Denver Roundtable Recap Article 

On November 12-13, 2024, the Conservation Finance Network hosted our 13th annual Conservation Finance Roundtable in Denver, Colorado, in collaboration with the Salazar Center for North American Conservation. The overall event agenda is available here, and the article that follows summarizes key takeaways from the event.  
 
Held just one week after the November election, we covered its potential implications for conservation. Alex Funk, representing the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, highlighted efforts to help deliver federal funds to the ground for watershed restoration and shared his thoughts on which programs are likely to face pressure or could be favored in a Trump Administration. Chris West of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation emphasized that despite understandable concerns about potential funding cuts, the conservation community has weathered multiple government transitions in recent years and to be prepared to take advantage of unanticipated opportunities.  

At the state level, as David Weinstein from the Trust for Public Land indicated, bipartisan support for conservation remains strong, as evidenced by the 100% success rate of the 23 state and local ballot measures TPL supported this fall, and the 88% success rate for all conservation-related ballot measures in November 2024 (see TPL’s LandVote Database for information on all 2024 ballot measures).  

Though federal funds available for conservation and climate are likely to decline, and the Biden Administration’s commitment to Justice 40 to go away, voluntary working lands conservation is likely to remain a bipartisan issue and there may be opportunities to address wildfire and water scarcity issues. As David reminded us, while federal funds constituted a much higher proportion in recent years, such funding has historically constituted only about ~20% of overall funds. We are likely to return to that level and can continue to accomplish a lot of conservation with state and local dollars. 

Attendees shared numerous updates and innovations addressing water policy and water conservation issues in the Colorado River Basin, and Colorado specifically.  

• Lauren Ris of the Colorado Water Conservation Board grounded the session in Colorado River Basin planning work, introduced the Colorado Water Plan, and described the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s collaborative strategies for incentivizing water conservation.  

• Kate Ryan of the Colorado Water Trust described the fundamentals of water law in Colorado and shared how her organization uses legal tools to protect water for conservation and instream flow purposes.  

• Andy Mueller of the Colorado Water District described the proposed landmark Shoshone Water deal, which involves the $99 million purchase of water rights from Xcel Energy’s Shoshone Power Plant (the largest and most senior non-consumptive water right on the Colorado River) to preserve instream flow.  

• Daryl Vigil, who leads the Water and Tribes Initiative, provided a critical perspective, reminding attendees that many Tribal Nations are still negotiating water rights treaties with the U.S. federal government (see this 2025 update about unsuccessful efforts to secure water rights for Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribal members in northeastern Arizona). This lack of finalized agreements leaves some Tribal communities unable to access water from the river.  

 
The roundtable also focused on strategies to integrate water and land conservation on private lands in Colorado. Rebecca Jewett from Palmer Land Conservancy described their efforts through the Bessemer Farmland Conservation Project to work collaboratively with private landowners and municipalities to strategically and voluntarily transfer water rights from nonproductive agricultural lands to productive farms and municipalities (for more information about the project, review this case study). Sarah Parmar from Colorado Open Lands spoke about their new use of a groundwater easement to retain water rights for both agricultural and conservation purposes on farms (for more information, see here and here). Rob Bleiberg from Colorado West Land Trust described their work to protect land for water, ecological, and agricultural purposes, and their developing buy-protect-sell strategy to protect farmland for new farmers (see this summary for more detail).  

Private capital also has an important role to play.  A panel of philanthropic leaders - Amanda Hill of the Gates Family Foundation, Nathan Fey of Mighty Arrow Foundation, and Ian Shelledy of the Walton Family Foundation – discussed the philanthropic use of grants and program-related investments to accelerate watershed protection and restoration. A panel of impact investors and advisors - including Debbie Huttner at Pearl Wealth, Craig Metrick at Pathstone, and Mike Higuera at Conscience Bay - provided valuable perspectives on corporate motivations for investing in sustainability, how nature might figure in impact investments and the status of a sustainable ranching venture in Colorado. 

Other innovations shared during the conference included:  

• The Tribal Infrastructure and Restoration Fund, introduced by Mary Kelly, a Partner at Culp & Kelly LLP, for water and irrigation infrastructure, restoration of ecologically and culturally significant lands, and to develop sustainable revenue streams for ongoing restoration efforts on Tribal lands in the Lower Basin.  

• Launch of the Foundation for America’s Public Lands, which supports the work of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Tomer Hasson, Senior Program Officer at the Foundation for America’s Public Lands, said the new foundation has four areas of focus: drought adaptation; virtual fencing; collaborative stewardship in the San Pedro Riparian NCA, and the Lands to Love marketing campaign about BLM lands. 

