Episode 3: Innovations in Open Space

I know we're feeling a lot of challenges in our world today, and in the world of land conservation, I'm really excited here today to start discussing the innovations in wildlife crossings, the things that we are doing with people, soil and land health. And I'm super excited today to introduce our guest, Heidi Wagner, who is our newly appointed Deputy Director of Strategic Foundations. Hi, Heidi.

Hi, thank you for having me.

When you and I met, you weren't the Deputy Director. You were the Resource Planning Manager, is that correct?

That's correct. It's a fairly new development.

Awesome. I'm so happy for you. Can you explain to me a little bit about what it means to be a planner?

Planners, what I always think of when I think of environmental planners is we are the people that step out with a larger perspective and listen to the voices of community and staff to weave together everyone's professional and personal expertise to make responsible, creative decisions on how we manage our open space for the benefit of the community and the wildlife and the habitat.

When you were little, Heidi, like 10-year-old Heidi, did you think to yourself, you know, one day I'm going to plan things?

Yes, I did. You know, I didn't think of it quite that way when I was young. As I went through college, I was always interested in planning, but for many reasons, I couldn't get a degree in planning. So I went fully the natural resource route. And it wasn't until after I had graduated that I was thinking, what am I going to do with this education? What am I direction am I going to take with my career? One day I'm driving down the road of my hometown. And, you know, when you've driven a road so many times, you don't really see it anymore. But something caught my attention this particular day. And I looked up to where the utility lines were. I was always used to seeing the branches of these old 300-year-old oak trees that had been on a site of a former elementary school. I was just so used to seeing it. And all of a sudden they were gone. It was just this big hole where these trees should have been. And I looked and they had just cleared that whole site of these old growth trees. I was angry. Who let this happen? Why did this happen? What is this for? I found out later that they had cleared the whole 30 acres of beautiful remnants of natural areas for a Walmart. And in its place, to add insult to injury, they replaced these beautiful trees with little sticks. Every so often in the parking lot that half of them died, I said, I'm going to be a planner. Nine months later, I started my first job in the planning department as an address coordinator, worked my way up from there. That's how I started.

Was that in Indiana where you grew up?

Yes, southern Indiana.

So Walmart contributed to you becoming a planner?

It did.

Well, thank you for Walmart, I guess. So one of the things today that I really want to start exploring is the future of our local ecosystems. What it means to not just preserve, but to actively build our health and resiliency into our landscapes. So Heidi, to start us off, what excites you most about the direction we're heading in when it comes to ecosystems and wildlife in Boulder County?

Yeah, I think there's a lot to be excited about. First of all, we're so blessed in Boulder County. We have preserved over 110,000 acres, and 76,000 of that we own as a county, and it's called in-fee title. The rest of that land is conservation easements, so those are still held by the land owner, but we help monitor them. But that 76,000 acres is a lot of opportunity. We have about 50,000 of that, I think, in natural lands, and a little over 26,000 in agriculture. So that's very exciting, because that is the land area of Longmont, where we're recording this, Lyons, Lafayette, Lewisville, Boulder. Like, if you merge those cities all together, that's the area that we steward. That's very exciting, but it also does bring challenges for us, especially with climate change and all the alterations that have occurred to our natural environment.

So let's start with something that's both symbolic and deeply impactful, partnerships with our Native American communities. Heidi, can you please tell us about this work and what it represents for our partnerships and inclusivity within the county?

Absolutely. I'm really excited about this. Frankly, this work is long overdue. I am proud to be a part of an organization that is at the forefront of inclusivity in this space. Partnerships with Native and Indigenous communities in Boulder County, that's the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Oot, and many others. It's important for us to acknowledge the fact that we are now stewards of the land that they called home. And there's a responsibility that we have to listen to their voice, to partner with them, and to support Indigenous ways.

One of the things that we're kind of getting into is this collaboration and how it plays a major role in the Buffalo project that we're getting into. And that kind of partnership is also at the heart of some of the work being done to help wildlife safely navigate our spaces.

