Chaffee Couty, Colorado ranchland - Photo: Darcy Kiefel
Santa arrived early this year for dozens of communities that received grants from Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), that state’s enviable conservation funding program.
As we have mentioned before, dedicated state funding programs are a powerful force in creating conservation. GOCO, which began in 1992, sets aside a portion of state lottery funds for support of conservation and park projects. Counties, communities, agencies, and nonprofits apply for the funds for specific projects.
According to the GOCO website, to date the program has awarded grants to more than 3,100 projects in all of the state’s more than 64 counties.
Among the cities celebrating grants this week are Thornton and Alamosa, which will use the money to help build skateparks. Dillon is going to build picnic shelters. Pitkin County received 2.5 million for the Wapiti Ridge Mountain Park. And the Colorado Riverfront Trail System will grow in Mesa County.
The funds will help TPL and its partners conserve a key open space in the mountain community of Crested Butte, protect a working ranch in Chaffee County, add open space to the Denver suburb of Westminster, protect a creek corridor in the town of Saguache, and conduct a GIS park and conservation analysis in metropolitan Denver.
In all, more than $24 million was distributed in this round of funding. The complete awards list can be found here.
In choosing its lottery as a conservation funding mechanism, Colorado has hit on a solution that seems to actually do better in hard times. According to lottery director Abel Tapia as relayed by the The Pueblo Chieftain, “the Colorado Lottery realized a record profit of $112 million during the past year and anticipates it will hit its target this year to continue funding GOCO at the expected level.”
Congratulations to all the Colorado communities that have received this much-deserved support in crafting a conservation future. More information about TPL work in Colorado can be found on TPL’s website.
Twice each month TPL’s Conservation Finance service publishes links to state and local conservation finance stories from around the nation. As always, TPL’s online LandVote database provides the best source of data on conservation finance measures since 1988.
