Uniting Colorado’s Cities with Nature

In partnership with Metro Denver Nature Alliance, TNC developed a Regional Conservation Assessment that will help decision-makers identify lands and waters to connect, protect, restore, and enhance across the 6,200 square mile Denver region. This will answer questions such as: Where are the most important habitats for wildlife? How can we better connect parks, trails, rivers, and forests for people and nature to move between them? Which places are top priorities for restoring nature?

Ultimately, the goal is to facilitate collaborative planning across municipalities, with an eye toward climate resilience, connecting habitats, and increasing access to nature for people. With meaningful input from diverse partners and local communities, this tool will help create more equitable access to the benefits of nature for all those who live in Denver and surrounding communities. 

Planting Trees for a Healthier Denver

Trees in cities provide a multitude of benefits to people who live around them. Picture yourself on a city street lined with large, old trees. The shade on your skin, the calming effect of green leaves above, and the way the vegetation quiets the noise of the city might be some of the first things you notice. Beyond that, trees help keep streets cool, improve air quality, and prepare neighborhoods for climate change. Research even shows that people are happier and healthier when they live in neighborhoods with more trees.

Unfortunately, in many cities, including Denver, the benefits trees provide are unequally distributed. Wealthy neighborhoods have an average of seven times more trees than poor neighborhoods. 

This inequity can be attributed to a range of challenges, such as the history of redlining in Denver, a discriminatory practice of refusing to insure mortgages in neighborhoods with more African Americans and immigrant families. These decades-old policies still impact our neighborhoods today, as the maps of lower tree cover line up with historically redlined areas.

Together with partners, TNC has been working with local communities in the Denver neighborhoods including Globeville, Elyria Swansea (GES) to plant more trees and find holistic solutions for expanding the tree canopy across the city. TNC has helped organize community tree-planting events and built partnerships with community-based organizations and nonprofits that bring important youth engagement and tree expertise like Groundwork Denver, The Park People, and Globeville First.

Creating a Green City for All 

Tree planting efforts in local communities are part of a bigger story.

“It’s the larger picture around policies to put more resources from the city into communities that have been historically ignored and disinvested in,” says Cindy Chang, with The Park People. “We’re focusing on making sure the GES community is getting the priority it deserves.”

Tree planting and planning at a large scale can also create job opportunities. TNC and partners have advised on a regionwide tree workforce development program.

In partnership with the University of Colorado’s Masters of the Environment program, four graduate students researched best practices for creating a more equitable urban forest. The students conducted a literature review and over 50 interviews with stakeholders in cities around the U.S. and presented their findings to leaders in the City and County of Denver at the first-ever Urban Forestry Roundtable. This roundtable is the first critical step in kicking off a citywide master planning effort set to launch later this year.

The graduate student research team commented, “Presenting to the City of Denver was a great opportunity for our team to share the findings of our nationally influenced research on the intersections of equity, climate resilience, and the built environment within urban forestry. While our research suggests that tree inequities are prevalent throughout the U.S., it’s encouraging to see that many cities are working towards meaningful community engagement and enhanced collaboration to achieve truly equitable outcomes.” The research team includes graduate students Kayli Skinner, Kiana Seto, Lorena Gonzalez, and Melissa Englund.

Investing in Nature Now for Colorado’s Future

Choices about how and where our Front Range cities grow—including density, transportation, water and energy use, and managing and integrating nature—will be critical in shaping Colorado for decades to come. By focusing on nature-based community resilience, urban habitat connectivity, and equitable climate action, Denver communities are investing in our state’s future.

“Cities are a conservation strategy unto themselves,” Hawkins says. “If we want to solve big conservation issues like protection of wild spaces, we have to get cities right.”

Our future must be one in which nature and people are connected. That means that our cities should be planned with both people and nature in mind, and with a long-term vision to guide decisions made today.