A Good Year for Conservation: Keep It Colorado Grants Helped Conserve Equivalent of 3,579 Football Fields

A Good Year for Conservation in Colorado 

Keep It Colorado’s grants helped conserve over 4,700 acres – the equivalent of 3,579 football fields  

Dec. 19, 2022 – DENVER – The year 2022 has been a good one for conserving Colorado’s natural resources. Nonprofit land trusts continued their work partnering with private landowners who volunteered to permanently protect the lands, waters and wildlife that define the state. With financial assistance from Keep It Colorado, six land trusts helped landowners conserve about 4,725 acres of land spanning 10 counties. That is equivalent to 3,579 American football fields, nine Grand Lakes or 1.8% of Rocky Mountain National Park. Protection efforts also included acreage along 13 miles of stream.

For these projects, Keep It Colorado’s cost assistance totaled $393,483.

“These grants average out to roughly $83 per acre, so the return on investment is pretty high considering that these lands will be protected for the long term,” said Melissa Daruna, executive director of Keep It Colorado. She added, “We’re proud to play a small part by supporting the land trust community and the landowners who have volunteered to conserve these lands; they know that healthy lands and waters today means healthy lands and waters for generations to come.”

Conservation creates numerous benefits for Colorado, including clean water and air; healthy habitat for plants, wildlife and other species; local food; healthy wetlands and soils; and working farms and ranches. It also helps create resilience against the impacts of climate change, and threats such as fires, floods and drought, for Colorado’s ecosystems and communities.

Conservation projects that have been completed with the support of Keep It Colorado Transaction Cost Assistance Program (TCAP) grants since it launched the program in 2021 are:

1. Bramwell Valley Ranch in Archuleta County – Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust

2. Campbell Ranch in Delta County – Colorado West Land Trust

3. Cheley I in Larimer County – Estes Valley Land Trust

4. Edgerton Creek Ranch in Garfield County – Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust

5. Enos Ruybal Fox Creek Ranch in Conejos County – Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust

6. La Jara Creek in Conejos County – Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust

7. Mt. Harris townsite in Routt County – Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust

8. Sacramento Preserve (TriWalk) in Park County – Mountain Area Land Trust

9. Sporleder Ranch in Las Animas and Huerfano Counties – Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust

10. Weaselskin Institute in La Plata County – La Plata Open Space Conservancy

11. X Brand Ranch in Park County – Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust

Read stories about several of these successful projects on Keep It Colorado’s website.

Four additional conservation projects from those first grant rounds are scheduled to be completed by late January 2023. Grant awards for those projects amount to $123,432.

Additionally, in a separate news release on Dec. 12, 2022, Keep It Colorado announced it had awarded $197,000 in cost assistance grants to three additional land trusts for projects that will be completed by the end of 2024.

Keep It Colorado’s TCAP, funded by Great Outdoors Colorado, regrants funds to nonprofit land trusts to help cover the costs associated with conservation easement transactions. TCAP enables landowners who have urgent opportunities to conserve their properties, but who face financial barriers to facilitating the transaction, to conserve more land more quickly – thereby protecting critical habitat, local food systems, iconic viewsheds, wetland and river corridors, and places of historic and cultural significance. This eases the financial burden on landowners and enables them to move forward with protecting critical landscapes that are at imminent risk of being sold, subdivided or converted to other uses.

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