The City of Longmont was awarded a GOCO Colorado Youth Corps Association grant that will fund 8 weeks of work by Larimer County Conservation Corps focusing on restoring and protecting the City’s watershed through forest stewardship and wildfire risk reduction.

Funds for this project were awarded by Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), which receives a portion of Colorado Lottery proceeds, to the Colorado Youth Corps Association for use by accredited conservation service corps. The goal of the program is to employ crews throughout the state on critical outdoor recreation and land conservation projects in partnership with local governments and open space agencies.

The City of Longmont established a Forest Stewardship Plan and program almost two decades ago. Since then, the City has carried out forest stewardship treatments of approximately 80 acres each year. To date, over 1,000 acres of forestland in Button Rock Preserve has been treated. This effort is greatly improving the overall health of this preserve area.

A recent update to the Forest Stewardship Plan builds on and further refines the management prescriptions based on current forest management practices and science. An extensive forest inventory carried out by the Colorado State Forest Service in Button Rock Preserve during summer 2016 served as the foundation for the updated plan. This update addresses current forest conditions through forest plot research modeling, vegetative inventories, wildfire fuels modeling, wildlife listings according to habitat suitability, and noxious weed management.

The grant from GOCO Colorado Youth Corps Association must be used by the end of 2024. For more information about the City’s Forest Stewardship Plan, visit the Button Rock Forest Stewardship webpage.