Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative · Article 16 of 24
Natural resource conservation is the value written against climate, heavier and changing recreational use, and urban development. The statement calls for exceptional conservation, habitat connectivity, and adaptive management of plants, wildlife, and the habitats they depend on. It is the longest of the seven sentences because the stressors are not one thing.
What a hundred plans already ranked
In the existing-plan matrix, watershed was the second most cited category, at 15 percent, just behind management. Fire and forest health tied recreation infrastructure at 12 percent. Wildlife was in the same top cluster. Creek plans, water-quality plans, community wildfire protection plans, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife herd plans fill pages of the appendix, from Fountain and Monument Creek studies to bighorn sheep and elk data-analysis units. The Vision Plan did not discover water and fire. It found them already dominating the regional bookshelf.
A map that compresses the wildlife layers
The Colorado Natural Heritage Program built a conservation summary for the OPPI boundary, stacked on the statewide summary and tuned with local expertise. It compresses many wildlife and biodiversity layers into one view, includes public and private data, and is meant for landscape planning and stakeholder conversations. The plan is explicit about the limit: it is an exploratory tool, not a decision tool, and it should be read with other layers. The same caution sits on the Areas of Opportunity map. A recreation project proposed in a high-conservation area is not automatically inappropriate. It warrants further review.
The project list, read as conservation
Watershed protection strategy, forest health and wildfire fuels treatment, the North Slope management-plan update, Minnequa Dam restructuring for fish and boat passage, the John Griffin riparian reconnection in Cañon City, a regional land-conservation plan that includes REPI and viewshed protection, and a wildlife rehabilitation and education center are all on the regional list. Fremont listening-session comments named drought, water shortages, and wildlife under a growing population in wild areas. June 2024 comments added invasive species and the protection of water supplies from overuse. The value statement is the umbrella. Those projects are the work under it.
Source: Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative Vision Plan 2025, prepared through the Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance as the local Colorado Outdoor Regional Partnership, with support from Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Great Outdoors Colorado. Project team: PPORA, Trails and Open Space Coalition, N.E.S. Inc., Bachman PR, and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Geography Department. The plan was written across a four-year process and released in 2025; some statistics reflect a point in time before publication. Natural resource conservation value, page 96; plan analysis, page 47; conservation summary, page 100; project descriptions, pages 474–478.
