Roberts Ranch easement will conserve agriculture

By JoAn Bjarko
North Forty News

Multiple pieces of funding are falling into place for the community to help preserve one of the county's oldest ranches.

With a donation from landowner Catherine Roberts included, a funding package of $3 million will buy a conservation easement on almost 5,000 acres of the Livermore area Roberts Ranch. The conservation easement, which includes the property's decreed water rights, will prevent future landowners from developing the land. It also establishes a management plan that will preserve the agricultural, historic and cultural values of the ranch.

Heather Knight, director of the Laramie Foothills Project for The Nature Conservancy, said if transaction details proceed on schedule, the sale will close in April. She noted that the ranch will remain private land; a conservation easement does not give public access.

"The goal is to maintain the land in the same or better condition as it is now, ecologically speaking," Knight said.

Local groups have been working for nearly a decade to protect the family ranch established by R.O. Roberts in the 1880s. "Anytime you're trying to do a large, complicated conservation project, it just takes time," said John Stokes, director of the Fort Collins Natural Resources Department.

Funding sources include $1.8 million from Fort Collins, an $891,000 grant from Great Outdoors Colorado and $200,000 from the Larimer County Open Lands Program. The Nature Conservancy, which played the lead role in working out the details, will be responsible for the conservation easement.

Catherine Roberts moved to the ranch in 1943 after marrying the late James Evan Roberts. Evan Roberts died in 2002 at age 94.

"Evan wanted to keep it intact and a ranch forever," his widow explained. "Evan and his father (George F. Roberts) spent their lives putting it together."

The entire Roberts Ranch is 16,000 acres. K-Lynn Cameron, director of the county open lands program, said she considers this the first phase of a long-term preservation effort. This easement encompasses land on the west side of U.S. Highway 287. It adjoins thousands of acres already protected by other private conservation easements, the county's Eagle's Nest Open Space and state wildlife areas.

Stokes, who served as eastern Colorado director of TNC until last May, said Fort Collins will benefit because the conservation easement protects the watershed along the North Fork of the Poudre River. The city's Halligan Reservoir is there.

Catherine Roberts said the money from sale of the easement will go back into the ranch for preservation work.