It is undisputed that wildlife populations in both Summit and Eagle Counties are in significant decline.  Residential development throughout both counties over the last 50 years has pushed the populations of elk, deer and many other animals to critically low levels. What can be done?

Leaders in Eagle County met to discuss the issue in 2019. They realized that better coordination was needed among the county’s many individual planning agencies, county government and local, state, and federal wildlife management agencies. The fragmentation of past efforts was a serious problem, given the county-wide size of the problem. The result was the formation of the Eagle County Community Wildlife Roundtable, also called the Roundtable. 

The Eagle County Community Wildlife Roundtable includes representatives of the local U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management offices, wildlife management staff from the county government and most of the towns in the county, local environmental and user groups and members of the public.

The stated purpose of the Roundtable is to “gather a group of diverse stakeholders in the valley to understand and address issues facing wildlife populations. Together we will identify a shared vision and realistic actions to protect regional wildlife, while also ensuring that these actions are supported by the community as a whole. We want to leverage diverse values, creativity, and resources to move toward positive action and enduring solutions to the complex wildlife issues in Eagle County.”  

The Roundtable is currently working with an outside consulting firm to develop a Decision Support Tool. Datasets included in the Decision Support Tool have been provided by Colorado Parks & Wildlife and other agencies from existing studies. These datasets aim to show in a multi-tiered, interactive format the species that reside in Eagle County and their areas of summer and winter habitat. 
The Roundtable will then use the Decision Support Tool to create a countywide Wildlife Conservation Plan. The purpose of the plan is to provide a road map for community members, local governments and other organizations to implement coordinated strategies, policies and on-the-ground projects that will make meaningful progress to restore and conserve wildlife populations and habitat in Eagle County.

The Roundtable intends to develop projects and policy ideas, implementation plans, and metrics for success to guide collaborative conservation projects and create a way to coordinate and streamline local and regional efforts to conserve and steward wildlife habitat throughout Eagle County. The Roundtable will focus on projects and actions that will conserve and restore wildlife populations and habitat, not projects and actions intended to promote recreation or other land uses. The needs of wildlife will come first, not specific individual stakeholder, entity, or agency needs or preferences. 

Taking a regional approach, the Roundtable can also move beyond smaller mitigation projects related to individual developments and focus on larger areas and projects within the county that the Decision Support Tool shows will be the most effective for habitat preservation and enhancement without regard to political boundaries within the county. The most effective projects in the county can be identified and pursued based on a countywide rather than more parochial analysis.

The vision of the Roundtable is that wildlife will thrive and our community will embrace the value of a diverse wildlife population and take action to protect and enhance wildlife and their habitat for future generations. 

None of this will be easy or fast, but it is an attempt to begin to analyze and address wildlife issues on a countywide rather than more fragmented approach. Is this something that the citizens and governments of Summit County should also consider? 

“Get Wild” publishes weekly in the Summit Daily News. Mike Browning is a member of the Eagle County Community Wildlife Roundtable and on the Board of Directors of the Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance.