Every five years, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) leads development of a comprehensive outdoor recreation plan to maintain eligibility for funding through the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and to inform additional investments from other federal, state, local and private programs. Given the significance of outdoor recreation in the state, this plan is much more than a federal requirement for funding. This plan is the first time a Colorado SCORP considers both conservation and recreation together as values that are closely intertwined.
Bat populations in the western portion of the US are threatened by the rapid westward expansion of White-nose Syndrome (WNS), a disease implicated in the loss of over a million bats since 2006. Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), the fungus believed responsible for WNS, has been confirmed in southeastern Wyoming, southcentral Kansas, western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle, potentially placing at least 13 of the 18 bat species native to Colorado at risk for significant population-level declines. The continued westward movement of WNS emphasizes the need for improved information on the status of bats in Colorado, a systematic and thorough survey and assessment of the importance of caves and abandoned mines to Colorado's bat populations, and a coordinated effort to monitoring for WNS in the state.
