Episode 2: What Makes Us Unique

If you've ever visited Boulder County, Colorado, you've undoubtedly seen the stunning landscape of the Rocky Mountain foothills jutting up out of the rolling prairies, Long's Peak towering in the backdrop. And on any given day, there's thousands of people recreating on our public lands, hiking in our state parks, picnicking in our green spaces, mountain biking on our county open spaces. They may even be commuting on our regional trails. But what really sets BoulderCounty Parks & Open Space Department apart from other agencies is what we're going to explore today with our special guest, Therese Glowacki, our director. Thanks so much for being on the podcast.

You're welcome. It's a pleasure to be here.

I also understand that the department is celebrating a special anniversary this year. Can you elaborate on what's happening at Parks & Open Space?

Well, Eva, I am so glad you asked. This is our 50th anniversary. Parks & Open Space was created 50 years ago, way back in 1975. And our motto is Rooted and Reaching. And we are rooted in the community. It was visionaries that thought about creating an open space department. We are reaching because in those 50 years, we've been able to preserve over 110,000 acres of open space. We've provided over 120 miles of recreation and preserved 34,000 acres of agriculture. We've restored creeks, wetlands and forests. We are also celebrating all the people who made it happen in the course of those 50 years and all the people who are going to continue to help us take our open space into the next 50 years. And those are the things that really set us apart.

In addition to exploring what sets us apart, I think we're also going to maybe dive deep into some of these priorities that guide our work. And I think one place that a lot of people have some misconceptions is on agricultural lands. Could you give an overview for those who don't know how that role of agricultural lands plays in our department?

So, agriculture is really important in Boulder County. And even when Boulder County Parks & Open Space was created 50 years ago, the creators of Open Space thought about agriculture. It's one of the guiding values. They said we need to preserve rural buffers between communities, and we need to preserve the agricultural heritage that we have here. So, by preserving agriculture, we're preserving a way of life that's been here for 140 years. And it produces all kinds of important things for the community of Boulder, like food. If you go to the farmers market, a lot of those tomatoes and other vegetables or fruit that you get are grown on County Open Space. So by preserving Open Space agricultural land, we're preserving just a part that's really important to our community.

So how does that work? We own these lands, but how does it work in practice with the farmers?

So the way that we manage our agricultural open space is through a partnership. And the partnership is both the county's department and farmers, real live farmers and ranchers. The farmers and ranchers get to participate in managing land on open space through a lease agreement. So, whenever we have a property that's up for lease, we put it out to bid and we say, what kind of agriculture would you do on this 150 acres or 300 acres? And we put it out to the community, the farming community, and say what would you do on this agricultural land? And they give us bids just like you would bid on a trail building project. What they come back with helps us choose which farmers will farm what land. When we select a farmer to farm a land, for example, they might be doing organic vegetables. And we've selected them through this bid process. And we know that they're going to produce, you know, greens and carrots and all that, that can be sold to the local community or even our local stores. So that partnership is really, it's the way parks and open space can manage a lot of land without actually having people out there managing each individual parcel.

Can you explain a little bit more about sustainable agriculture and how that fits in?

I can. So sustainable agriculture, it's often more recently referred to as regenerative agriculture. So there are all kinds of different ways that farmers can farm land. One bucket that we put things in is conventional farming. And that's where, if you drive through Iowa or Nebraska, you might see it's large fields with row crops that, row crops, for example, corn or soybeans. And it's all farmed with big equipment. It uses a lot of chemicals, chemical fertilizer, chemical herbicides or pesticides to treat weeds or bug insect pests. So, sustainable agriculture is a way of thinking about growing crops from our fields that is more in tune with nature. And what that really means is that you're really looking at the whole ecosystem of farming. You're looking at the soil health. And you want to make sure that your soil has all the right microbes and good root structure. Perhaps, you don't need as many chemicals because you're using compost for a fertilizer. So sustainable agriculture looks at farming as a whole system. How are you using your water? How much are you tilling it? So sustainable agriculture is really, it's a different way of thinking of it. And in many ways, sustainable agriculture is going back to agricultural roots, pre-industrial agriculture where you would have a diversity of crops. I mean, I'm thinking of the Native Americans and the Three Sisters crops where you have corn and beans and squash and they all depend on each other. And the corn provides the nice stalk. The beans can then creep up the stalk, it gives them support. And then the squash fills out the land around it. So that's an example of sustainable agriculture that we see farmers doing now on some of our agricultural land. There's a lot of different aspects to sustainable agriculture.

Do you find that it also benefits wildlife in addition to people?

Most definitely. There are many different ways that agriculture can co-exist with wildlife. We really value, if you look back at the big picture, if you had an agricultural field, is that providing habitat for wildlife compared to an apartment complex? So let's look at it that way. Our agricultural fields, even conventional farming that might have a center pivot, there are edges on the fields. And we have been encouraging our farmers to use those edges, and we call them corners, to plant pollinator-friendly plants. Another way that you can encourage wildlife on agricultural land is through planting shrubs and creating windbreaks. Those are all things that help with sustainable farming. If you have a windbreak, it's going to reduce the wind erosion, and the windbreak might have some shrubs and some trees in it. Those shrubs might be chokecherry, which provide seeds for the birds. And then the tall trees, they may be cottonwood or something else like that. Those trees could provide nesting sites, both for small migratory birds or for raptors. So the edges of the farms really help provide some wildlife habitat. In addition, we've really converted our landscape here with the use of water. We know our big creeks in Boulder County. We've got Boulder Creek, and we've got St. Frane Creek, we've got Left Hand Creek. Farming 140 years ago, they really wanted to tap into that water, and so they created a whole complex series of ditches. And the ditches take water from, for example, Boulder Creek, and they run it down what they call laterals, and that irrigates the fields that are further from the creek. So it's a network of getting water to the fields. Well, as the water goes from the creek to the field, it basically is creating small riparian areas. And so on much of our ditch system throughout the county, there are wonderful riparian habitats, large trees, small bushes, and all of those provide wildlife habitat. It also creates sometimes wetland habitat. So you get small invertebrates, and fish actually do sometimes use the ditches, and reptiles. So even the small animals use those ditches as their riparian habitat. The other thing is most animals use riparian habitats at some point in their life. We see the, you know, kind of the mid fauna, like fox and coyotes. They use not only the big creek system to get around, but they also use the ditch system to get around. So all of those things layered on top of each other really show how agriculture and wildlife can enhance, how agriculture, you know, how agricultural areas can preserve habitat for wildlife.

I've also heard that sustainable agriculture can help with climate change. Is that true?

That is true. How sustainable agriculture can help with climate change is our soils store a lot of carbon. And the way we farm can either keep that carbon in the ground or it can release it. And so we're encouraging our farmers to use practices that store the carbon in the ground, like low till or no till farming. We always want to have roots in the soil. And so we're encouraging our farmers to plant cover crops. And those cover crops mean that the soil isn't going to blow away. They're again adding carbon to the soil. And then we're also encouraging farmers to incorporate grazing into their farming. Because grazing, so as you're driving down the road and you see cows, those cows are contributing, they're eating the plants, and then they're depositing their carbon right back in the form of manure. And that helps the plants become more vigorous. It keeps the soils intact. And when we do those kind of practices, it means we use less fossil fuels. If you need less tilling, you'd need less tractors driving over your fields. So all of those things help in our ever-growing effort to fight climate change here in Boulder County.

I think it was really interesting what you mentioned about how we've really modified the landscape. And I know that the department is still modifying the landscape as it goes to restoration efforts. Can you talk a little bit more about what we do with creek restoration and stream restoration in the county?

