Watershed Protection

Colorado’s forested watersheds provide the supply of clean water and biological diversity needed for a future that is balanced economically, socially and ecologically. Effects of uncharacteristic wildfire and insects and disease on the health of forested watersheds include sedimentation of water supply infrastructure, undesirable changes in forest conditions and decreased water quality.

With guidance from the Colorado Water Plan and the Colorado Forest Action Plan, the Colorado State Forest Service and its partners integrate forest management and watershed protection to secure the future of Colorado’s water for the benefit of people and wildlife.

Goals and Accomplishments

Select locations on the map to learn about accomplishments toward goals for Watershed Protection.

Select a goal to learn about accomplishments toward that goal for Watershed Protection.

Goals and accomplishments are connected to national priorities of state forest action plans: Conserve working forestland, Protect forests from harm and Enhance public benefits from trees and forests

Goal 1: Improve and Maintain Water Quality and Quantity

The CSFS updated the Forestry Best Management Practices to Protect Water Quality in Colorado in 2023 and required contractors working on projects funded by the CSFS to adhere to these guidelines. To ensure compliance, the CSFS monitored the application of BMPs in forest management activities at project sites on a semi-annual basis with help from a multi-agency team. Since 2020, teams conducted site visits in 2021, 2023 and 2025 and published reports of their field monitoring results and recommendations.

Over the past five years, the CSFS and its partners prioritized numerous forest health activities in the headwaters of major river basins in Colorado. This work has been critical to reducing the potential negative impacts to water quality and quantity from wildfire, such as post-fire erosion and lack of forest regeneration. For example, the CSFS treated about 4,000 acres in Denver Water’s Zones of Concern from 2020 to 2023 to restore forest health in the Colorado and South Platte river basins through the From Forests to Faucets program.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board established the Wildfire Ready Watersheds Program in 2021 to assess the susceptibility of Colorado’s water resources, communities and critical infrastructure to post-wildfire impacts. The program assists communities in planning and implementing mitigation strategies to minimize these impacts before a fire, helping to reduce the risk of fire to watersheds and riparian areas.

In 2023, the Colorado Water Conservation Board updated the Colorado Water Plan, which provides a framework for helping Colorado meet its water challenges through collaborative action around water development and water conservation. The plan provides insights into the importance and value of Colorado’s water to the state – and 19 other states and Mexico – and a vision and actions to ensure thriving forested watersheds.

A team from the CSFS Monitoring Program is conducting a snow-water equivalency study on the Colorado State Forest to improve future planning for increased water quality and quantity after forestry activities. This will provide Colorado-based empirical evidence for how small-scale treatments in subalpine forest types impact snowpack dynamics. The study is ongoing and will be completed by 2028. Project partners include the Colorado Water Conservation Board and CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources.

Goal 2: Improve Resiliency of Critical Water Infrastructure

Since 2020, the CSFS and its partners implemented forest management treatments on thousands of acres in key watersheds across land ownership boundaries where they will have the biggest impact on water supply infrastructure. For example, the CSFS worked with Colorado Springs Utilities and the USDA Forest Service under the Good Neighbor Authority program on the Lonesome Square project near Pikes Peak. This project is one of 16 that the CSFS implemented across 2,350 acres of forests in the Pikes Peak watershed from 2020-2025 to protect water supplies for the roughly 500,000 residents of Colorado Springs.

The CSFS established or renewed partnerships with Northern Water, Fort Collins Utilities and Aurora Water since 2020, allowing the CSFS and the water providers to pool resources with an emphasis on protecting critical water infrastructure and conveyances. The CSFS and Northern Water inked a multi-year agreement in 2021 to fund forest health projects that will protect the collection and distribution systems of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. In addition, the CSFS, Fort Collins Utilities, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the Colorado State Land Board and Department of Natural Resources launched a multi-phase project in July 2025 to mitigate wildfire risk to the Michigan Ditch on the Colorado State Forest. The ditch provides 11% of the water supply for Fort Collins and flows through areas of the state forest with up to 80% of trees killed by spruce bark beetles.

In 2022, the Colorado legislature passed House Bill 22-1379 to fund projects that reduce wildfire fuels around high-priority watersheds and water infrastructure. Through this legislation, the CSFS allocated $1 million each to three projects that will protect water supplies for more than a million Coloradans through landscape-scale treatments. Project sites are in the Fraser Valley, Staunton State Park and the North Slope of Pikes Peak and involve partnerships with Colorado Springs Utilities and Denver Water.

Many partnerships that focused on collaboration across organizations and land ownership boundaries thrived over the past five years in Colorado. These groups prioritize forest health and fuels treatments around key reservoirs and associated infrastructure. Examples include the Watershed Wildfire Protection Group, 2-3-2 Partnership, Upper South Platte Partnership and the Northern Colorado Fireshed Network, among many others in Colorado. In 2021, the Clear Creek Watershed and Forest Health Partnership formed to address growing fire and water quality threats across the entire watershed encompassing Gilpin, Clear Creek, Jefferson and Adams counties.

Goal 3: Sustain or Restore Fundamental Ecological Functions for Watershed Health

Foresters in the CSFS field office in Fort Collins provided technical forestry expertise to 18 landowners in 2025 through the Farm Service Agency’s Emergency Forest Restoration Program. This program helps private landowners recover from disasters, such as wildfire and blowdown events, encouraging them to restore forested land that supports various ecological functions including clean water.

Outreach from partners that manage forests and water helps Coloradans recognize that healthy watersheds enhance cultural benefits, such as recreation and an increased quality of life. Over the past five years, the CSFS regularly communicated about the importance of proactive forest management for infrastructure protection through conferences, public events, youth education initiatives and media outlets. An intern with the CSFS wrote a story for the CSFS website about healthy watersheds and active forest management, and the CSFS has featured watershed protection in Forests and Water United in the West and in its Report on the Health of Colorado’s Forests in 2022 and 2024.

Through Congressionally Designated Spending funds from U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s office, the CSFS funded and supported an Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change project at the Colorado State Forest to begin to manage the forest proactively for anticipated future conditions. The results of this project will help forest managers use the best available science to ensure the state forest continues to provide important ecological benefits, including air and water purification.

When planning projects, CSFS foresters work to establish riparian buffers, headwater protection and other forest management strategies identified in source water protection plans and the 2020 Colorado Forest Action Plan. For example, the Upper Colorado River Headwaters Watershed and Community Protection Project utilized Denver Water and federal funding to implement watershed resiliency treatments on 400 acres of high-priority forests in headwaters in Grand County. This project enhanced and complemented adjacent USDA Forest Service treatments for a positive, landscape-scale effect.

Impacts from IIJA Forest Action Plan Funding

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Forest Action Plan implementation funding supports the Colorado State Forest Service with reforestation of watersheds through staffing at its tree nursery. The Nursery Program Specialist manages the Restoring Colorado’s Forests Fund, which provides thousands of seedlings every year to landowners at no cost to help them restore forests after wildfires and other natural disasters. This position helps these landowners plan for what to plant and access the seedlings and resources for planting. With this support, these landowners are encouraged to restore forested lands, so privately owned forests in critical watersheds burned by wildfire can remain as forests and continue to provide clean water to those downstream.

Since the Nursery Program Specialist was hired in early 2024, the position enabled the hiring of three student interns and supported the distribution of about 30,000 seedlings to landowners to support replanting in 15 burn scars across nine counties in Colorado.

Explore Accomplishments for Other Themes and Goals

You can also explore statewide cross-theme accomplishments toward goals.

Visit the Colorado Forest Action Plan Five Year Review homepage.