Conserving Colorado Roadmap

Keep It Colorado has led the development of Conserving Colorado: A 10-year Roadmap for the Future of Private Land Conservation. It is a collaborative plan that rallies land trusts and partners around a unified vision for the future of private lands conservation in Colorado. Providing a set of concrete objectives, strategy and vision, the plan identifies urgent areas for protection and creates a roadmap for on-the-ground conservation the private lands conservation community wants to achieve in the next 10 years. Goals are to double the number of acres of land protected through conservation, double the engagement of Coloradans in conservation efforts and programs, and double the resources needed to support conservation work over the next decade.

Innovative Conservation Incentives

Keep It Colorado launched a program to develop innovative conservation incentives that will give landowners a choice about how to determine a proposed conservation easement value for their property, while maximizing opportunities to conserve wildlife habitat, water resources, healthy soils and other land conservation values. In June 2024 we published a paper that discusses alternative incentives used in other states; potentially useful government programs; options for mechanisms of incentivization; and potential funding sources. And it assesses possible roadblocks and unintended consequences.

An important part of telling the conservation story is demonstrating the impacts of protecting our natural resources, why that’s important, and how much of a priority this work is for Coloradans and the future of our state. To help decision makers make choices about where to put their investments and engage more people in this work, Keep It Colorado commissions research studies, public opinion surveys, reports and toolkits that make the case for conservation.