Yes, so one thing that I would like to highlight is some of the early partnership work that we've done a few years ago. We were gifted with a wonderful property. It is called South Down Indian Mountain, and there is a partnership of indigenous community that has come together to host ceremonies there. Another area that we support those ceremonies is Rainbow Tree Nursery for the Indigenous Peoples Community Church. So that's just an early way. Some of those partnership efforts have started to manifest and show up. And then we are very hopeful to have future work that we can announce and speak to at a later date.

Well, that's great. So, like, stewardship of wildlife, right? So, let's get into something that I care about. I grew up in Boulder County. I grew up in Longmont, actually. And as a little kid, I've seen elk run across Highway 36 on numerous occasions. And we've talked about wildlife crossings, and it's a big thing in Canada. It's a big thing in California. We have a wildlife project working to be in place. Can you give us a little bit of the background of that project and where we stand today?

So, the area that we are looking at for wildlife crossing, like you said, here in Boulder County is Highway 36. It is the stretch of highway between the city of Boulder and the town of Lyons. If anyone listening has not driven that and you are local in the area, please go drive it. It is a gorgeous stretch of road because we have an uninterrupted corridor for plants and wildlife. There is very, very little housing, very, very little development, and it truly is a remnant of the ecosystem that was here before settlement. Because of that preservation, because we've done a good job preserving the area, there are numerous wildlife corridors in that space for different types of wildlife. And yes, like you said, especially elk. And what happens is the elk, they don't really realize there's a road. Unfortunately, that is one of the areas of highest collision between elk and cars. A wildlife crossing is really about safety for people and for that wildlife. Generally, wildlife crossings are usually done at the federal level, sometimes the state, because they are complex, they are costly. But we have been pursuing one because we recognize the importance of that crossing for both wildlife and people. And so I'm really excited about that effort. We're in the earlier stages of planning, but we know approximately where we can locate the crossing. And we have been working in partnership with other municipalities and our state with CDOT. And I think lastly, there is also a bikeway being planned along that corridor. And for all of you bikers out there, you're probably aware of this. And we are working to integrate the wildlife crossing with the bikeway corridor so those things can go hand in hand.

Human safety, animal safety, and bike safety.

It's a win.

I love it. It's a win-win for everybody, right? So as we talk about ways that we're designing smarter landscapes for wildlife and for people, I want to shift gears a little bit to another kind of foundation, the literal one under our feet, soil. Soil is such a critical but often overlooked part of our ecosystem's health. What are some of the ways that the ag division at the county is working with local farmers to promote healthier soils?

We have a small but mighty hard-working agricultural division in parks and open space. They have been providing grant opportunities to our leaseholders. If you recall, at the beginning of our conversation, I said 26,000 acres in agriculture. It is our responsibility to work with all the farmers that lease that land to help them be successful in their operation. If they would like to apply for a grant, to improve their soil health, because it translates into strong, nutritious food, and it's better for the ecosystem to have soil that is not depleted of nutrients and organic matter. So I believe they have up to $450,000 to award. And so far, they have awarded 10 farmers, and that have made those improvements over 15 different properties, for something around almost 1,300 acres. And that's very early efforts. So we're excited to be championing soil health in the department.

Do you have any success stories or reactions from farmers, from any of those farmers that have taken part?

You know, I think that would be a great opportunity to bring in some of our agricultural friends and talk to them about that. But from what I have heard is that the farmers that have utilized those grant dollars have seen a lot of early successes in the improvement of the soil health and their ability to produce healthy crops and animals.

While we're learning from the land, let's go back to a time when land changed dramatically. In 2013, we had a giant flood in Boulder County. That event really reshaped how we think about land and specifically stream restoration. In 2013, that flood had a massive impact on not only the St. Vrain Creek, but the whole front range in general and its surrounding lands. How has that experience influenced how the county is approaching stream restoration now?

