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P.O. Box 791
Boulder, CO 80306
303-441-3440
About Us
Open Space & Mtn Parks Plants & Wildlife Rare & Sensitive Species Habitat Conservation Areas (HCAs)
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Habitat Conservation Areas: Preserving our Wild Heritage
You can help preserve and protect these extraordinary areas by staying on trail, observing closure signs and regulations, and avoiding nighttime use from one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise. Click on an HCA to learn more about it:
Learn more about the Visitor Master Plan and Off Trail Permits.
Southern Grassland HCA
Western Mountain Parks HCA |
The City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) department designated Habitat Conservation Areas (HCAs) as a way to protect areas that provide habitat to some of Boulder’s rare plants and animals. HCAs protect some trees and flowers so unusual that they are found nowhere else in Colorado! Other species in HCAs are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
This HCA protects a 3,000 acre remnant of intact grassland and the plant and animal species that depend upon it. Visitors to the area may see wildlife such as badgers or burrowing owls. A restored section of Coal Creek cuts across the HCA. Bald eagles return each year to nest in the cottonwood trees along its banks and many ground-nesting birds breed here each spring, such as meadowlarks and grasshopper sparrows. To visit this HCA, walk the High Plains and Greenbelt Plateau trails.
communities—can be found to this day. Nowhere else in Colorado can you find Paper Birches (
including the only occurrence of the six-lined race runner lizard on OSMP. Several pools along the creek provide a refuge for fish, where they can restock the populations up and down the waterway. The area can be accessed on the White Rocks Trail. Visitors may see bald eagles, northern harriers, belted kingfishers, and Great blue herons, which nest in a protected rookery just east of the HCA.
The grassy flats beneath Jewel Mountain are relatively undamaged because its stony soil was too difficult for settlers to plow. This unusual “xeric” (dry land) tall grass prairie is home to a number of rare butterflies such as the Arogos and Crossline Skippers. Jewel Mountain is home to elk herds that migrate between the mountains and eastern plains. Southern Arapaho cultural sites also make this an important area. Jewel Mountain HCA is not accessible by trails.
When the Ice Age came to an end 10,000 years ago, Colorado’s lush stands of tallgrass prairie couldn’t take the heat, and were replaced by drought-tolerant grasses. But in isolated pockets around Boulder, tiny remnants or “relicts” of this ecosystem remain. This HCA preserves some of the most important stands of tallgrass prairie west of the Mississippi River. In fall, grasses take on delicate and subtle shades of ochre, tan, wine and purple. These p
ockets of habitat support rare plants like the Ute Ladies’ Tresses Orchid (pictured at right), which is protected under the Endangered Species Act and the American Ground Nut, known to grow in only six sites in Colorado (four of them on OSMP). Bobolinks, disappearing across much of their range, still nest here, as do common snipe and meadowlarks. Prairie dog colonies in this HCA attract hawks, eagles and American badgers.
Sombrero Marsh may have been the only perennial body of open water in Boulder Valley at the time of settlement. Sombrero is an alkali marsh, rare in this part of the United States. It is shallow and periodically dries out, leaving mudflats that provide unique habitat for emergent vegetation and nesting wading birds. But it wasn’t always this way! It had been used as a garbage dump until 2000, when OSMP acquired the marsh. OSMP began restoring the marsh, first hauling out 55,000 cubic yards of trash, then replanting native alkali marsh vegetation. Several short trails and a board walk now skirt the eastern shore for use by the public, school groups and classes at Thorne Ecological Institute.