Great Outdoors Colorado in December awarded $78,495 to two conservation corps projects supporting wildfire mitigation and river restoration in Mesa County, and Keep It Colorado regranted $32,000 in GOCO funds to permanently protect Bieser Ranch in Mesa County.

The first two grants are part of GOCO’s Conservation Service Corps program, administered in partnership with Colorado Youth Corps Association to help partners hire conservation service corps for outdoor recreation and stewardship projects.

Colorado West Land Trust received $52,330 and will partner with Western Colorado Conservation Corps to implement wildlife-friendly wildfire mitigation on conserved lands in Mesa and Delta counties. Over four weeks, crews will treat 31 acres of elevated forest and 2.1 acres of invasive riverbank vegetation.

The Town of Palisade received $26,165 and will partner with Western Colorado Conservation Corps on the continuation of the multi-year Riverbend Park Riparian Restoration Project, a collaborative effort with Desert Rivers Collaborative and RiversEdge West to remove invasive species along the Colorado River. Over two weeks, crews will clear four acres of invasive trees and participate in revegetation training, planting native species sourced from a local nursery.

Keep It Colorado’s Transaction Cost Assistance Program (TCAP) re-grants GOCO funds to nonprofit land trusts to help cover the costs associated with conservation-easement transactions. It helps landowners who have urgent opportunities to conserve their properties, but face financial barriers to completing the transaction, to conserve land more quickly.

Located on the northern slopes of the Grand Mesa in the Plateau Valley, the 627-acre Bieser Ranch is an untouched landscape in a region facing increased development. It features Willow Creek, which supports a diverse range of wildlife such as elk, mule deer, moose and black bear. These wildlife travel across the ranch and neighboring ranches to U.S. Forest Service lands on Grand Mesa and Bureau of Land Management lands further down the valley.

A working ranch since 1904, it currently supports a cow-calf operation managed by three living generations of the Bieser family.