Usually news stories focus on what we’ve lost, or are in danger of losing, such as the rare plant or animal that’s almost disappeared or whose numbers are drastically reduced, or an extraordinary landscape that is threatened by man’s capricious actions.
In contrast, earlier this month Colorado officially celebrated 30 years of saving such treasures, with its Natural Areas Program administered by Colorado State Parks. There are 78 designated natural areas, totaling 140,000 acres of “the most significant, unique and intact areas with the rarest plants, communities, animals, or most unique or significant geology or paleontology.” This includes 3,000-year-old trees, world-class fossil beds, rare and globally significant plants, even the state’s largest Brazilian free-tail bat community.
All are of statewide significance; a few are found nowhere else in the world. An additional 25 sites totaling 51,266 acres are registered as eligible for designation.
Many are well-known: Roxborough State Park, with its magnificent stone outcroppings; awesome Wheeler Geologic Area; East Sand Dunes; Lookout Mountain; Gateway Palisade Natural Area; Picketwire Canyon, with the longest dinosaur trackway in North America; Indian Springs, with 450 million-year-old fossils. Others are known mostly by the locals, but each is very special. An estimated 2.3 million people visit natural areas annually.
Designated Natural Areas protect 159 rare, threatened or endangered species and communities. Most are owned by government agencies, and one-third allow public access.
“It’s always a voluntary agreement, not regulatory. Often we cooperate with land trusts,” explained Rob Billerbeck, a biologist and Natural Areas program manager. He’s elated over a recent acquisition, an endangered wildflower that exists only in Colorado but is threatened by booming development. The landowners had been working with the Natural Areas Program to protect the plant for some years, but when the ranch was put on the market last year, the deadline loomed. With the cooperation of partners and The Nature Conservancy, the Natural Areas Program was able to buy the critical 43 acres that has the best population of the plant. It was CNAP’s first purchase.
“Private landowners really welcome our knowledge and advice,” Billerbeck siad. “Many want to protect endangered or special places. We even have a couple of natural areas on oil and gas lands.”
For those who think oil companies are too often destructive, there’s the illuminating story of the Parachute penstemon, a rare plant discovered in 1986 on Mount Callahan, on the Western Slope. The penstemon is found on oil shale slopes so steep that sometimes researchers have to rope up to stay in place, and on a nearby BLM property — and nowhere else in the world. The land is owned by Occidental Petroleum, which in 1987 agreed to a natural area designation to protect the penstemon.
Knowledgable and devoted volunteer stewards who monitor the sites play a powerful role in the program’s success. Most have graduate degrees in the natural sciences, while others are experts in botany, geology or are expert birders. All have a passion for protecting and saving Colorado’s natural treasures.
It’s remarkable that the Colorado legislature had the foresight and wisdom in 1977 to establish the Natural Areas Program. Among the long list of natural treasures, that stewardship protects 30 sites with rare species found only in Colorado, four sites with habitats that are critically imperiled globally, and 27 sites with species that are vulnerable.
In this month of counting our blessings, the Natural Areas Program makes the list.
Joanne Ditmer’s column on environmental and urban issues for The Post began in 1962 and now appears once a month.
