A Message From the Director: 
 
Fact: The Backcountry Wilderness Area’s trails and education programs experienced more than 160,000 visits in 2018. 
Fact: The 8,200-acre (13 square miles) conservation area is healthy and improving each year.  
Fact: Wildlife are thriving. 

Fact: We got goats! 

Truth is, we couldn’t be more thrilled about last year’s progress made in the Backcountry Wilderness Area. We’re pushing forward the priorities of our mission: To improve wildlife habitat, inspire the next generation of nature stewards, and ignite a lifelong love of the outdoors for all. Above it all, there is also anticipation looming that the work we’re doing in Highlands Ranch could set a standard for other developing areas in our state to model. 

Highlands Ranch’s development is nearing 100 percent complete, but people seeking Colorado’s easy blend of city life and the great outdoors continue to flood the state’s other areas. With the influx of people comes serious debates over the health of our state: conservation vs. development and conservation vs. recreation. More people mean more homes, roads, and infrastructure. More people mean a greater demand for trails and access to wild places. But who can blame them? Part of the lure to living in Colorado is the great outdoors and the chance to escape into beautiful wilderness areas away from the hustle. The question is, at what point does our eagerness to explore become too taxing on natural places and the wildlife that lives there?  

In the southwest corner of Colorado, officials have been trying to increase the elk herd for nearly a decade without success. A theory is that, in this example, if elk are spending their time fleeing humans rather than eating, nursing their young, or conserving energy, then their survival rates will start to decrease. Further north, in the Routt National Forest near Steamboat, there is an on-going debate where bikers want more trails and conservationists argue that more trails may be detrimental to wildlife. And, a recent article in the Denver Post points out development along the Front Range is impacting Bald Eagle nests and that areas that were once wildlife habitat are being gobbled up by roads and housing.  Federal and State officials commented that more than laws, local decisions will determine the future of habitat and wildlife in our state. Local decisions that for the Backcountry Wilderness Area, started four decades ago. 

Nearly 40 years ago, the planners of Highlands Ranch and Douglas County got it right when they set aside 13 square miles of open space for conservation. Ten years later, in 1988, when just a few thousand of the eventual 31,000 homes were built, one-third of the total land area of Highlands Ranch—8,200 acres—was designated for conservation when dollar sign-filled eyes could have opted to ax the habitat and build more homes. We’re grateful for the forethought and local decision makers who championed the importance of protected wildlife habitat. Our management plan, that was put in place nearly 20 years ago, added an additional layer of protection of the Backcountry and provided the backbone of what we are doing today.   

Now, the Backcountry Wilderness Area is a potential model for community-level conservation in our state. In the simplest terms, the Backcountry provides a large, contiguous area with limited access to humans so wildlife can thrive, while also providing designated areas for recreation and education. We are doing it all—conservation, recreation, and environmental education—and keeping it balanced. We’ve also made fire mitigation a chief priority, according to a recent directive by the Secretary of the Interior, by clearing brush throughout our ponderosa pine forests and killing an invasive, highly flammable grass throughout the property. All the while, we’re educating more than 800 kids annually at Camp Backcountry, built a first-class archery range on the high traffic part of the property, host more than 150,000 visits annually to our 25 miles of natural surface trails, and still leave more than 5,000 acres of Highlands Ranch to the area’s first residents—elk, bobcats, bluebirds, foxes, black bears, golden eagles, mountain lions, and more diverse species. The fact is, the Backcountry Wilderness Area is becoming a rarer stretch of wild in a growing area and we’re eager to continue conserving it for the future. 

Mark Giebel 
Backcountry Wilderness Area Director