Restoration is one of my passions, for sure. Since I have worked for the department, I just think that is one of the benefits of owning 110,000 acres, is that we have the land and we have the skilled people who can really invest in restoring our county for wildlife habitat, for sustainable agriculture, and for recreation. So let's start with a couple of restoration projects that people might not know are really restoration projects. They're hidden restoration projects. And one of those is Walden Ponds. So Walden Ponds is an open space area that people love to go because it's a fabulous birding area. It's actually listed by Audubon as an extraordinary birding area because of the number of migratory birds that use it. And just its ponds here just attract so many different birds. Before it was Walden Ponds Wildlife Habitat, it was a gravel mine. We humans need mining resources because we drive on roads. And so gravel was harvested back in the 70s and the 80s from Walden Ponds. There were just big pits dug in there and they created holes in the ground that then later filled in with groundwater. Now it's close to Boulder Creek as well, which is wonderful because that means a groundwater table is pretty close to the top. After the gravel mining was done and they moved away and County Open Space got the property, we started enhancing the ponds by planting beneficial vegetation around the edges and controlling weeds. Because if we just, if, you know, it was mined and then you walked away and let it fill with water, basically it would be filled with weeds. So by planting desirable vegetation like willows, which provide wildlife habitat and food, then we're enhancing that and turning what was a scar on the landscape because it was a gravel mine, gravel, several gravel pits out there. We've turned it into an amazing wildlife habitat. And the recreation that goes along with that, we put trails around the edges and you can go out there, you can take a stroll with your family and your friends, you can bring your binoculars and you can see this amazing amazing bird life that use Walden Ponds. So gravel mining is one, one of the projects that we've restored. Another is, we all remember the 2013 flood. It was in some parts of the county, a hundred year event. In some parts, it was even a 500 year event. The place that it hit the county hardest was in the north part of the county, along the St. Vrain River. Now, we're really fortunate that Boulder County, through a grant 25 years ago, was able to buy land along the St. Vrain Creek between Lyons and Longmont. It's more than five miles of creek corridor there, that we own the edges, the land around it. So when the 2013 flood hit, it took out trees, it blocked the creek, it turned creek beds, creek edges into cobblestone fields, which is what a river should do. It's a good thing when a river floods, for sure. And the fact that we own all the land around it meant that we could restore that in a positive way. We could take all that debris that was moved around and shuffled around, and we could go in just like we did at Walden Ponds and plant desirable vegetation. We planted willow trees and we planted native shrubs and native grasses, and we planted cottonwood trees to kickstart the regeneration of the creek corridor. And we also thought about the long run. We said, we don't just want to put the creek right back where it was, because in parts of the creek, in parts of the St. Frane Creek, between Longmont and Lyons, it had been straightened for agricultural uses. And we said, we still want to preserve that agriculture. We still want to be able to take water out of the creek. And so we rebuilt some irrigation structures, but we didn't just rebuild them as dams that are impediments to water flow or sediment flow. We worked with our creative staff and amazing consultants to make passage along the St. Frane Creek that would pass water for irrigation. It would pass sediment, so it wouldn't build up behind it. And it would pass fish, because sometimes when you have an irrigation structure on a creek like the St. Frane Creek, the fish, especially the little tiny native fish that we have in the St. Frane Creek, can't get past that dam. So by restoring these irrigation structures, we were able to make them more wildlife-friendly, more creek-friendly. And that restoration is amazing. When you go out there, even our consultants, when they were working out there rebuilding the structures and re-contouring the creek corridor, so it had more meanders and it had some backwater, so it provided wetland habitats, they just loved it. They said, this is wild America out here. They had mountain lions. They had deer, their beaver out there. We were able in this to bring from this what many people saw as a devastating event, the 2013 flood, and turn it into a benefit to the creek, a benefit to wildlife. And the other benefit is it is a benefit to humans because by having room for the river, by restoring the creek corridor so it has a wide floodplain, the next time a flood comes down, it can expand over the edges, it can flood the sides without tearing everything apart, it can do what a river is supposed to do. And that will help the citizens of Longmont, the residents of Longmont, because it won't come flooding into the city. So those are the types of layer on layer of restoration that we are able to do because we own and manage this land, and we have the support of the public to do these kind of restoration projects.

Yeah, and it's kind of a secret, hidden part of the landscape, right? People are there recreating, but they're actually enjoying a space that has been restored for not just their recreation, but wildlife, even some critical species like Preble's jumping mice. And I wonder with these restoration efforts, mining and kind of creek restoration, are there other restoration efforts that occur on open space that maybe we don't know about?

