CNHP Map Will Support Governor's Colorado Beautiful Initiative

Colorado Natural Heritage Program director David Anderson, along with staff members Amy Greenwell and Michael Menefee, were thrilled to participate in The Outdoors Summit in downtown Denver this summer. The Summit convened to help launch new initiatives to protect, preserve and enhance the state’s great outdoors and natural areas. Conservation leaders from around the state attended the event. Speakers included Governor John Hickenlooper and former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar among many other notable participants.


Governor John Hickenlooper presents his Colorado Beautiful plan at the Outdoors Summit in Denver, Colorado.

During the Summit, Governor Hickenlooper rolled out his Colorado Beautiful plan, an exciting conservation initiative that ultimately aims to enable every Coloradan to live within a 10-minute walk of an open space natural area. Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) has awarded $15.6 million in grants to support the Colorado Beautiful plan. A hallmark of the plan will be the creation of an interactive trail and recreational lands map. The map will use CNHP's existing map of Colorado's protected areas, called The Colorado Ownership, Management, and Protection (COMaP). COMaP is a dataset maintained by CNHP and the CSU Geospatial Centroid.

The complete Colorado Beautiful map is scheduled for completion in 2016. The map will also help guide plans to preserve and strategically protect Colorado’s most threatened landscapes, waterways and urban open spaces. It will also be used to identify 16 high-priority trail projects to help connect people to more recreational opportunities. The map will include all the state's trails, open spaces, parks and protected lands in a single site. “Colorado Beautiful, we believe, is not only about connecting our parks, trails and scenic lands, but about connecting people to the outdoor delights that set Colorado apart as a special place,” Hickenlooper said. “It’s important to bring our newest generations outside, away from electronic distractions and into the splendor of our waterways, forests, wildlife, grasslands, mountains and canyons.”


An image of the Colorado Ownership, Management, and Protection map (COMaP) that will be integrated into the Colorado Beautiful map proposed by Governor Hickenlooper.

The 2015 PIT Tag Workshop: Learning about rare fish and rare-fish databases

The PIT Tag Workshop is a conference hosted approximately every four years to address use of, technology improvements to, and analysis of passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag data for rare fish in the Columbia River Basin and beyond. Database and web-application developer Kirstin Holfelder and zoologist Rob Schorr attended the 2015 PIT Tag Workshop in late January at the Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington. Holfelder is being assisted by Schorr and Amy Greenwell in the development of STReaMS (Species Tagging, Research, and Management System), which will be the new database for the Upper Colorado and San Juan river basins rare fish data. These data are used to monitor some of the West’s rarest fish species, including Colorado pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius), humpback chub (Gila cypha), bonytail chub (Gila elegans), and razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus). The meeting sponsors, PTAGIS, presented the evolution of the database used to house Columbia River rare fish data, and it gave Holfelder and Schorr a chance to identify needs or modifications to the developing STReaMS.

Kirstin Holfelder in front of Multnomah Falls.

Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington.

View of the Columbia River from Skamania Lodge.

The West’s rarest fishes are getting help from CNHP: Database planning at the Upper Colorado and San Juan River basins fish recovery programs’ researchers meeting

Database and web-application developer Kirstin Holfelder and zoologist Rob Schorr attended the 34th annual Researcher’s Meeting of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program and San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program in Moab, Utah. Holfelder gave a talk describing the structure of the newly-developed and evolving Species Tagging, Research, and Management System (STReaMS). Holfelder is the brains behind an interactive database and web-accessible interface that will allow researchers and managers access to decades-worth of rare fish data from Colorado and San Juan rivers research and monitoring efforts. These data are used to monitor some of the West’s rarest fish species, including Colorado pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius), humpback chub (Gila cypha), bonytail chub (Gila elegans), and razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus). Holfelder and Schorr were able to interact with the West’s premier fish biologists and discuss how researchers and managers want access to fish data.

Kirstin Holfelder presents the structure of STReaMS, the developing database system for rare fish data in Upper Colorado and San Juan river basins.

Kirstin Holfelder enjoys sights at Arches National Park during downtime in Moab, Utah.

CNHP Completes Data Exchange with NatureServe

CNHP is a member program of NatureServe.  NatureServe has 82 member programs in Canada, the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The power of the network lies in its consistent use of heritage methodology. Local data are collected and ranked in similar fashion by member programs, and as such, are scalable at national and international levels. Data exchanges between NatureServe and member programs ensure that the entire network has up-to-date information on species’ global imperilment ranks and conservation priorities.

Earth from space

In September 2012, CNHP exported and delivered data on Colorado’s rare and imperiled species to the NatureServe office in Arlington, VA. By December 2012, CNHP received the data back from NatureServe, complete with the latest international ranks and taxonomic information, and integrated the changes into Colorado’s BIOTICs database. This is likely our last data exchange. NatureServe is developing an online database which will replace the current data exchange process and provide real-time data synchronization in the future!

