Apr 22, 2021
The Lottery recognizes the Larimer County Department of Natural Resources and its Laramie Foothills Mountains to Plains 2020 Expansion Project with a Starburst Award.
The Laramie Foothills Mountains to Plains 2020 Expansion Project was an opportunity for Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins to conserve several irreplaceable ranchlands in the Laramie Foothills, located about 25 miles north of Fort Collins. This $2,287,468 project utilized $668,000 in Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) funds this past year to continue to protect the public investment in this landscape. By connecting nearly 2,000-acres, in additional conserved lands, an unprecedented landscape is protected for generations to come.
The Laramie Foothills is an important regional conservation site that includes vast ecological and cultural resources. The conservation efforts in this region were significantly increased in 2004 with the inception of the Laramie Foothills Mountains to Plains (LFMTP) partnership and generous GOCO funding, in which over 50,000-acres of land was successfully conserved. Then in 2020, under the current GOCO grant-funded acquisition project, Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins conserved two properties in the Laramie Foothills, totaling 1,975 acres.
These properties included the West Red Mountain Ranch and Hawk Canyon Ranch properties and were made possible thanks to being components of the GOCO 2020 Laramie Foothills Expansion Grant, which bolsters the efforts of Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins to conserve lands in this region.
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More than $10.5 million in Lottery funds are represented in 11 winning projects distributed statewide through grants via Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), the Conservation Trust Fund (CTF), Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), and Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST).