So, first of all, to give a little perspective to our listeners, back in 2013, I think the day was September 11th, we received over 20 inches of rain in two days. That's pretty much the equivalent to our annual amount of precipitation. It was absolutely a torrent. Because we have altered our natural environment through, for example, mining, roads and other surfaces that water can't get through, the system wasn't able to handle that. So, what I mean by that is the water when it fell wasn't able to drain away quickly enough to avoid damage to homes and ecosystems. I do want to acknowledge that there were lives lost that day, I believe four people lost their lives that day. We had damage to about 1,500 homes and businesses. When the rain stopped as Parks & Open Space, we went out to assess the natural side of things. You can see some pictures on our website that I think tell the story because whole entire stream corridors were decimated. Flood water had just completely overflown that channel and destroyed the entire surrounding area. It was hard. It was really hard to see. After we took assessment of the damage, we started to see that there was an opportunity to restore those streams, to widen them again, to reconnect them to their floodplains like they had been before mining, before settlement. So the next time an event like that happens because it's not if, it's when, the floodwaters have somewhere to go safely without that damage to people or the environment. I'm just really proud of Parks & Open Space because we take a philosophy of natural stream design. We don't put concrete in on the sides of a stream and walk away. What we try to do is mimic the natural stream ecosystem and what that was like before we altered it. That involves actually a lot of engineering and a lot of analysis to make something that looks very, very natural. And you would never know 5, 10, 15 years after one of our restorations that we had done that.

Human activity altered streams in potentially a negative way. But now we're working to mimic the natural movement of streams. Can you explain how that actually works on the ground?

At first, I want to say, like, I don't want to sound like I'm shaming or blaming those that came before. I think most people, they didn't really realize the impact of what they were doing. But when I say mining, I do think it's important for the community to understand that along our creek corridors, such as East Boulder Creek and St. Vrain, there was and still is a lot of mining activity that basically digs up that stream and the surrounding area to extract the rocks, the aggregate, from it. And when they're done, they usually narrow that stream significantly and straighten it. And so what it looks like on the ground for us to restore that stream is, first of all, we often will look at old photos, if any exists, to see if we can see what that stream or area looked like before it was disturbed. And there's some places that we have photos in the county from the 1920s and 1930s before it was mined or before farming occurred. You can starkly see the difference. We say, okay, that's what it looked like. Wow, that stream moved back and forth across the landscape, sometimes 300, 400 feet of a meander in just a short area. Like it would really go a lot of different places. And we constrained it and moved it into one channel when we altered it. And so when we're restoring it, we say, hey, how can we mimic that now? How can we do that again in a way that's still safe for the water, respects the water rights, and also restores that habitat and brings the plants and the wildlife back that used to be adjoining that corridor? So when you're standing on the ground after a restoration, that's what you're going to see. You're going to see a stream that undulates across the landscape, hopefully some willows and some wildlife, and it's going to look completely different than a place that has not seen that stream restoration and has been disturbed.

I love the idea of us bringing those streams back to that natural way of being. By any chance, have you seen the YouTube video, How Wolves Change Rivers?

Oh, I have not.

We'll post it on the website along with this podcast. It's a story of the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park. And when they reintroduced wolves, the wolves had a whole cascade effect on the behavior of animals, specifically the deer species, moose, elk and deer. And what they ended up doing was they changed the meandering of the rivers. And it brought back bird species, it introduced more beavers, it introduced more willows, so the moose population increased. But most specifically what it did is they changed the behavior of the elk, the number one prey species of the wolves. And in the end, this cascade effect led to an complete alteration of the forest ecosystem to the point that they changed the movement of rivers. So we'll post that again on the website. That is something that I really love to think about how regardless of not whether humans did it intentionally or not, we changed things in kind of a negative way. And we're changing things back, and the reintroduction of wolves just to Yellowstone changed everything back to the natural environment. So you talked about aerial photos, like how far back do we go with these aerial photos that the county has?

So it is usually the 1920s. I think as soon as we could fly, that's one of the first things people did is take pictures of the landscape. One of my focus areas in graduate school was looking at those photos, and they just putting them all together over time really helps tell this story in a way that I won't be able to do today in front of a microphone. But we could probably link to that. Some of those archives of those historic photos. You know, it's hard if you are not in natural resources. When you look around at our environment today, you're not going to understand how different that is from just 100 years ago, 150 years ago. The reason our environment looks like it does now is through a series of choices that have been made the last 150 years. And those photos can help remind you, it was a choice and we can now make different choices for the betterment of people and the natural environment.

So while we're restoring streams to their natural flow, we're also looking at how to do the same in our forests. And to discuss that, we brought in Stefan Reinold, our newly appointed Deputy Director of Land Stewardship. We want to talk a little bit about forest health, but it's not just about forest health. There's a lot more to it, isn't it?

