CNHP in the November/December issue of the National Wetlands Newsletter

For the past two years, CNHP Wetland Ecologist Joanna Lemly has been working with colleagues from the EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, Colorado Department of Transportation, and CSU Researcher Brad Johnson on a project to improve wetland mitigation by incorporating more watershed-scale information into the decision making process. A description of their work was recently published in the Environmental Law Institute's National Wetland Newsletter.

The full newsletter is available to subscribers, but a copy of the portion of the November/December newsletter featuring Joanna's work is available here.

To demonstrate how to use watershed-scale information within the mitigation process, one key step has been to create high quality wetland maps for areas with a high density of wetland impacts. The project team chose the northern Front Range corridor, stretching from north Denver to south Fort Collins, as their demonstration area. This area includes the Big Thompson and St. Vrain drainages from the foothill to their confluence with the South Platte River. CNHP Wetland Mapping Technician Zack Reams spent the summer creating those new wetland maps which will be submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wetland Inventory Program for inclusion in the National Wetland Mapper.