As more people fill more space, land conservationists at Great Outdoors Colorado are committing $19.8 million to save four parcels covering 24,825 acres — including a golf course.
And GOCO officials say they’ll spend an additional $27.2 million by December 2018 to try to protect large landscapes in the face of development.
But the new “open space” from suburbs to rural pastures, adding to 1 million acres statewide that GOCO has helped save since 1992, won’t be enough to guarantee the room to roam that Westerners traditionally enjoyed. Colorado’s population density is increasing.
“If the state continues to grow at the current pace, no, $47 million is not enough to protect everything. It’ll be a good step,” GOCO open space program director Michele Frishman said.
“Colorado will look different. Where are all these people going to live? Where are they going to recreate?”
The latest parcels:
- 4,348 acres of ranchland near Gunnison, between Crested Butte and Gothic, where the Trust for Public Land has been working to keep agriculture in business.
- 2,182 acres west of Fort Collins adjacent to Larimer County’s Horsetooth Mountain Open Space.
- 18,149 acres of Costilla County land near Alamosa, including 6 miles along the Rio Grande River.
- The west of Denver, near Golden, where developers planned to put in housing.
The golf course purchase marks a first for GOCO. A $3 million grant matched a community priority. Some 10,000 residents of the Prospect Recreation and Parks District, facing construction of 400 single-family homes, voted to spend up to $9 million to buy the golf course to prevent development.
Parks board chairman Jim Zimmerman said those 146 acres have been a golf course since 1956, surviving a Coors push to mine gravel. Zimmerman said preserving the golf course could help wildlife.
“You just would really rather not have that much housing development,” Zimmerman said. “We really want the recreation value, the open space. Something of that nature.”
Launched by voters in 1992, GOCO has directed $917 million of state lottery proceeds to 4,700 open-space projects, including creation or restoration of 900 miles of trails and 1,100 parks.
Colorado’s population (about 5.45 million) rom 2014 to 2015. State demographics data show that the density of people has increased by 25 percent in the past 15 years, from 41.9 people per square mile to 52.6.
A Colorado State University mapping project calculated that 30.8 million acres, roughly 46 percent of Colorado’s surface area, is at least partially protected against future development. Protected land includes acres owned by the federal and state governments and land under conservation or other easements that prevent construction.
Beyond the desires for recreation, population growth and development threaten wildlife and the health of grasslands and forests.
“We do need to have aggressive goals. Our goal for the next five years is conservation of 750,000 acres of land. Northwest and southeast Colorado are our priority areas,” Colorado Nature Conservancy director Carlos Fernandez said, contemplating needs of bighorn sheep.
Future conservation easements negotiated in southeastern Colorado ideally would cover 25,000 to 30,000 acres, Fernandez said.
“The bigger you can do those deals, the more that you can guarantee a diversity of wildlife for generations to come.”