• Designation of four new Sentinel Landscapes: Kittatinny Ridge Sentinel Landscape in Pennsylvania, Great Salt Lake Sentinel Landscape in Utah, Mojave Desert Sentinel Landscape in California, and Eastern New Mexico Sentinel Landscape. Rob Rule, Deputy Director of Partnerships for Western U.S. and Pacific, Department of Defense Readiness and Environmental Protection Program, said an application process to designate new Sentinel Landscapes is likely to begin in early 2025.  

• Work with the Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape and other local partners to develop an endowment to monitor water levels in the San Pedro Watershed recharge area, as described by Quantified Ventures’ Chris Wolff.  

• The Forest Service’s grantmaking with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Claire Harper of the Forest Service’s Cooperative Forestry Program said that in 2024 the Forest Legacy Program invested $544 million in 63 projects that will conserve more than 608,000 acres of private forestlands across the United States.  

• Efforts by the First Nations Development Institute to create an indigenous-led land trust.  

• Efforts by the Colorado Mass Timber Coalition to eventually develop a market and processing infrastructure for mass timber made with Colorado wood, as described by the Coalition’s Will Lepry.  

• The National Forest Foundation’s work to support process-based restoration of national forest lands in the Colorado River Basin. The National Forest Foundation’s Joe Lavorini also referenced NFF’s development of an in-lieu fee program utilizing wetland mitigation credits on the White River National Forest in Colorado. 

• The Keystone Center’s development of a strategic plan for outdoor recreation, climate resilience, and conservation in Colorado that incorporates water conservation and ecological objectives and seeks to involve Tribal and other underrepresented voices in its development. The draft plan, which the Center’s Julie Shapiro summarized, is available here and the final plan will be released in early 2025.  

 
The event highlighted numerous efforts to create new sources of interim finance, or short-term loans, for both conservation and restoration. Andrea Ferri of Blue Forest spoke about the recent launch of their Southern Oregon-Northeastern California Watershed Resilience Bond, a partnership with Pheasants Forever to provide upfront funding for land restoration projects on private lands, which will be repaid with NRCS funds. Coalitions and Collaboratives, a Colorado-based group, works across the country to provide interim finance to small groups leading restoration efforts to bridge the time when they need funds and when they can be paid back by the federal government; for more information about their Forest & Water Renewal Revolving Loan Fund, click here. LegacyWorks Group provided an update on their Conservation Loan Collaborative, which will be a backbone service for organizations who wish to set up and administer revolving loan funds. 

We also heard about innovative uses of state funds to support conservation. Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), which is funded by proceeds from the Colorado lottery and has traditionally provided grants for land conservation, has provided short-term, zero or low-interest loans totaling $20 million for land acquisition since 2020, according to Chris Yuan-Farrell, GOCO’s Director of Programs. Brad Hunter described how Craft3, a CDFI that operates in Oregon and Washington, is seeking to develop a line of credit for land acquisition by land trusts funded with SRF funds from the state of Washington. 

Claire Jahns, with the consulting firm Scale, reviewed state-level climate action planning processes and the twenty states that have incorporated conservation and restoration of natural and working lands in their climate action plans. Washington and California have created state funds to help implement climate plans, and the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants are funding implementation of nature-based climate solutions in ten states, including four in the Middle Atlantic, Montana, and Nebraska (for more about the CPRG program, see this article). Chris Wolff from Quantified Ventures described their work in the Colorado River Basin and QV’s analysis of a pipeline of 124 nature infrastructure projects requiring $4.5B in financing.   

Overall, key takeaways for the CFN team included:  

• Clear recognition of the bipartisan nature of conservation and resounding local support for it. To maintain ongoing support for conservation work, we will need to focus on the many co-benefits of conservation: clean water, wildfire mitigation, and wildlife are messages that resonate with many Americans. 

• We were surprised to learn that many Tribal Nations still do not have negotiated water rights agreements with the federal government.  

• Concerns around wildfire risk are activating non-traditional players, such as water utilities, to invest in forest restoration work. 

• We continue to be impressed by the need for interim finance for both land acquisition and restoration efforts and look forward to tracking the successes of the new funding and financing efforts described above.   

• Implementation of Nature-Based Solutions continues to be an emerging opportunity. 

For additional detail, see powerpoint slides from Roundtable presentations (see slides from Day 1 and Day 2).