The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation urged Colorado forestry planners to link forest ecology to the wildlife that rely on and live within forest habitat as a key educational goal. The Colorado Forest Health Council created the state’s 2055 Vision for Forest Health as an outline to manage forests and mitigate wildfire vulnerabilities over the next three decades.
“The general public lacks an understanding that forests change over time, naturally and traditionally experience disturbance, and that disturbance and regrowth is beneficial to most of the species of wildlife that inhabit forests,” according to RMEF submitted comments. “Disturbance has been natural (weather-induced fire, blowdown, insect death) and man-made (cultural fire by indigenous people, prescribed fire, mechanical thinning and harvest). It is important that educational materials and curricula emphasize the dynamic characteristics of forests and explain how active management that includes thinning, harvest and beneficial fire achieves ecological outcomes.”
The Colorado Department of Natural Resources asked for stakeholder input to help create its forest vision.
RMEF has a long, on-the-ground conservation history in Colorado. Dating back to 1987, RMEF and its partners completed 904 conservation and hunting heritage outreach projects in the Centennial State with a combined value of more than $212.9 million. These projects conserved or enhanced 512,504 acres of habitat and opened or improved public access to 120,252 acres.
RMEF input also emphasized the vital role that hunters play in conserving habitat and benefiting forest management and urged the need for stronger support of wildlife and wildlife habitat, and greater collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists with an interest in big game.
(Photo credit: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation)