Colorado Natural Heritage Program launches historic, statewide biodiversity survey
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — For scientists hoping to protect Colorado’s most imperiled species, the first challenge is finding them.
“When you talk about rare plants, most people haven't seen them. That's because they're so rare. And a lot of them are really difficult to identify,” said David Anderson, the chief scientist and director of the Colorado Natural Heritage Program.
Anderson’s office is plastered with maps. He sports high-traction hiking shoes and a mallard ringtone. Despite the difficulties for researchers in locating rare plants and animals, Anderson believes that by studying these species and understanding where they live, we stand a much better chance of being able to protect them from extinction.
“When we're empowered with this kind of information we can make great decisions. We can do the things we need to do to save nature,” he said.
Starting this summer, the Colorado Natural Heritage Program — which specializes in tracking species, wetlands and other natural resources— will embark on the state’s first comprehensive biodiversity survey.
The study will provide detailed data on plant and animal populations in every Colorado county. The survey, which is expected to take five years, will equip communities, governments and conservation organizations with data to make more sustainable decisions and protect imperiled species, such as the Gunnison Sage Grouse, Greenback Cutthroat Trout and the Black-Footed Ferret.
Gaps in the data
The idea for such a survey emerged when Anderson began working with NOCO Places — a regional partnership between Larimer, Boulder, Clear Creek, Gilpin, and Jefferson counties to address mutual challenges around land management and outdoor recreation in Northern Colorado.
While Larimer, Boulder and Jefferson Counties — some of the most affluent counties in the state — had terrific data to inform recreation and conservation decisions, Clear Creek and Gilpin counties had little to no data.
Using what little data did exist, Anderson created a model of Clear Creek and Gilpin counties’ natural resources. By stacking spatial data layers on top of one another, he hoped to better understand the distribution of natural heritage resources.
“Clear Creek and Gilpin counties had some white spots in there, where there were no stacked up resources,” said Anderson. “And so those two counties were like, this doesn't look right to us.”
Anderson agreed. It was impossible to tell which spots on a map had an actual lack of natural heritage resources, versus merely a lack of data.
Sensing that this problem extended beyond Northern Colorado, Anderson’s team brought a proposal to Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), which uses revenue from the Colorado Lottery to support outdoor initiatives. Anderson devised a strategy for a statewide biodiversity survey that would prioritize counties with the least existing data. He estimated such a study would take ten years.
GOCO liked the idea. So much so that they asked if he could do it in five years. In March 2024, GOCO provided a $7.8 million grant to CNHP to carry out the research.
For Anderson, equity remains at the heart of the project.
“Many counties are not empowered with conservation data, and they're underserved in that way. There’s a pattern of some of our least affluent counties having the least amount of conservation data and so they're not empowered to come to the table with other counties,” he said.
This data can help communities and organizations make better decisions for the future.
For example, if town planners need help deciding which property to conserve for a local open-space area, they can weigh the relative merits of different properties and give each location a conservation rank. Conservationists looking for the most bang for their buck could fast-track properties with high biodiversity, wetland areas, rare species or other conservation assets.
In addition to helping people understand what’s happening at a species level, biodiversity data equips communities with tools to tap into the massive outdoor recreation market and seize state funding through programs like the Colorado Outdoor Regional Partnerships Funding Program.
“We're going to empower everyone in Colorado to come up with a sustainable future for recreation and raise the affluence of their counties,” said Anderson.
What is natural heritage?
The Colorado Natural Heritage Program (CNHP) was founded in 1979 with support from the Nature Conservancy. Today, it functions as a non-academic department at Colorado State University.
Despite the importance of data CNHP provides, not everyone understands what the natural heritage even is.
“Our name is long. People can’t remember it,” said Anderson. “Most people don’t know what natural heritage is.”
The term “natural heritage” dates back to the early-years of the American Environmental movement when Lyndon B. Johnson coined the term in a 1966 address to Congress.
Jimmy Carter then adopted the phrase when he created the Georgia Heritage Trust as Governor of Georgia..
“In those years, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act were all getting signed and people were so environmentally aware,” Anderson said.“But now, I don't know. The term isn't on people's tongues the way it used to be. So one of my missions is to bring it back.”
Anderson developed his own bond with the natural world as a child.
“I would help my dad, who was a biology teacher, collect samples for his high school biology classes,” he said. We would go out and collect plant samples and frogs and things like that.”
He solidified his interest in botany as a student at University of Colorado, Boulder where Anderson spent his free time hiking in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. During a summer class at the Niwot Ridge Research Center he learned to identify the species he encountered on summer hiking trips.
David Anderson is the director and chief scientist of the Colorado Natural Heritage Program.
Photo: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
Following college, Anderson spent two years working for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska. In graduate school, he conducted research on Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island in the world, located in the Canadian Arctic.
Today, Anderson spends less time in far-flung field outposts and more time in the office herding a network of volunteers, staff biologists, and partner organizations.