There are. We do all kinds of restoration in all of our disciplines. For example, we do a lot of forest restoration. So Boulder County Parks & Open Space is fortunate we've got about 30,000 acres of our open space located in the mountains that you were so beautifully describing. Those forests have had fire suppression for the last 130 years. And what that means is, especially our low elevation ponderosa pine forest, they are adapted to fire. They want fire. When a fire comes through, when a fire came through before white settlers were here, it would burn the small trees, it would singe the big ones, but it wouldn't kill them, and it would keep a more open savanna mosaic. So you would have some trees and a lot of grass in between. And again, a diversity of vegetations, shrubs and forbs and flowering plants. It was not just what we call dog hair forest. By suppressing fire, the trees have been allowed to grow for 130 years. And we have parts of Hile Valley Ranch that have over 3,000 trees per acre. And historically, it should have had maybe 30 or 50 trees an acre. So part of our forest restoration is helping get parts of our forest back to that more mosaic where you have the big old growth trees that are fire resilient and you have this whole open area between trees so that if another fire comes through, which it will, we have lightning strikes that cause fire. If another fire comes through, it can burn the grasses, but it won't necessarily be a crown fire that goes from tree to tree to tree. So we do forest restoration. Now when you go up towards Nederland, our forests are different. They're lodgepole pine forests, and those forests need a different kind of restoration. Lodgepole pine forests, they're what we call even-aged. All the trees in the forest are the same age. So a catastrophic event would take out a lodgepole pine forest, and then all new seedlings would grow up at the same time. That's how that kind of forest is supposed to grow. So when we do forest restoration up around Nederland, we typically do what we call small patch cuts. We're replicating what the lodgepole pine forest would do naturally. So what that means is we cut a patch. The tree seeds in pine cones are what we call serotonous. It takes heat to get those seeds to burst from their cone and be able to make contact with the ground and sprout. So you need pine cones on the ground without trees above them. So the heat from the sun can pop those pine cones open and then those trees can regenerate. And we expect them all to come back at the same age. Forest restoration can take on a different look depending on where it is. We've also done some grassland restoration. With farming, when you till the soil, you get rid of plethora of native species. And in some areas in Boulder County and throughout the West, farmers got a little ambitious. And they would farm areas that might not have been the best for farming. Maybe they were too steep and the soil was too erodible. And they didn't really produce a good crop anyway. So in areas like that, on County Open Space, we've been able to say, okay, we don't want to farm this anymore. We want to convert this back to a grassland. In order to do that, it takes many steps. But one of the really fun creative projects that we've worked on in parks and open space is gathering seed that can be used in that grassland restoration. Now the way we do that is through volunteers. So we have groups of volunteers that go out and collect native seed. And they collect a whole different variety. It's not just one grass or one tree species. But they collect as much native seed in any given year, because native seed doesn't always come up the same every single year. So over the course of many different years, we've been able to collect a host of different kinds of seed. So then, back on that ag field that we've decided to convert back to native, we put together a seed mix. Our plant ecologists say, we want some shrubs, we want some flowering plants, and we want some grasses. So they put together a seed mix, and then we reseed that native grass. And then we watch it, and we go back, and you have to treat weeds, because unfortunately, when any land is disturbed, the first thing that wants to come up are weeds. And weeds often outcompete the natives. When the natives get established, then our grasses turn into this vibrant, wonderful habitat for a host of different pollinators. Lots of different birds and butterflies can re-inhabit the native grassland.

I know that we're going to have a new open space, Prairie Run, that will be available to the public. And I'm wondering if you could take us through some of these restoration efforts at just this one new space. Give the public an idea of how complex the management is.

