big chunks or nearly all of the trust lands. Many times they are leased for livestock grazing, mining and drilling or private recreation. Colorado voters in 1996 created the Stewardship Trust, which said that 10 percent of the trust lands be managed to maintain the natural values and are held to a higher standard of care.

Webster said some Western states, including Arizona and New Mexico, charge the public fees to recreate on the lands, which allows access while still meeting financial obligations. Some activities, like off-roading, might be prohibited, he said.