Yes, definitely. So the term forest health is, to me, a very nebulous statement, because you really want to think of the forest as a whole. Insect and diseases are a part of that. Fire is a part of that. Disturbance ecology is kind of very important, especially in our front-range forests. To kind of expand upon that, what we're looking for when we look at our forests is we're looking for diversity. Diversity in species, we're looking for diversity in structure, and the processes that actually kept that diversity on the landscape are insect and disease outbreaks and wildfire.

So it's like thriving forest ecosystems.

Correct. What's problematic in Colorado is that we have suppressed fire over the years. By suppressing that fire, we took out the process that kept our forests open, especially our lower elevation forests. And by suppressing fire, we have actually changed the structure a little bit. So we actually have forests that are dense, and density has led to outbreaks. So normally insect and disease outbreaks, we consider endemic populations, right? That's good for the forest. That's little pockets here and there and spreads. But when it gets to these epidemic levels, like we saw with the beetle outbreak previously, we've seen with emerald ash borer in other states, those things are what really affect the scale of change. If you lose a whole forest to a fire, you just created one piece rather than the mosaic that you're looking for. You want to have pockets of burned trees. You want to have pockets that maybe were thinned by fire. You want to have pockets that are completely gone. So it's just trying to figure out how to put fire back on the landscape. And so that's something that we are trying to do at Parks & Open Space.

What kind of things do we do in Parks & Open Space? They assume we don't just go out and rake the forests, right?

That's correct. So, I mean, I think there's a couple of things that we're looking at. So to safely put fire back on the ground, we need a forest structure that's not going to lead to a catastrophic wildfire. So if I try to put fire in a very, very dense forest, it is going to get up into the canopy, and it's going to burn through the canopy, and we're going to lose that forest. We're trying to get the structure back that can actually receive fire. Once we do that, some of our lower elevation forests should have fires every 5 to 35 years. We haven't seen that over 120 years at this point, and so we have to think about how do we get fire on the ground to remove the surface fuels. So that's one of the things we've noticed is when we go out and we do these thinning projects, we actually have a really good example at Calwood Fire at our Howell Valley Ranch where we did thinning, and then we did some areas that we did thinning and prescribed fire. The areas that we did thinning and prescribed fire, we actually have tree survival and we have forest survival. Areas that we just did thinning, we still have some survival but not as good as areas that we did both thinning and prescribed fire. And then areas that we did nothing, we actually have complete tree loss. And so we know that by doing these little projects and trying to build something, we can save our forest.

For our listeners, if they were to take one thing away, what is one thing that you think they might be surprised to learn about forest health or thriving forest ecosystems and how we maintain or restore them?

What we've been trying to do is we've really been trying to educate the public on the importance of fire. Fire is scary. You know, we don't want fire burning our homes and we don't want to lose that. But it is a really important tool in the toolbox for us to maintain or kind of repair and restore the structure that existed prior. That mosaic of structure across the landscape is really what is needed for all of our wildlife populations, for our plant ecology and for all those pieces. And so understanding that fire is an important tool is really something we need to get across.

Thank you, Stefan. I'm really glad that you are a member of this team.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Whether it's forests, streams or wildlife corridors, the thread through all of this is people, right? People who care, people who contribute, who connect with land. So let's talk about the human side of ecosystem work a little bit. How are we as the county and Parks & Open Space helping people feel more connected to open space and to the natural world?

Yes, that is the big piece of our mission, because we can't do any of this work without a supportive community and staff that bring a diversity of live, personal experiences and educational experiences. We are trying to not only bring that diversity into our workforce, but also engage the diversity of our community in new ways. I think historically, Parks & Open Space and many other open space organizations have catered to one demographic. That demographic is usually white between the ages of 35 and 65 that is well educated and has a lot of money. And if you look at actually who lives in Boulder County, we have a lot more diversity in that. There are many other people here that would like to probably hear about our work. And so it's our job to understand what are the interest of those communities. How can we remove the barriers to accessing open space? How can we remove the barriers that we have put in place that don't allow us to hear their voices because they can't come to that one particular meeting or they're too busy working jobs and raising kids and how can we reach them and see how they might want to come and interact with our open space and visit our open space because it's going to take all of us to move to the future together. We need the entire community to be invested and supported in our work.