We are very excited about Prairie Run. It's going to be a new park, and it's going to be a wonderful place where people can go and take their families and watch birds and put their toes in the creek. We're very excited about it, and it's going to take a lot of time. It's not just starting now, because we've been restoring that habitat for 20 years. Just like I was describing Walden Ponds and the gravel pits, well, Prairie Run also had gravel mining, and that was actually under Parks & Open Space watch. When we bought the property, and I think this is a testament to just the long-term vision of our predecessors, when we bought the property, we knew it was going to be mined, and we have several other examples of that. But we knew it was going to have gravel mining, and the idea was you could get the gravel resources, use them for county purposes like building roads, and then restore it to a wonderful wetland habitat. So we've been working on that restoration since the mining stopped, and the mining stopped 20 years ago. So we've contoured the edges. We were really fortunate in this one, because we weren't just given the holes in the ground that the mining company did. We said when you're done mining, we want the edges someplace shallow. Why? Because some plant species like to grow in shallow water. Some places deep, because some fish species like to be further under the water. So we were able to contour it and make it diverse, so it's not just a big hole in the ground. And then we started replanting, just like I've described before. We put wetland vegetation in there, and we had volunteers out there that got to help restore with the wetland vegetation. And so that has brought us to where we are now. The land is still, it's not a wonderful haven throughout the whole, over a thousand acres of Prairie Run. But in the places where we had gravel mining, that's already, that restoration has already started. What we have planned in the future is really some larger scale restoration, including realigning the creek, putting some meanders back in the creek, like I described what we did after the flood. There hasn't been a flood to re-contour the area there, but manually with our good staff and our good contractors, we're going to go ahead and put some more meanders in the creek there and plant more riparian vegetation. So that will again bring Boulder Creek back to a more natural creek. What it is right now, in addition to the gravel mining, the creek was also straightened for irrigation 100 years ago. So it's a well-loved, I like to say, a well-loved creek, but it's not natural. So our restoration is going to help put some of that natural features back into the creek and then have the gravel mining, which is now wonderful wetland habitat with amazing bird already, amazing bird life out there. So those two things combined. And then the third thing is we're going to restore the uplands where the grasses are. So just like our grassland restoration that we've done on agricultural land, we're going to restore some of the grasslands using our native seeds again. So it's going to be a long process, you know, five, seven years to do these creek restoration and grassland restoration. But it is just going to be amazing when we're done. And what I love to think about is that, just like I said, we have five, more than five miles of trail along the St. Vrain Creek, five miles of riparian corridor along the St. Vrain Creek. On the Boulder Creek, most of the creek, from Boulder to the County Line Road, have been purchased and preserved for open space. And even though we haven't quite got to the restoration, and now we are, the City of Boulder's been working on theirs for a long time. So the City of Boulder owns, you know, seven miles of it. We own five, six, seven miles. And so with their restoration that they've done closer to Boulder, and our restoration that we have planned out by the County Line, that's going to be like 12 miles of Boulder Creek restored. Which is just so wonderful to think of, that we've restored the St. Vrain because of the flood, and now we're restoring Boulder Creek in collaboration with the City of Boulder. Our two major waterways, which are so important for the people of Boulder County, and for the wildlife of Boulder County, are going to be restored. And we have plans for them, and we're implementing them. It's very, very exciting.

I really like that you talked about the City of Boulder restoration, because when you're talking about large scale restoration efforts, you can't do it alone. I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about other collaborators, partners that really are furthering the department's work.

