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a grass-roots conservation effort |
A short history and overview of current activities of the Crestone/Baca Land TrustIn 1998 residents of the Baca Grande subdivision formed a steering committee to explore the possibility of creating a land trust. The committee received tremendous support from local citizens, absentee landowners, the Baca Grande Property Owners Association, the Town of Crestone, Crestone/Baca Planning Commission and the Saguache County Board of Commissioners. Based on that support, the Crestone/Baca Land Trust was born. The Manitou Institute served as fiscal sponsor until the Land Trust established its own non-profit corporation in October 2001. During the first few years the Land Trust focused on building community support. This foundational work included fundraising, developing grant proposals and conducting ongoing inventory and mapping of sensitive lands in the Crestone/Baca Grande area. All this activity resulted in the Land Trust's first major project that focused on conserving sensitive wetlands between the riparian corridors of Cottonwood and Spanish Creeks. In 2000 the Crestone/Baca Land Trust was awarded a $129,000 Land Conservation Grant from the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund (GOCO) that enabled us to purchase approximately 177 acres of the Cottonwood Creek Conservation Site. In August 2004, CBLT received a $48,000 matching grant from the Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW) for a biological assessment of the Baca Grande subdivision and restoration and preservation of the Spanish Meadow wetland and wildlife corridor. In 2005, this important biological study was completed by John Sovell, zoologist with the prestigious Colorado Natural Heritage Program at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. See “CNHP Study” for more information and to download this important report. Between January and December, 2007, CBLT retained a part-time consultant, Conservation Biologist Ceal Smith, to develop biological issues related to Lexam’s proposal to drill and identify conservation priorities, develop grant proposals and help CBLT strengthen its organization through membership development and other activities. Some of our recent accomplishments include: Helping to launch the lawsuit filed by the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council (SLVEC) Energy Minerals Law Center lawsuit filed against the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) for non-compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). We are not a party to the lawsuit. Formation of an Upper Sangre de Cristo Watershed Group that includes representation from the National Park Service (Great Sand Dunes), Rio Grande National Forest Service (Mountain Tract), USFWS/Baca National Wildlife Refuge, Saguache County Commission, the Town of Crestone, the Rio Grande Conservation District, Sonoran Institute and members of the North Access (to the Great Sand Dunes) Team. We have good prospects of obtaining a planning grant in 2008 in support of the activities of this newly formed group in developing a protection plan for the upper Sangre de Cristo watershed. Joint submission (with SLVEC) of a 36-page comprehensive scoping letter on the draft Environmental Assessment underway with the USFWS that resulted from the lawsuit filed by SLVEC. To download the entire letter The future? Now that USFWS is in compliance with NEPA, we hope to get back to the business of being a land trust. There are still important and vulnerable lands that need protection in the Baca Grande. We hope to secure funding and landowner cooperation to pursue additional land acquisition and conservation easements. More work is needed to identify and prioritize wildlife corridors including refinement of our scientific basis for identifying priority corridors. One promising new collaboration is with USGS zoologist Kate Schoenecker who is conducting a 3-year field study of elk and bison herds in the San Luis Valley to identify specific habitat use patterns in the Baca Grande subdivision. To download Kate Schoenecker’s preliminary Report Other priorities for the near future include: 1) Continued dissemination of the results of the Sovell Report; 2) Strengthening local and regional partnerships. |
the Crestone peaks at dawn.
© Linde Waidhofer