Routt County Commissioners voted Tuesday to fund the conservation of roughly 8,000 acres of land located on the rolling foothill terrain along the Williams Fork Mountains.

The deal involves property spread across two ranches, the Camilletti Ranch and the Chance Ranch, at a combined cost of roughly $2 million — with an additional $60,000 provided for reimbursement of transaction costs.

The vote for final approval for the agreement between the county and the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust means 3,978 acres of the Chance Ranch and 4,192 acres of the Camilletti Ranch will be conserved under the deal.

The deal includes the county paying $1 million for the purchase of the conservation easement at Camilletti Ranch and $950,000 for the conservation purchase at Chance Ranch. Each deal also permits funding of up to $30,000 for the reimbursement of transaction costs.

The properties cover an area located roughly 20 miles southeast of Hayden.

“This represents an amazing opportunity for Routt County to conserve about 8,000 acres,” said Claire Sollars, chair of Routt County’s Purchase of Development Rights Advisory Board. “It’s a contiguous. There are a couple of parcels that are separated, but the overwhelming benefit is phenomenal, especially for the wildlife habitat, avian habitat, the greater sage grouse habitat and especially as we are protecting a portion of the Fish Creek corridor, which is a tributary of the Yampa River.”

A conservation agreement involves a voluntary agreement between a landowner and another entity that places restrictions on the use of the piece of property. The easements restrict designated uses forever, with the effect of permanently conserving the property.

The deal in Routt County means the owners of the two ranches, who have worked together for nearly 30 years, will be able to continue using the land for agricultural and ranching uses without feeling the pressure from outside entities seeking to develop the land.

“We just want to try to do what we can in different avenues to try to maintain our operation and see that it continues into the future,” Rudy Camilletti said. “In the current climate of everything, it is getting more difficult all the time to not only maintain open space but to try to compete with outside interests, money and so on coming in, to try to maintain the core of what we are doing.”

County commissioners voted 3-0 to approve the conservation easement acquisitions.

“Thanks to the landowners and everyone involved, one of the ways that we have assessed some of these funding requests is the number of the 35-acre parcels that we have eliminated,” commissioner Tim Corrigan said. “Not just for the benefit of open space, but also for the pressure on county services — if we really had in this case the (more than 200) single-family residences dotted out there, the pressures on our county roads and services costs us quite a bit to maintain.”

Commissioner Tim Redmond echoed Corrigan’s thoughts.

“I think this great,” Redmond said. “I am loving seeing this land conserved. I love to see the preservation of the ranching tradition and history; I think that is one of the things that makes this county very special.”