You're so right. We could not do things alone. So we have partners in many different aspects. For example, you mentioned the City of Boulder. So the City of Boulder and Boulder County have worked together to first preserve land. Sometimes we jointly purchase land, where, for example, we'll buy the fee and they'll buy a conservation easement. So we're spreading out the cost. We've done that with almost every municipality in Boulder County, which is really wonderful. So we have jointly owned property with Louisville and Lafayette and Longmont. By partnering, we're both committing to keeping it as open space and having it provide the amazing benefits that open space provides to the community and to the natural resources. So cities, city partners are huge. We also partner a lot with the state, Colorado Parks and Wildlife. So in Boulder County, we manage the land, but the wildlife is managed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, CPW. We do that in partnership because they certainly can't be everywhere. But they have the wildlife regulations and rules. And so we work really closely with them. For example, they have state rules around raptor nests. So we work with them to assure that we're protecting raptor nests that might be on Boulder County Parks & Open Space. And we're assuring that they're not going to be impacted by the work that we're doing or the trails that we have on Open Space. They're a great partner. We also have to do some wildlife management that is very controversial for sure, like managing prairie dogs. Managing prairie dogs is such a complex issue, and people are passionate on both sides. When prairie dogs are in our native lands, on our native grasslands like around Rabbit Mountain, they're usually fine. They provide food for the raptors. They provide burrows and help regenerate the soil. Prairie dogs are a keystone species, so they're very important, and we really want to protect them in Boulder County. But when prairie dogs intersect our agricultural land, that's where there are problems. And so we work with CPW. We worked with them very closely as we developed a Prairie Dog Management Plan, which allows us to remove prairie dogs from our agricultural land so it can still be productive ag, but preserve them and make really good habitat on the areas where we want them. So CPW, the state, is a big partner. We also partner with the federal government, and the two major, well, more than just two, but two major federal government agencies that we work with, one is the US. Fish & Wildlife Service. So you mentioned Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse. So it is a little tiny mouse with a really long tail, and it is adorable, even if you don't like mice. And it is only found in Boulder and Larimer Counties, and a little bit into Wyoming. So it's a very unique species. And it's on the Federal Endangered Species List as a threatened species. So as open space managers, we want to protect the habitat. We want to make sure that when we do our creek restorations, that we're putting plants in that Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse light. And we have to work with the US. Fish & Wildlife Service because if we're putting a trail in that might impact the riparian area, the Fish & Wildlife Service will say, wait a minute, we don't want the trail so close to Preble's habitat. So we've modified where our trails are to help protect and preserve that threatened species. The other major federal land manager that we work with is the US. Forest Service because a good portion of the mountains in Boulder County are US. Forest Service land. And so when we purchased Open Space, oftentimes the US. Forest Service is our neighbor. So if you're trying to restore a forest, like I talked about with the Ponderosa Pine, and your neighbor doesn't do anything to restore it, you don't have that continuity and a larger scale restoration. So when we're doing forest restoration, we often partner with the US. Forest Service, and we'll do work on our side of the property, and they'll do work on their side of the property. And inevitably, in Boulder County, there's probably private landowners right around there, too. And we have a wonderful project that we're working on right now. It's just west of Nederland, and we have county land, federal land, and private landowners, and they are all working together to design the forest restoration project, which is just going to be great, because when you have cross-boundary, the impact is so much larger than just being able to do a little forestry project on county open space, for example. So we work a lot with the US. Forest Service. And then, of course, we can't forget that Rocky Mountain National Park, part of it is in Boulder County. So we work with the national park as well. Just on managing, we talk about managing visitors. You know, the Long's Peak Trailhead is in Boulder County. And we have an organization called NOCO. It has six counties, the state, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the US. Forest Service and Rocky Mountain National Park, all working together and managing visitors. And we get to talk together, we say, where are the hotspots? Where are there illegal trails that go from County Open Space onto US. Forest Service? Where are there areas that we can join our efforts and focus and maybe distribute recreation? So if one trailhead is getting too much use, we can put out social media posts that say, hey, here are some other trailheads that you could think about, where the parking might not be so crazy and you could still have a wonderful recreation experience on the Forest Service versus in Rocky Mountain National Park or on Boulder County Parks & Open Space at Caribou Ranch versus the Forest Service Hesse Trailhead. So that's another really important partnership. Another partnership that we do is we partner with communities that are interested in working with us. For example, there are some businesses that like to come out and volunteer because their staff need a day out of the office. It's good team building. It's good for their mental health. And they get to contribute to their community. They get to go out and help, whether it's collecting seeds or doing a creek restoration or doing a trail rebuild. They get to go out and do some good physical work. They get to learn about open space. And then they go back to their offices and they say, this is what Boulder County is. You might not have known that Boulder County is doing creek restoration and we got to work on a creek restoration. Or you might not have known Boulder County manages some of the irrigation ditches throughout and we got to go out and clean an irrigation ditch. So those are opportunities where we're partnering with individuals and organizations to come out and volunteer with us.

I know earlier you mentioned that you have volunteers that do seed collection. Do you have individuals that can volunteer on these kind of work projects?