What are some of the ways that these residents can get more involved, especially those who might not traditionally see themselves reflected in our work?

I think the first thing that I would want to ask is, what do you need to be more involved? How can I, as a public employee, remove any barriers to hearing your voice? And so I don't want it to be the onus always on the community. I think it's on us to reach out to that community and say, we are stewards of the land that you purchased. Tell us your values. Tell us what you would like to see in these spaces. And so that's the community side of things, but I also want to talk about the staff side of things and how we are working to encourage young people, especially, to consider this field and natural resources. And we need people from all different backgrounds, all different lived and educational experiences, and sometimes from backgrounds that you wouldn't normally associate with parks and open space or with natural areas. We need communications, we need marketing, we need outreach specialists, you know, we need a whole suite of people, as well as the wildlife biologists and so forth, but we need planners. So think about that. There is a place for you here.

One of the things when you say that, that makes me think about is our buildings and historic preservation group. We have a group that preserves our historic buildings and does construction, and that is another area where someone who might not think, oh, you know, Parks & Open Space is not for me, but that is a place potentially for you as well. So that leads right into another important part of the story. Who's doing this work and how can we open more doors to future generations? Open Space careers aren't just for ecologists and biologists anymore. As it stands right now, including all of the seasonals at Boulder County Parks & Open Space, we have 230 employees today. Regarding our vision for making our field more inclusive and appealing to people from different backgrounds, I brought in my teammate from CSU Extension Office, Tommy Roth, to talk a little bit about some of the projects that he is doing to bring what we do to other areas of the county. Tommy, one of the things that you have done is you created this plant mobile, where you go around, and I'll let you explain from there. What is the plant mobile?

The plant mobile is kind of our vision of how to get people to plant more native plants. So we know that natives have tons of ecological benefits. They help out our pollinators in ways that non-native plants just simply can't. We wanted to figure out how to get people to plant more of those, and we thought, why not just give them away for free? So the plant mobile goes around Boulder County, and gives away free native plants. And what we did with it is we wanted to target audiences that we weren't reaching with Extension. So Extension is a very historic government program. It's 111 years old. Today is actually the 111th anniversary of the Smith-Lever Act, which is what invented Extension. Because it's such a historic program, it sometimes is archaic, and it sometimes only serves certain audiences. So we weren't serving the demographic of our county equally. We weren't serving everyone equally. We were serving some people more, and we weren't serving other people. So we wanted to target with this Plant Mobile Program sort of venues that there were going to be younger, more diverse audiences in. So we started, we gave away tons of plants at climbing gyms. We started targeting breweries. We started targeting libraries. We did a parade where we went throughout the parade with a truck filled with native plants and gave them out to everyone. And it's really been really inspiring to talk with all these people who never saw themselves as someone with a green thumb. They never saw themselves as someone who would be able to have a garden and to try and inspire them until gardening is for everybody.

So rather than throwing candy, you handed out plants to little kids.

We handed out plants to little kids and man, a little kid's face when they get a plant is really amazing because it's a living thing. It's really beautiful to see.

That's great. But that's not the only thing you're doing. You guys are actually outside of this building here at Longmont Public Radio. You're setting up a new demo garden, is that correct?

Yeah, we're setting up a new demo garden. So we want to be able to demonstrate what it would actually look like if someone was to remove their lawn and replace it with Colorado native plants. So we're getting rid of all this lawn space and we're going to be putting in plants that are native specifically to the front range ecoregion. So we have a really, really unique ecoregion here. We live in the place where the Great Plains turns into the Rocky Mountains. And so there's 9000 feet of elevation difference in Boulder County. And there's tons of really interesting plants in that system. But we're targeting just the Foothills ecoregion. So just things that go really close here to Longmont.

If one of our listeners were like, hey, you know, I want to get a free plant from Plantmobile. How would they go about figuring out where you're going to be doing this?

Yeah, that's a wonderful question. So we have a newsletter that we send out that gives people, tells them where the events are going to be. They can also reach out to our Master Gardener desk and ask to be added to the newsletter, or they can reach out to the Master Gardener desk and ask us any type of plant question about any home garden situation. We have really, really smart Master Gardeners that can answer all those questions. So that email is mggpa at bouldercounty.gov.

