COMMERCE CITY, Colo.—The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will contribute $350,000 toward connecting Denver area trails, parks and open spaces as part of President Barack Obama’s “America’s Great Outdoors” initiative, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday.
The Interior Department also will work with Colorado on water and land conservation projects in the Yampa River Basin in northwest Colorado and the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado under the initiative, Salazar said.
Obama has said the program aims to protect land and water, support tourism and recreation jobs, and perhaps help Americans slim down, too, by encouraging them to get outside.
Governors have been submitting ideas on projects for the initiative. The idea is to focus on places where federal, state and local cooperation with private parties can make a dramatic difference and boost access to nature, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said.
“As we invest in natural landscapes, we also create jobs for our not only our neighbors but also our children and grandchildren,” Hickenlooper said.
Colorado is among the first states to announce existing efforts that will be supported under America’s Great Outdoors. Salazar said he hoped to have an inventory in each state around July 4.
The Colorado projects exemplify goals of enhancing urban parks and wildlife, restoring river corridors and preserving rural landscapes and ways of life, Salazar said.
In the Denver area, Salazar envisions trails one day linking the city’s trail systems to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Rocky Flats and Two Ponds national wildlife refuges and to Rocky Mountain National Park.
In the San Luis Valley, where Salazar’s family has roots, goals are to promote tourism in the valley between the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountains and to protect ranching and wetlands.
In the Yampa River Basin, goals include protecting at least 10,000 more acres of habitat and riparian corridors in two years and combating invasive species.
“This is an example that can be followed all around the country,” Salazar said.
Salazar, a former U.S. senator and state attorney general from Colorado, made the announcement at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new $7.6 million visitor center at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge outside Denver.
The refuge was once the site of chemical weapons and pesticide production, but a multiyear cleanup has turned it into a home for bison, eagles and other wildlife.
