COMMERCE CITY — The first three of dozens of federally backed greenway-conservation projects across the nation will be in Colorado, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday.
Salazar said $350,000 in Fish and Wildlife Service funds will be available to help link Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, at the north edge of Denver, to greenway trails along Sand Creek and the South Platte River and eventually on to Rocky Mountain National Park.
The Rocky Mountain Greenway Project might include a new shuttle bus linking the Regional Transportation District bus route to Lyons with Estes Park. Riders then could take another shuttle into the national park, Salazar staffers and park officials said.
A commission created to guide that project also will explore linking park hiking trails to the Front Range via trails through the Arapaho National Forest and existing city and county open space.
Rocky Mountain National Park officials have been working at “improving our connection to the Front Range, especially the underserved inner-city kids,” said park spokesman Rick Frost. A bus-link test program could be started by next summer, he said.
Two other Colorado projects would build on work in progress to preserve riparian corridors and ranchland in the San Luis Valley and along the Yampa River.
All the projects will be “flagships of President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative,” Salazar said. These are “not pie-in-the-sky projects” but “ones we can get done.”
Modeled on Great Outdoors Colorado, America’s Great Outdoors aims to reconnect Americans with nature. Salazar and other senior administration officials have been meeting with governors about priority projects in their states and expect to complete a list this summer.
For example, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead favored conservation easements to help keep farms alive, and Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe hopes to connect Little Rock residents with 3,000 miles of trails.
Gov. John Hickenlooper joined Salazar on Thursday in announcing the projects during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the $7.6 million visitor center at the arsenal, a former chemical-weapons and pesticides factory.
Hickenlooper cited Great Outdoors Colorado as an example of the state’s emerging forte as a center of ideas and innovation.
“What happens when you do that right is that those ideas go forward and get taken up,” Hickenlooper said, adding that people’s ability to connect with nature remains “a basic core value of America.”
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
