Effects of population growth on wildlife habitat in Colorado: a briefing paper for the Colorado Division of Wildlife commissioners, June 1998

Wildlife and people need habitat in Colorado. Wildlife need forest and range and wetlands. People need places to live, places to work, roads to travel on, and schools to educate their children. Meeting the "habitat" needs of an expanding human population causes fundamental changes in the way land is used in Colorado. Changes in land-use, in turn, can cause marked shifts in habitat available for Colorado's wildlife. There is widespread consensus among professional biologists and wildlife managers that habitat loss to development is the foremost threat to the diversity, abundance, and distribution of Colorado's wildlife. However, this broad agreement is based largely on local experience and is not founded on a comprehensive, statewide analysis of habitat loss in the state. Here, we offer data on the history of habitat loss to development in Colorado and provide projections of the kinds of losses that can be reasonably expected in the future