We do. We have so many opportunities for volunteers. We have one day projects, which are like our seed collection, where you can go on to our website and look it up and say, you know, what are the volunteering opportunities on Open Space? So one day events are often like a trail resurfacing or refurbishing water bars on a trail. We've been doing a lot of those recently, which is really great because when we restore a trail and get the water off of it, then we don't have to close it during muddy trails because the trails are, you know, inundated with water. So sometimes our forestry projects have one day projects. After we've done the forest thinning, we'll build slash piles. Sometimes we have volunteers come help us build the slash piles. Sometimes after those slash piles are burned, because that's how we get rid of the wood after our forest thinning for some of them, we'll have volunteers come out and rake those burn scars. So they're just a small circle, maybe 15 or 20 feet in diameter. And you get to rake them and you get to use again the native seeds and put it down and then put some slash on top and help restore those burn scars from the forestry projects. We have agriculture opportunities. You can volunteer too, typically in the fall when a farmer might have already harvested most of what they're going to harvest. Sometimes we'll have what's called gleaning projects, where you get to go out and you get to help pick the ugly fruit basically, the vegetables that weren't prime for the farmer's market. And volunteers will collect those vegetables and then donate them to food banks. So those again are just wonderful volunteer opportunities that you might not think about. That those are just one day projects. And then we have some really long term volunteer projects. If you've tried out a day or two and you really say, hey, Open Space is just a place for me to spend some of my free time, you can volunteer for our long term projects like our Volunteer Naturalists. Now that program, you have to apply. We interview you because we know it's a long commitment. So when volunteers volunteer for the Volunteer Naturalists program, that's a lot of volunteering in one sentence, we train them over the course of 10 weeks where they come in and they learn about the plants and the wildlife and the agriculture and the forestry. And then when they finish their training program, they get to go out and provide education to our community. So they might go to a school and do a living map program where they talk about the different ecosystems in Boulder County. Or they might provide a night walk where you get to listen to the birds of the night, the owls and that sort of thing. So we have volunteer naturalists that have been with us for over 25 years. Our request is that you commit to, you know, doing through, I'm not exactly sure now, three or more programs a year. And we have volunteers that might do 10 or 15 programs in a year. And it's a real, again, they find people that have similar interests, like maybe they both like butterflies. And so they'll do three or four butterfly programs together. Another one of our long-term commitments is our cultural resource volunteers. And these are volunteers that like to tell the history of Boulder County, like the history of the Walker Ranch, when people were homesteading. They get to reenact life back in the 1880s, and they get to use on old washboards to wash their socks and hang them out on a line to dry and churn butter. So if volunteers, if that's what you like to do as a volunteer, you can volunteer in that realm. And we also have volunteers that interpret Agricultural Heritage Center. And they'll show you blacksmithing on the farm. And they'll teach kids about animals on the farm. So those are other opportunities for volunteering. Many people don't know or understand this, that our county extension, it's CSU Boulder County Cooperative Extension, is a part of Parks & Open Space. And they have so many volunteer opportunities. You can become a master gardener. So same deal, you get trained. And then you get to go out and teach people or answer phone when people call up and say, my beans are turning yellow. What do I do? Our master gardeners are the resources that can help them navigate how to have a successful garden. And they help small acreage farmers and they help with fruit production and they help you even if you have a small yard. If you're having issues with your landscaping, they'll help you learn how to do sustainable landscaping. So there's a host of opportunities through Boulder County Extension.

I love that you've given us this kind of behind the scenes of all these different parts of Parks & Open Space, especially in the management. But we're going to circle back to the beginning where people really connect to our Parks & Open Spaces, a lot of them just in the recreation field. Could you explain kind of the priorities of providing recreation and what benefits you see that people get from it?

