Both the North Rim Road and Round Mountain Forest Restoration projects will be funded through a grant that CPRW received from a Colorado Dept of Local Affairs – Community Development Block Grant (Disaster Recovery). The source of funds for this project is a federal grant program. The contract needs to be completed by June 30, 2019.
The main goal of these two project areas is to build capacity for wildfire risk reduction projects across Larimer County watershed groups.
North Rim Road
Since 2015, CPRW has been working with several partners including The Nature Conservancy, Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, Larimer County Conservation Corps, and the Ben Delatour Boy Scout Ranch on the Elkhorn Creek Forest Health Initiative (ECFHI). Forest resiliency work so far has been at Ben Delatour and the Educo properties (located on
North Rim Road), with the work centered around Elkhorn Creek. The overall project goals of the North Rim Road Forest Restoration Project and the ECFHI are to reduce high severity wildfire risk and to protect downstream water quality of the Cache la Poudre River. While expanding to other areas within the Elkhorn Creek sub-watershed, the goal is to increase our impact across the landscape, reducing wildfire risk and protecting water quality to Elkhorn Creek and the Poudre River.
Round Mountain
The two primary goals of this collaborative project on the City of Loveland, Colorado’s Round Mountain property are to:
1. Implement a high priority wildfire resiliency project in the Big Thompson River Watershed
2. Build social/community resilience with respect to wildfires by engaging community members through site visits and workshops
Forest management within the project areas is aimed at creating an open, low-density ponderosa pine stand that is characteristic of historical stand conditions, is not at risk of high-severity wildfire, and is resilient to future disturbance. CPRW and BTWC are building upon ongoing resiliency work in a high priority area of the Big Thompson Watershed, as identified as a high wildfire threat area on the Colorado wildfire risk assessment portal website.
Statewide