Boulder County Parks & Open Space (BCPOS) is celebrating 50 years of protecting and managing unique and priceless lands in Boulder County. This experiment in land use — dreamed up by visionary naturalists, planners, policymakers, and activists — has taken hold throughout Colorado and the United States. Protecting national parks and forests is not new, but coming together as a community to protect the small, important natural treasures in our backyards is what sets Boulder County apart.
BCPOS is so special because of it’s major goals: preserving the unique biodiversity in our county, defining urban boundaries around towns, protecting agriculture, and providing quality recreation and places for the community to connect with nature and each other.
Using sales tax dedicated to open space and property taxes, which support local government, we have protected more than 110,000 acres, built 120 miles of regional and mountain trails, preserved 26,000 acres of agricultural land, and kept our towns from merging together. When friends or family visit from outside our county, I often hear them say, “I saw cows on my way here” as though they are surprised that an urban area like Boulder or Longmont would still have cows in the fields. I tell them it was not by accident. Boulder County could have looked like the larger Denver metro area where one town runs into another with only a road to divide them. But open space preservation buffers our towns and keeps active agriculture, including cows, in the fields.
We also have fantastic hiking trails and access to streams, lakes, rivers, and of course, the mountains. Our trails are constructed to be sustainable, reducing their impact on the land and built to last for generations.
Leading the Way to Exceptional Open Space
In all of this work, we prioritize protecting the most valuable wildlife habitat and reducing the human impact on it. Our extremely knowledgeable and dedicated biologists have inventoried the county and identified rare and important forests, grasslands, streams, and wetlands to preserve. We do a lot of this by controlling noxious weeds, planting and reseeding after floods or fires, and, more recently, reclaiming and restoring land that has been turned inside out from mining. Our mine restoration projects include the Highway 7 andesite quarry and the Cemex limestone quarry near Lyons, the Cardinal Mill hard rock mine near Nederland, and the newest Prairie Run Open Space on the east county line. East Boulder Creek, as it passes through Prairie Run, has been straightened for mining and agriculture and doesn’t function as quality riparian habitat. Our team is working with restoration contractors to design a dynamic and resilient stream with adjacent wetlands. We’ll be monitoring as wildlife return to this area in abundance.
We are doing this work for you, our community, so we all have clean air and water, and a chance to get out into nature. We are expanding who we work with to include members of our Latinx, Indigenous, and LGBTQ communities. We want our visitors, volunteers, and staff to reflect the diversity of our county. Every day, we are taking steps in that direction with intention and commitment.
Although we have accomplished protecting 110,000 acres in our 50 years as an agency, there is still so much more to do. Please join us in celebrating our 50th year by volunteering with us on a restoration project, seed collection, or trail maintenance project; visiting a local farm and supporting our Boulder County farmers; or by joining us on a hike led by enthusiastic volunteers. Together, we can improve and enjoy our open spaces and make them welcoming to all.