Well, I am a big recreator on Open Space. It's near and dear to my heart. And on the weekend, I love to go out hiking. And I know the benefits of hiking are one, they're good for mental health, two, they're good for physical health, and three, they connect you to the land. So you really have this feeling of, you know, I belong in Boulder County and I see the wildlife out here and the amazing vegetation and I can go to a property that's surrounded by an ag field and I can say, oh, we're preserving ag. So recreating from the human's perspective is so important for all of those reasons. There are so many different ways for people to recreate and we really try on Parks & Open Space to provide opportunities for a host of different ways people can recreate. I know a lot of people like to ride mountain bikes. Most of our trails in the mountains are open to mountain biking. And we've got regional trails. So if mountain biking isn't your thing, but you're fine on a regional trail, our regional trails like our trail between Longmont and Boulder and our trail where we're going to be eventually connecting into Prairie Run out there with the Boulder to Erie regional trail, the Coal Creek and Rock Creek trails, those 22 miles of trails that took us 25 years to build, people use them just to go out for a three or five mile bike ride. Those are so important. The trails that connect to communities are also really, really important. Our communities when we do surveys on what they want, they often tell us we just want a connection from our neighborhood to a regional trail. Because our regional trail network is so vast, so we're working on a lot of those small little trail connections so that basically anyone in Boulder County could get on a trail, maybe it's in Longmont and they get on some of the like the St. Frane Trail, and it gets them out to a regional trail, like near Sandstone Ranch. Those type of recreation experiences are so important. We also know we have a lot of birders, and all that creek restoration and gravel mining restoration gives people wonderful places to go, to watch birds, watch wildlife. If they're photographers, they can go out there and get amazing wildlife pictures. Most of our trails are open to dogs, dogs on leash. So people who like to walk their dog every single day can go out on those regional trails or on the trail connectors, or go to Walden Ponds or Pella Crossing or Lagerman and take their dog and go out and recreate. We have some that you can actually do water activities, like you can get on a belly boat and go fishing at Lagerman Reservoir. You can do it at Pella Ponds. With the variety of open space properties that we have, we really provide a lot of recreation opportunities for the community.

Yeah, and I know I've been impressed with how accessible many of our trails are, providing shelter, providing benches, providing ADA accessible bathrooms. You know, there's so many things that go into each property. You know, in our conversation, we've like peeled back a few of the layers of restoration and recreation and volunteers. But I'm wondering, when people listen to this, what do you want them to take away? What's like your, you know, if there's nothing else, what's the kind of call to action or wish that you have for folks that have listened this far to our podcast?

The message I want them to take away is this open space is your open space. You are welcome here. We are working really hard to make our community engagement, to reach out to communities that you might not see on open space as much as white middle-aged people. We are trying to make it more accessible by offering programs and teaching different community groups that, hey, this open space can be your open space. You can go out and you can do a night hike with us. You can come out and learn about wildlife and the plants and all the fun things that also connect back to your community. We just had Cinco de Mayo. Our Latinx community have really deep roots with nature. It's not always evident on our open space that that's where they may be able to find the connections to their roots that they may have lost because they're now living in the middle of an urban area. And so our education and outreach is really trying to broaden who feels welcome on open space. I also think that open space is a challenge. I touched a little bit on prairie dogs and there are a host of different conflicts out there. And what I want people to take away is that open space is really trying hard to balance what we want as humans with what our environment needs to thrive and provide clean air and clean water for our environment and for those of us that live in the environment that we're all part of it. I would say if your passion is one thing, we love it. We love people's passion and we would love you to come out and volunteer for us on any of those volunteer projects I talked about. But if volunteering isn't your thing, I want you to just be engaged in open space and think about the multitude of benefits it provides, whether it's a forest being managed in an area you're never going to see, but it might provide you with clean drinking water, or whether it's an agriculture field that's being restored to a native grassland right next to your favorite trail. So much of what open space is, is really this combination of preserving the natural environment and making it a welcoming space for the people of Boulder County.

Thanks so much. I really feel like folks that are listening, as they're driving along or hiking on one of our parks, they're going to see things differently. When they look at the creek and it's not straight, they're going to say, wow, that was restored. Or the reason that the trail is level the way it is, so it's more accessible for wheelchairs. I think that these things are hidden in plain sight, but you were able to kind of show us some of the variety of thought process that's going into the decisions that the department is making, especially as they continue to manage these properties and manage new properties. So thanks so much for lending all of your knowledge to our listeners. I hope that people, when they're on the trail, that they get involved.

Well, thank you, Eva, it has been such a pleasure talking about Open Space. It really is my passion and such a community asset.

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