As we look to the future, we're also building spaces where all of this work comes together, places that are both ecologically smart and welcoming to everyone, right? This is an important part of everything that we do. And I know this is something that, like, is near and dear to your heart, the Prairie Run Open Space. It's a great example of infrastructure that supports both community gathering and ecological values. Can you walk us through what's happening there?

So Prairie Run Open Space is a little over 1300 acres of land that we have purchased over decades that sits at the eastern edge of the county, right on the county line, just north of the town of Erie. We purchased this land years ago with the intention of restoring it and opening it to the public. It is a very special place. It is the place where East Boulder Creek and Coal Creek Meet is on this property. It's also been a place well utilized for its natural resources, so it has been heavily mined in parts. We always knew we wanted to open it, but one thing after another, and then the flood happened, and it really set us back as a department from the ability to do planning for our spaces. And East Boulder Creek, as the area was called during the planning process, was the first plan that we took up after about almost a 10-year gap. And the reason we selected this property is, one, we had told the community for 20-plus years that we were working to open it, but two, we didn't have any other open space offering in that section of the county. And there's a lot of diversity in that area, and we knew that we wanted to create a property that was accessible and attractive to members of our community that we don't normally see visiting open space. And I think about 77% of our community identifies as white, but 93% of our visitors are white. So why are we only getting 7% of people that identify as non-white on our spaces? We're much more diverse than that. And we wanted to listen to their voice and say, what do you want to see in your open space, in an area that was really easy to get to? We created a plan that does wonderful things for the stream. We're doing two large stream restorations, both on Coal Creek and East Boulder Creek. And we're doing soil health initiatives. We are replanting wetlands, a lot of wonderful ecological actions. But we're also doing something a little different in the community amenity space, specifically to be more welcoming to everyone. One thing that I'm very proud of, if you go to any parks and open space property, more than likely, you're going to see a trail and you're going to see a shelter house. And those are great, and we're going to still have those. But what's unique about Prairie Run is we are creating an accessible path from the parking area to the restored East Boulder Creek. So if you have mobility limitations, you'll be able to easily get out of your vehicle, wheel or walk to the stream, and directly adjacent, there'll be a large shelter house and a nature play area. If you are a multi-generational household looking for a place to have a nice picnic with a grandma who's in a wheelchair with your toddlers all the way down to two, you'll be able to do that at Prairie Run. And there is also an accessible fishing pier. We're going to offer drinking water, which we haven't done before. And these might seem little things, but there's so many moving pieces behind that, like getting a water tap, designing the infrastructure in a different way, that for us, this is something very unique, innovative. We're excited to bring it to our community, and we can't wait until you can sit, relax in the shelter house over your food, where your kids play in the stream or in the natural space or the play area. You know, everyone can be there together and not just, you know, okay, I'm going to hike on the trail and then get back in my car and drive away. So something a little different.

I mean, that's awesome, because as a person who's visited a lot of Boulder County's Parks & Open Spaces, it might seem little, but those things are vastly unique for what we see every day at the various Parks & Open Space lands that we have. I mean, it also, it's really interesting because it really makes a feature of the Prairie Run Open Space inclusive and desirable for everyone, right?

That's the point.

That's great. Thank you, Heidi. If you could leave our listeners with one single takeaway about the future of our ecosystems and the work ahead, what would it be?

So I think my takeaway would be opportunity and hope. We have the opportunity to repair and restore. It's a big challenge. It's daunting sometimes, but I think it's honestly the work of our generation is to restore our natural environment from the damage that has been done. That gives me hope because I believe that to have people that care about this work and dedicate their careers to this work, this is a legacy like no other because the opportunity is vast and you can come into this organization and make a huge difference. And that legacy will live on for generations to come. Everyone, our children and our children's children, our ecosystems will all benefit from that. And I just don't think you can ask for anything better than that.

I agree. Thank you so much, Heidi. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in today. We'd like to thank Longmont Public Media for their recording space. And we'd like to invite you as a listener to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and to subscribe to this podcast series on any of your favorite apps. My name is Grant Orvis from the CSU Extension office. Thank you very much.