Map of Natural Heritage Member Programs

NEW GEOSPATIAL DATASET ONLINE: Terrestrial Ecological System Patches

Terrestrial Ecological Systems are dynamic groupings of plant and/or animal communities that: 1) occur together on the landscape; and 2) are linked by similar ecological processes, underlying abiotic environmental factors, or gradients; and 3) form a readily identifiable unit on the ground (Comer et al. 2003). In order to assess the health of Colorado’s major ecosystems, CNHP developed a dataset of large-sized (>20,000 acres) ecological system patches for the “State of Colorado’s Biodiversity” project. Ecological systems were derived from the Southwest Regional Gap Analysis Project landcover dataset (USGS 2004).

Developing this dataset enabled CNHP to identify at-risk ecosystems in Colorado. Individual patches were ranked on a scale of 1-10 based on overall condition status, threat status and protection status. Top threats were assigned to each patch. The results of the analysis show that many of Colorado’s major ecosystems are intact, but only two are effectively conserved. Shortgrass prairie is by far the most altered ecological system. Nearly half of the shortgrass prairie in Colorado has been lost in the past century; however, several large, high quality areas still exist. While these data are an effective tool for broadly measuring current successes, they also highlight intact landscapes that pose great opportunities for future conservation efforts.

Table with Conservation Status Ranks of
Major Ecological Systems in Colorado

These data are bundled in an ESRI geodatabase and can be downloaded from CNHP’s website here.  As always, if you need more detailed information or need data for commercial use, please contact our Data Distribution Coordinator.

Mapped locations of rare and imperiled species and natural communities in CNHP’s database doubles in the past decade

CNHP strives to have the most comprehensive database of rare and imperiled plants, animals and unique natural communities (referred to as “elements of biodiversity” or “elements”) in Colorado. We compile data from our own field surveys and county inventories, and collect data from key partners and other professionals in the conservation community. It is nearly impossible to survey the entire state, but as a collective, we can build a comprehensive database that serves Colorado and ensures that the complex challenges of the 21st century are tackled thoughtfully and informatively.

See our latest tracking list here. If you have data for any species we track, please complete a CNHP field form and submit your data to our repository. You can download CNHP field forms or fill them out online at the CNHP data submission page.

Thanks to Colorado’s conservation community, our database has grown from 11,500 mapped locations of rare elements in 2000 to over 25,000 mapped locations in 2012. Help us double this again in the coming decade!

Graph of the number of rare and imperiled species and natural communities
that have been mapped by CNHP during the 2000 - 2012 period.

CNHP takes over maintenance of COMaP

The Colorado Ownership, Management, and Protection (COMaP) project was initiated by Dr. David Theobald, Associate Professor in the College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University (CSU). The goal of COMaP was to build a statewide protected areas map for Colorado from all of the disparate sources of land ownership and management data throughout the state. The first version of COMaP was released on May 28, 2004 as COMaP v1.

Annual updates and improvements to COMaP through version 8 have been funded by the Colorado Division of Wildlife and Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO). In 2010, funding was provided via a USGS GAP Stewardship proposal to allow COMaP to become integrated with their national Protected Areas Database (PAD-US). At that time, responsibility for maintaining, updating, and distributing COMaP became a collaborative effort between CNHP and the CSU Geospatial Centroid.

Maintaining COMaP is a natural fit within CNHP's mission and, indeed, many other Natural Heritage Programs and Conservation Data Centers across the nation (all part of the Natural Heritage Network) are the state stewards for protected areas data.

With the funding from the PAD-US project, CNHP was able to update COMaP again, and version 9 is now available for download from CSU's Geospatial Centroid. This round of updates focused on state, regional, and local government lands in addition to GOCO funded conservation easements.

We would like to thank all of the agencies and organizations that submitted updates and corrections, your contributions have been essential to the success of this project!

Data on website updated for 2011

The data that we have available for download and viewing on our website has been updated for 2011. This includes updated potential conservation area reports; downloadable GIS data for element lists by 7.5 minute quad, potential conservation areas, and network conservation areas; updated tracking lists; and an updated interactive map of where CNHP is working this year.

These datasets get updated annually and they are available for free for non-commercial purposes only. For more up-to-date, detailed, specific, and/or commercial use information please contact our Environmental Review Coordinator, Michael Menefee.

New online data submission forms

The Colorado Natural Heritage Program tracks and ranks Colorado's rare and imperiled species and habitats, and provides information and expertise on these topics to promote the conservation of Colorado's valuable biological resources.   Data maintained in our central tracking database (BIOTICS) are an integral part of the Natural Heritage Network and play a role in ongoing research at CSU. These data reflect the observations of many scientists and institutions and provide a record of the current state of knowledge of Colorado's biodiversity.

These data are acquired from various sources, including you! If you have field survey data that you would like to submit for inclusion in BIOTICS, we now have online data submission forms to supplement the hard-copy field forms, both of which can be accessed here.  We hope these web forms make it easier for you to submit your data to us and, as always, we welcome any feedback about how the forms work for you.

