© Mike Norton (Colorado)
Colorado Natural Heritage Program
Our Focus
CNHP identifies and describes areas of statewide and global conservation significance and educates decision makers regarding the impacts of various land use options.
Our Mission
To preserve the natural diversity of life by contributing the essential scientific foundation that leads to lasting conservation of Colorado's biological wealth.
Professional Services
Biological Inventory and Research
CNHP's biologists are actively involved in conducting inventories, research, and monitoring throughout the state, focusing on rare and imperiled plants, animals, and natural communities. Our clients and partners rely on our team of botanists, zoologists, and ecologists who have over 50 years of experience documenting and analyzing Colorado's irreplaceable biological resources to help them make well informed conservation decisions.
Conservation Planning
By actively planning for conservation, communities, land managers, and others can develop effective strategies to reach their conservation goals. CNHP planning staff are available to help convene stakeholder meetings, coordinate protection and conservation activities, and help turn planning goals and objectives into real conservation action.
Data Management and Mapping
CNHP provides professional data management and mapping services to many federal, state, and local agencies, as well as citizens and consultants. These services include customized data management, GIS/Mapping and spatial modeling, and website/internet services. Our IT professionals customize databases, spreadsheets, and other natural resource data products to fit the needs of our clients and partners. CNHP's clients often require customized maps, digital data layers, habitat modeling, and other types of spatial analyses to assist them with making informed decisions. CNHP also designs and maintains customized public and private/protected websites, including graphics, database incorporation, and FTP.
Visit our website at www.cnhp.colostate.edu for additional information or to download data, reports, and publications.
CNHP Projects and Initiatives
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Colorado Biodiversity Scorecard
Conservationists and planners need methods to identify priority areas for conservation, information on how to characterize the relative importance, quality, and urgency of these areas (inform conservation strategies), and a means to measure conservation success on a regional or statewide basis over time. In order to assist the Colorado office of The Nature Conservancy with their "Measures of Success" program, and to provide biodiversity status information to other organizations in Colorado, the Colorado Natural Heritage Program has developed a prototype analysis of the status of Colorado's biodiversity, using a "scorecard" approach.
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Colorado Natural Heritage Program Potential Conservation Areas
Colorado's Potential Conservation Areas (PCAs) assist citizens and land managers conserve at-risk species and natural communities around known occurrences of these biological resources by focusing on the ecological processes (such as fire, hydrology, etc.) necessary to support them.
Go to the Map
Use the interactive map to zoom smoothly from a national view to state and local perspectives anywhere across the country.