FCCD In The News

December 2020

Healthy Forest Program Offers Forest Fire Mitigation
​Funding for Private Landowners

The Big Thompson and Fort Collins Conservation Districts and other districts along the northern Front Range have turned to helping private landowners with forest management through the Healthy Forest Initiative program.

Photo Credit: Bethany Baker 

December 2020

Districts Work to Prevent Extensive Wildfires Before They Happen

Gretchen Reuning, forest program director with the Fort Collins Conservation District, said the work they do with these private landowners is a sort of insurance for the land the communities enjoy so much.

Photo Credit: Austin Fleskes

December 2020

Photo Credit: Jim Tolstrup ​

Partnering with the Land: SMC’s Conservation Forestry Project and the Cameron Peak Fire

Fire mitigation is only part of the motivation for the ongoing SMC conservation forestry project, which is happening in close partnership with National Resource Conservation Service and Fort Collins Conservation District, and is more broadly concerned with “overall forest ecosystem health.”

May 2021

Inside the Toxic Link Between Colorado’s Wildfires and Its Water

Even as communities across the state keep their eyes on a 2021 fire season expected to be as bad as that of 2020, when the state saw the largest fires in its history explode, they are racing to create high-tech water treatment programs capable of filtering out the toxins now present in their once-pristine water, and replacing the pipes, intake flumes and grates damaged beyond repair last year.

Photo Credit: City of Glenwood Springs
July 2021
Photo Credit: Windsor Severance Fire Rescue

Thinning The Forest Saved Shambhala From Colorado's Largest Wildfire.
​It Offers Lessons For Other At-Risk Places
It’s all by design. Foresters cleared the 118-acre area in 2018, one tree at a time, in a management style known as forest restoration. The project is part of a growing effort to restore tens of thousands of acres of Northern Colorado’s overgrown forests to conditions not seen since the late 1800s.
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