Colorado panel says Good Neighbor Authority, local partnerships are expanding stewardship — but steep‑slope costs remain high

At a Nov. 1 meeting of the Colorado Forest Health Council legislative committee, presenters from state and local organizations described how Good Neighbor Authority agreements and local partnerships are increasing the pace of forest restoration across Colorado — but they cautioned that steep‑slope treatments remain costly and require subsidy or special equipment.

“What we’re doing is working,” Everett Merritt, who manages the Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) program at the Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS), told the committee. He said GNA has enabled cross‑boundary projects with federal land managers and local partners and highlighted recent projects that protected communities and watersheds.

The panel — which included Merritt (Colorado State Forest Service), Jonathan Paclian (executive director, Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative), and Scott Golden (senior resource specialist, Boulder County Parks & Open Space) — described several project examples, how they were funded and staffed, and the operational trade‑offs involved in treating steep ground.

Merritt said Colorado’s GNA program has put more than 15,000 acres under contract or completed projects on a mix of federal and adjacent lands, delivered roughly 200,000,000 board feet of federal timber to industry, and currently operates about 30 active agreements. He described joint annual work‑planning at the district level as a key shared‑stewardship practice: state and federal staff “sit down at the district ranger level” to prioritize work and combine tools such as state contracting and appraisals to speed implementation while still following federal laws such as NEPA.

Panelists gave several project spotlights. In Summit County, Merritt pointed to the Wellington Fuels Project, a GNA unit near a 200‑plus home neighborhood where fuels treatments were later credited by firefighters with helping limit a wildfire’s effects. Merritt also described Deer Creek near Bailey — an area that serves Denver Water customers — and Pikes Peak area projects financed by a combination of federal, state and utility funding.

Jonathan Paclian described the Monarch Pass project in Chaffee County, where nonprofit fund‑raising, CWCB (Colorado Water Conservation Board) and other local contributions subsidized steep‑slope harvesting. Paclian said the project covered more than 400 acres, was expensive to execute, and relied on specialized tethered harvesting equipment operated by contractor Miller Timber. He said the overall project cost was roughly $2,000,000 and that high equipment and operating costs made local contributions essential: “the expense of this type of equipment on these steep slopes is just so incredibly high… it’s basically subsidized,” Paclian said.

Panelists and committee members discussed the tradeoffs of treating extreme slopes. Commissioner Mark Morgan and others noted that specialized tethered systems enable work on slopes that conventional ground‑based equipment cannot safely access, but that costs per acre can exceed $8,000 in some steep‑slope operations. Merritt and Paclian said those projects are often targeted to very high‑value resources — water infrastructure, highways or communities — and cannot be scaled everywhere.

Scott Golden described Boulder County’s cross‑boundary approach. He recounted a 2020 MOU bringing together US Forest Service, CSFS, local municipalities, conservation districts and nonprofits. The county has acted as fiscal agent on multi‑partner grants, combining COSWAP/LRI (landscape resilience investment) funding, local tax revenues dedicated to fuels reduction, and other program funds to execute thousands of acres of coordinated work. Golden emphasized using local NGOs as public‑facing partners to build trust with residents and cited aerial and helicopter‑assisted operations that in some cases lowered per‑acre costs for difficult harvests.

Panelists also discussed utility engagement. Julie (utility seat) asked whether utilities are included in annual joint work planning because lines and hazard trees outside rights‑of‑way can present acute risk; Merritt confirmed Springs Utilities is an active GNA partner and said CSFS is working to expand utility partnerships on the front range so utilities’ monitoring data and priorities can be leveraged.

Committee members raised implementation and scale questions. Mark Morgan observed that targeting slightly less extreme slopes (for example excluding the very steepest 10–15% of terrain) can reduce per‑acre costs and allow more acres to be treated within fixed budgets. Golden and Paclian agreed that most programs are shifting toward a mix of conventional treatments to maximize acres and selective tethered or aerial approaches where the asset risk justifies the cost.

The presenters asked the council to recognize three practical takeaways: 1) GNA and shared‑stewardship planning at the district level are effective tools for cross‑boundary work; 2) leveraging mixed funding (state, federal, utility and local contributions) is essential for steep‑slope and high‑cost projects; and 3) local governments and NGOs play a central role in community acceptance and in acting as fiscal agents when smaller organizations cannot front contractor payments.

The committee closed by thanking presenters and noting the council will continue these topics at a future meeting and collect the panel slides for member review.