He anticipates a variety of challenges to complete the survey, from droughts — that can make species harder to observe — to wildfires and heat waves. But the biggest challenge is bringing together all of the people needed to complete such a gargantuan study.
“It’s the classic example of building the airplane while it's flying,” he said, describing the logistical challenges he anticipates.
In order to pull off such a feat, Anderson is relying on everyone from professional botanists, to student interns and amateur naturalists.
Tyler Lovato, a CNHP Siegele Intern who is now a staff herpetologist, found this longnose snake last summer on the Comanche National Grassland. CNHP hires students to help with fieldwork every summer; 25 interns will assist this summer with the statewide survey. Photo: Brad Lambert, Colorado Natural Heritage Program
A network of scientists
Ernie Marx is an amateur botanist from Fort Collins, Colorado who is helping with the field work. Marx worked as a soil scientist but now spends his retirement identifying plants. By working with naturalists like Marx, CNHP is able to access hard-to-reach areas and stretch its resources.
Marx is currently gearing up for a six-week trip to the Colorado Plateau near Grand Junction, where he will identify and catalog rare plant species. Marx plans to camp for four to five days at a time, during which he will visit field sites and periodically return to town to resupply and log his findings.
“They send me out to locations where nobody has visited for at least 20 years,” said Marx.
Locations are kept top-secret in order to prevent people removing plants or trampling sensitive vegetation.
For Marx, the challenge of locating the plants he studies is part of the fun.
“Rare plants often grow in challenging habitats. That's why they're rare. They've somehow managed to survive in a place where other plants couldn't survive,” he said.
“Before I started doing this, I had no idea that there were expanses of land left in the state that are just so wide open and empty.”
Despite rapid population growth in Colorado, much of the state’s development remains clustered in urban areas along the Front Range.
Colorado population density per square mile
While population density remains highest along Colorado’s Front Range, it’s important to consider how future development and outdoor recreation will impact natural resources. Map: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS, Data: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, 2015 - 2019 American Community Survey
Marx’s work begins at home, where uses ArcGIS and topographic maps to locate target areas and devise a route to access them. A big challenge he says, is figuring out how to avoid private property.
Although 36% of land in Colorado is federal, public land, a 2018 report by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership found that 269,000 acres of this land are inaccessible because they are “landlocked by private property holdings.”
Marx always checks his work using Google Earth.
“Because of past failures, I kind of do a fly through to make sure there's no cliffs in the way and stuff like that.”
Widespread access to GPS technology makes navigating and recording plant observations much easier. Apps, such as iNaturalist, allow amateur naturalists to submit observations that the community can then verify.
Apps like iNaturalist have allowed CNHP to find and connect with community scientists, like Marx, around the state. In the future, CNHP hopes to update its species tracking lists more frequently by using data compiled in the app.
“It's just an example of where technology can have an impact in a really positive way,” said Marx.
Connecting with the cultural knowledge of Native communities indigenous to the state for the survey will be done in partnership with Gemara Gifford, a consultant who specializes in facilitating Indigenous and Native-led land and wildlife stewardship.
“We want to empower tribes in this entire venture,” said Anderson. “We intend to do that by funding tribal biologists and tribal knowledge holders — either hiring them as staff or providing funding to them.”
How biodiversity data will benefit communities
It can be difficult to understand all of the ways biodiversity data can benefit communities. At the most basic level, these data will help people to understand how certain plants and animals are fairing.
In Ouray County, for example, the last biodiversity survey took place in 1998.
Lynn Padgett, the Ouray county commissioner, — whose community has committed $25,000 in matching funds for the research, points to how her community has changed since the last survey.
“It was between 2 and 4 °F cooler in the late ‘90s than it is presently. And our precipitation is falling as snow has also changed since the ‘90s,” she said.
“I'm really excited to see what the study comes up with — to see what's changed. And, it's possible there are some things we thought are rare that are not as rare.”
The rare English sundew (Drosera anglica) is a carnivorous plant found in Colorado wetlands. Little red hairs on the leaves capture insects that are digested by the plant. The statewide survey by CNHP will recalibrate how common or rare certain plants and animals are in Colorado.
Photo: Grant Musgrave, Colorado Natural Heritage Program.
Anderson shares Padgett’s sense of excitement. By targeting areas that have historically lacked research, Anderson even believes it's possible they uncover species new to science.
Most importantly, however, he hopes that by better understanding the plants and animals that live in Colorado, people can make better decisions and minimize the impacts of development and recreation as the state grows.
“When we're empowered with this kind of information, we can make great decisions,” said Anderson.
“People don't realize that we have so much biodiversity and so many rare species here,” Anderson said. “Your decisions really matter because you want your kids to have the wealth of nature that you're enjoying. That's something I can get up every day and be really excited about.”
Cormac McCrimmon is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. Cormacmccrimmon@rmpbs.org