Conservationists have released a plan to protect key lands and waters in Colorado that people and nature need to survive and thrive in a changing climate. “Conserving Colorado: A 10-year Roadmap for the Future of Private Land Conservation” calls for doubling the number of acres protected over the next 10 years, from 3.3 million to 6.6 million acres. Comments from Linda Lidov, interim executive director, Keep It Colorado.
Keep It Colorado has received $500,000 in grant funding from Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO)’s Resilient Communities Program. The investment will enable Keep It Colorado to develop and administer a program to assist land trusts and landowners in covering the costs of transactions associated with conservation easements in 2021.
Keep It Colorado is developing the Statewide Private Lands Conservation Plan, a collaborative plan that rallies land trusts and partners around a unified vision for the future of private lands conservation in Colorado. Because 60 percent of lands in Colorado are privately owned, they account for a significant portion of the state that needs protection.
Keep It Colorado and the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust (CCALT) partnered with Colorado State University (CSU) to release a study that demonstrates the important economic impacts that potential future funding from the federal agricultural conservation easement program (ACEP) could have on the state of Colorado.
Who decides where a trail goes? What if the trail doesn’t go where I want it to go? What happens when people go off trail? Get answers to all of these questions and more. (Hint: Trails don’t just “happen.”) Here are some things people can keep in mind about trails - and what it will take to keep them beautiful, accessible and open.
In spite of the hardship of the unusual times we find ourselves in, our members have discovered some unique and exciting opportunities, and developed creative solutions they may never have imagined before. Let’s celebrate those successes and that optimism for the future. Here’s just a glimpse of what our land trusts have been up to.
August 1 is Colorado Day. On that day in 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting Colorado as a state. As we celebrate Colorado and all of its gifts, we think about the role conservation plays in keeping it special. Our thoughts also turn to the culture of conservation that will be required to keep Colorado wonderful into the future.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve seen how critical the outdoors and access to nature are to people around the world. Keep It Colorado has an opportunity to help make conservation a priority across the state. After all, that connection with the outdoors people are craving is made possible by conservation.
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