As our community faces more development, decisions about how we best can protect our wildlife, water and open spaces are becoming more and more common. How we manage and use the land around us in Routt County can have a large impact on how we respond to the challenge of climate change.

In June, Routt County Commissioners adopted a new Unified Development Code that will help protect sensitive habitats and other important resources from future growth.

The new code outlines rules and regulations for building in specific areas of the county, covering a wide range of issues from where denser development can happen to how new developments must design their landscaping. Some of the natural features protected in the new code, such as riparian areas and wetlands, are the most carbon-rich ecosystems in the county, and their protection is key to maintaining ecosystem services, including the important role of taking carbon out of the atmosphere.

The new code aligns with previous targets the county set in 2021 for reducing carbon emissions through the Routt County Climate Action Plan. While at that time most local climate plans did not include land use recommendations, the local governments in Routt County recognized their importance and included multiple actions related to land use in the plan.

More recently, the official Land Use Working Group of the Climate Action Plan Collaborative released several recommendations prioritizing action that local governments and partners could take to conserve and restore natural habitats to help store carbon and increase resilience. The new Unified Development Code incorporates many of those recommendations.

One of the most important provisions of the new UDC is increased setbacks from rivers, streams and wetlands for all new construction. This will not only help protect the trees and wildlife habitat associated with our riparian corridors, but will also help improve water quality and sequester carbon.

Several sections in the UDC give the Planning Department tools to maximize the protection of native vegetation. One key provision includes the direction that “natural vegetation should be preserved to the maximum extent practicable” in new developments.

In addition, the inclusion of open space protections, particularly as a public benefit associated with Planned Unit Developments, will help protect native vegetation. Perhaps most important, the provisions in the UDC for critical wildlife habitat will lead to preservation or mitigation of impacts to natural vegetation. These measures should prevent large-scale forest clearing or converting large areas of native shrublands to lawns, helping to maintain existing stores of soil carbon in naturally vegetated areas.

Several provisions also will lead to lowering water use for outdoor landscaping, including a limitation on turf installation, direction to use native plants in landscaping, a focus on low water use principles in landscape design and requirements for efficient irrigation systems when they are included.

The new UDC also includes improvements to the process for establishing land preservation subdivisions. This is an important tool in protecting against habitat fragmentation and preserving additional natural lands that should be encouraged in planning new developments.

Combined with earlier adopted code provisions that created a process for avoiding conversion of natural habitat when siting new commercial-scale solar arrays, the new UDC will help protect that natural lands in Routt County that we all appreciate as residents, and which help store carbon in our soils and vegetation. 

Written by Tim Sullivan, the Resilient Land and Water director for Yampa Valley Sustainability Council on behalf of the Routt County Climate Action Collaborative. For more, go to RouttClimateAction.com.