GOCO grant will help repair Longmont oudoor spaces damaged by heavy use during pandemic

Longmont will use more than $200,000 in state funds and an eager corps of volunteers to restore trails, shorelines and wildlife habitats trampled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In all, Longmont will spend more than $410,000 for the rehabilitation of local parks and other outdoor areas that bore the brunt of people blowing off steam after they escaped their homes during stay-at-home orders.

A $219,585 grant from Great Outdoors Colorado — or GOCO — will help fund recovery efforts while the city also will receive $190,617 through in-kind hours put in by Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, a Colorado nonprofit that each year organizes thousands of volunteers to complete more than 150 conservation projects in Colorado, according to the group’s website.

Wildlands Restoration Volunteers is needed because the city does not have enough staff to do the rehabilitation for the city’s 4,570 acres of open space, nature areas, preserves and greenways that cover 32 properties and 94 miles of trails, according to city staff report to the state requesting the GOCO funds.

Access to Longmont’s land resources helped residents with their mental, physical and emotional health during the pandemic, the staff report states. Use of open space increased dramatically during COVID-19 restrictions, according to the report.

The impacts of all that use includes accumulating trash, creation of social trails, trampling and erosion along stream banks and shorelines, and damage to wildlife habitats, the report states.

Trash was piled near the parking lot at Golden Ponds Nature Area on Thursday. By Monte Whaley

Lack of personnel to provide oversight over Longmont’s outdoor areas helped lead to city council last week blocking access to an unsanctioned bike course along Left Hand Creek because of overuse. Vandals also caused as much as $67,000 in damage to Longmont’s outdoor areas last summer, which may have been prevented if the city had more rangers patrolling those areas, city officials told council.  

The list of projected fixes the Wildlands Restoration Volunteers and city crews will take on include trail work; river cleanup; tree planting along greenways; tree painting to prevent beaver damage and Russian olive weed clearing at Golden Ponds; tree planting and rock boat ramp construction to protect the shoreline at McIntosh Lake; and nativeantive seed collecting, nursery expansion, and prairie dog barrier installation at Sandstone Ranch, a report to city council states.

The 20-year-old Wildlands Restoration Volunteers has grown into one of the state’s largest nonprofits specializing in land restoration. By 2019, it had worked on 150 diversity restoration projects across Colorado, according to the city’s report to GOCO.

Wildlands Restoration Volunteers moved to Longmont in 2019 and has partnered with the city oncity of on restoration projects since at least 2008, said Executive Director Katherine Thompson.

“Together we have accomplished post-flood stream restoration, trail work, invasive weed removal, native seed collections and more,” Thompson said in an email. 

She expects volunteers will clock in 45 project days over two years. Volunteers will tackle single-day projects and some multi-day projects. A typical Wildlands Restoration Volunteers project might engage 25 volunteers each day for six to eight hours, Thompson said.

The sun-soaked fishing deck at Golden Ponds Nature Area is seen on Thursday. By Monte Whaley