Job Opening: Conservation Data Services Team Leader & Database Developer

The Conservation Data Services (CDS) Team supports Colorado's conservation information needs through GIS mapping, data management, database development, and related computer services for recording and presenting biological and natural resource information. The team maintains CNHP's Biodiversity Tracking and Conservation System (BIOTICS) database, providing the most comprehensive source of locational information about imperiled species and ecological communities in Colorado. We work closely with government, private land managers, and owners to provide a central clearinghouse to collect and compare information on these vital biological resources across jurisdictional and land ownership boundaries in Colorado. The CDS Team also creates customized mapping, database, and website products to aid staff and clients in managing biological resources, and/or analyzing biological field sampling data.

The CDS Team Leader coordinates the statewide implementation of CNHP's information with partners and clients, including federal, state, and local agencies, as well as both non- and for-profit organizations. The CDS Team Leader supervises the CDS Team (3-5 staff) and is supervised by the Director. CNHP's work is funded entirely through grants, contracts, and agreements, and as a member of the Leadership Team the CDS Team Leader will need to actively pursue funding opportunities. Approximately 25-33% of this person's time will be spent on Team Leader duties, while 66-75% will be spent on grant writing and serving as principal investigator on database related projects.

Closing date is May 8, 2011.

***UPDATE***
The closing date has been extended to May 22, 2011.
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For more information about the position and how to apply, please see the announcement on the Employment and Volunteering page of our website.

Online Data Request Form

The CNHP Biological and Conservation Data system is used to evaluate projects for potential impacts to rare resources. By working early in the planning phase of a land management or development project we strive to avoid and minimize impacts while considering alternatives that allow projects to be implemented.

Information from CNHP's state-wide data system is available to the public, and can be used for conservation planning and to help facilitate the design and implementation of ecologically sound development projects. CNHP has worked with landowners, local planning departments, government agencies, consulting firms, and conservation organizations. New pipeline, roads, mines, and general conservation planning are excellent examples of projects where CNHP information has been of use. Learn more about the kind of data we have and our data request fee structure.

All data requests go through CNHP Environmental Review Coordinator, Michael Menefee. In addition to calling or emailing Michael directly (see our contacts page), we have recently implemented an online data request form. We hope this additional option gives you the flexibility to contact us in a way that best suits you. If you have any feedback regarding the online form, don't hesitate to let us know.

Closer to home

Endemic species are restricted to a particular geographic area. CNHP has documented occurrences for 166 Colorado endemics, that is, species or communities known only from the state of Colorado. This means that CNHP is the only natural heritage program collecting and maintaining data about its distribution and condition.

Penstemon harringtonii (G3S3) occurs in an area of about 4,000 square miles in the Colorado River drainage in northwestern Colorado.

A closely related species, Penstemon penlandii, (G1S1 and federally listed as Endangered) is known from an area of less than 10 square miles in northwestern Colorado.

Of course, in real life, plants and animals don't pay any attention to the rectangular state boundary. Many of our rare species overlap into neighboring states, and are perhaps better described as "narrowly restricted to a small geographic area." In these instances, while all relevant state natural heritage programs maintain data on the species, only one program will have "rank responsibility," assigning the global as well as state rank for this species.

Doubling our assets

CNHP has been busy in the 21st century! Over the past decade, the number of mapped locations of rare plants, animals and communities nearly doubled in our BIOTICS database, jumping from 11,577 to 23,068 mapped locations. That’s a lot of ground covered and a lot of digitizing.

A big thanks to all of our partners who made this possible by funding field work, submitting data and supporting our mission.

CNHP Assists Federal Agencies with Annual T & E and SOMC Reporting

Data management is central to the CNHP mission, but we do more than just maintain our Biodiversity Tracking and Conservation System (BIOTICS) Statewide Database that holds information on rare species and plant communities.

For the past two years, CNHP has worked with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to develop and maintain a national database for both threatened and endangered species (T & E) and species of management concern (SOMC) on BLM lands. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (also known as the BLM Organic Act) requires the agency to collect data pertaining to the condition of fish, wildlife and plant resources on BLM-administered lands in order to protect and manage these resources. The Endangered Species Act and the Government Performance and Results Act also mandate record keeping on the status of and expenditures for species that are federally protected or that are considered to be of management concern, so the BLM needed a database solution that would help them manage their information.

Michelle Fink, CNHP Landscape Ecologist and GIS Specialist (who also happens to know a good deal about databases) designed and built BLM's national reporting T & E and SOMC database. After each BLM field unit reports its data for the year, Michelle then compiles and quality checks and ensures the integrity of the data, updates the national dataset, and summarizes the data for BLM's reporting needs. The work is more than just a programming and data management task; biological expertise is essential to the entire process due to the complexities of the Endangered Species Act, the dynamic nature of species taxonomy and nomenclature, and the scientific knowledge necessary to appropriately compile, analyze and report scientific species status information. Melissa Landon, CNHP Conservation Data Services Team Leader manages the project and makes sure it all goes smoothly. This past December, Michelle and Melissa completed the coordination of the collection, quality assurance, compilation, analysis and reporting of information for Fiscal Year 2009.

CNHP has also worked with the National Park Service (NPS) for the past nine years on the development of an analogous agency-specific database to assist with annual NPS reporting requirements. Our Conservation Data Services team wears many hats in order to support conservation efforts in Colorado and beyond!