Q&A
Doug Robotham, executive director for the Trust for Public Land in Colorado for more than seven years, grew up on a cattle ranch near Denver, where he said he first fell in love with Colorado landscapes. The trust is celebrating 25 years and 80,000 acres of conservation in Colorado. It has brokered deals to convey to public ownership places that were on the verge of development.
Q: How do you pick which lands you will try to buy and convey into public ownership?
A: Local governments, state agencies and even federal land managers will contact us because they want to acquire a property for the public domain. They seek us out. We are also approached by property owners who want some kind of protection for their land. While many of the properties really do have national and international significance, sometimes the cultural or natural resources are of only local interest.
Q: What is the most difficult aspect of the work?
A: The hardest part of achieving our goals is that we are taking a market-based approach to acquire an end product – protected land – that is not traded in the marketplace. We are constantly challenged in assembling the financial resources to pull this off.
Q: Where does most of the money come from?
A: About 25 percent of our work involves federal ownership. The funding source is typically a congressional allocation from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (monies from oil and gas development) or some federal grant program. Fully 75 percent of our work in Colorado is at the county or municipal level, often accomplished with state grants – a lot of money from the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund.
Q: What Colorado mindset needs to be changed to promote more conservation?
A: If I could, I would flip a switch that caused people to take the long view of our connection to the great places of Colorado. We have to look beyond what is convenient and profitable in the short term. I have to believe we would end up with more livable communities by slowing things down. We are gobbling up some really special places because we want to live and shop in them.
– Electa Draper, Denver Post staff writer
REGIONAL NOTES
ANTONITO
Cumbres & Toltec to raise prices
The Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad Commission has approved a price increase next season for tickets on the 64-mile route between Colorado and New Mexico.
Rates will increase from $59 to $62 for round-trip tickets to Osier from Antonito or Chama; from $72 to $76 for a one-way ticket and return by bus; from $102 to $115 for a parlor-car seat on a round trip; and from $115 to $129 for a parlor-car seat on a one-way ticket with return by bus.
The season runs from mid-May to mid-October each year.
Tim Tennant of the railroad’s management company said ridership, as of Sept. 22, was up 22 percent, with 30,809 people compared with 25,210 last year.
DENVER POST STAFF REPORTS
