Conservation & Restoration

Photo: Playa lake with sandhill cranes, Courtesy of Wyman Meinzner, USFS

This joint program with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW), ensures that CWN staff provide technical assistance to NRCS and private landowners with regard to conserving wildlife. 

To date, CWN biologists have helped preserve more than 12,000 acres for wildlife and write Wildlife Management Plans for about 104,500 acres since 2003. 

CWN biologists focus in four key areas in Colorado— the Rio Grande, Arkansas, South Platte, and Colorado River Basins.  CWN staff are there to help ensure that there is a wildlife protection component to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs in NRCS offices. Projects range from restoring wetlands to putting thousands of acres under conservation easement.

Specifically, the four CWN Private Land Wildlife Biologists work to ensure that the following programs  und ther 2002 Farm Bill had a wildlife and wetlands component to them:

• Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP)

• Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP) 

• Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP)

• Conservation Reserve Program (CRP

• Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA)

CWN biologists are active across four multi-county service areas in Colorado. Each region covers four or more counties, where private land habitat and species conservation are important.  The four areas covered under this program include:

• Noe Marymor, Area 1, Craig

• Matt Reddy, Area 2, Ft. Morgan

• Patty Moore, Area 3, Pueblo

• Chanda Garcia, Area 4, Monte Vista

Conservation & Restoration Services

CWN offers several services including:

• Providing technical assistance for riparian, wetland, or planting restoration projects

• Conducting baseline inventories

• Determining effectiveness of restoration efforts on water quality, macroinvertebrates, and/or fish populations

• Watershed Monitoring & Assessment