Colorado and the Southwest BRINGING THE OUTDOORS CLOSER TO HOME IN 2026 AND BEYOND
Verde River, Arizona. PHOTO BY CHRIS HINKLE
Connecting Everyone to the Outdoors in the Four Corners Across Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, communities are growing and changing, bringing both new opportunities and new challenges. Creating and caring for places where people can gather, learn, explore, and connect has never been more important. Thanks to your support, Trust for Public Land is helping communities throughout the Four Corners shape a more sustainable future. This year, we celebrated innovative projects that bring nature closer to home, invested in emerging leaders who are strengthening their communities, honored Indigenous culture and connection to land, and protected the landscapes that define the Southwest. Together, we are creating opportunities for people to connect, belong, and thrive outdoors. From neighborhood pocket forests in Colorado to Tribal schoolyards in New Mexico, from the iconic Sonoran 2 |
Desert of Arizona to Utah’s Bonneville Shoreline Trail, your generosity is connecting more people to the outdoors and ensuring that our treasured places endure for generations. Thank you for making this work possible. With gratitude,
Jim Petterson Vice President, Mountain West Region Colorado and Southwest Director
TRUST FOR PUBLIC L AND IN COLOR ADO AND THE SOUTHWEST
Small Forests Make a Big Impact Across Colorado, Trust for Public Land is helping communities bring nature closer to home through our Pocket Forest strategy. Inspired by the Miyawaki Method, pocket forests are small, densely planted ecosystems made up entirely of native species. By layering ground cover, shrubs, small trees, and canopy trees, they can flourish quickly while supporting biodiversity, improving air quality, cooling neighborhoods, and strengthening climate resilience. Community members help plan, plant, and care for these forests, transforming underused land into vibrant neighborhood assets and creating lasting connections between people and nature.
Rodarte Community Center Pocket Forest In East Greeley, TPL and local partners are transforming a long-neglected quarter-acre site at the Rodarte Community Center into a forested outdoor classroom. Designed with input from youth and older residents, the space will serve after-school students, teachers, families, and the broader community through naturebased learning, gardening, recreation, and community gathering.
Installed in fall 2025, the pocket forest responds to rising urban heat, limited green space, and longstanding inequities in park access. Its dense native plantings will provide shade, improve neighborhood tree canopy and air quality, and create new habitat for birds and pollinators—all while giving residents a welcoming place to experience the joys of the outdoors.
Marie L. Greenwood Public School Pocket Forest In Denver’s Montbello neighborhood, TPL is working alongside community partners to create The Green Woods pocket forest at Marie L. Greenwood Public School (PreK-8). This new outdoor space will support nature-based learning, recreation, and neighborhood connection while bringing the benefits of urban forestry to students and residents. Students and community members helped shape its design, and lessons from the forest’s long-term stewardship will inform similar school microforests across the Rocky Mountain region. Our work with pocket forests demonstrates how even small investments in green infrastructure can produce outsized benefits, creating healthier neighborhoods while helping people build stronger connections to their communities and to the natural world.
LEFT: Greenwood Pocket Forest. RIGHT: Rodarte Pocket Forest. PHOTOS COURTESY OF SUGI
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Creating Places, Cultivating Leaders Trust for Public Land knows that lasting change happens when community members have the opportunity to lead. Through our Community Outreach with Resident Experts (CORE) Fellowship, TPL invests in emerging local leaders who bring lived experience, trusted relationships, and deep knowledge of their communities to the work of creating parks, schoolyards, and outdoor spaces.
Building Community at Delta Park As a CORE Fellow in Greeley, Fardowsa Barkadle brought together residents from the neighborhood’s Latino and East African immigrant communities during the design and activation of Delta Park. Through weekly “Coffee Chat” gatherings and community conversations, she created opportunities for neighbors to build relationships, share ideas, and shape a park that reflected their needs and aspirations. Fardowsa’s work extended beyond facilitating park design. By creating spaces for people to connect and participate in decision-making, she strengthened community trust and engagement. Although her fellowship has concluded, the relationships and sense of community ownership she helped build continue to shape Delta Park today.
A Full-Circle Moment As one of TPL’s inaugural CORE Fellows, Jeresneyka Rose worked alongside Southeast Colorado Springs residents during the transformation of Panorama Park, helping ensure that community voices guided the reimagining of an important neighborhood space. Following her fellowship, Jeresneyka continued serving communities as an artist, educator, and advocate. In 2026, we were thrilled to welcome her back as Program Manager for Belonging Colorado Schoolyards, bringing her experience and passion for community-centered engagement into a permanent leadership role. Her return illustrates the lasting impact CORE was designed to achieve: creating pathways for local leaders to build careers that strengthen their communities and shape the future of outdoor access.
Belonging Colorado Jeresneyka now helps lead Belonging Colorado Schoolyards, a partnership between TPL and Belonging Colorado that advances community schoolyards as places for connection, participation, and relationshipbuilding. Through grants, coaching, and peer learning, the program supports organizations working to bring families, students, and neighbors together across differences and strengthen community life through shared outdoor spaces. From volunteer stewardship projects and cultural celebrations to community meals and schoolyard activities, the initiative builds on the same philosophy at the heart of CORE: the strongest public spaces are created when communities have both a voice and a stake in their future.
Jeresneyka Rose at Panorama Park. PHOTO BY ABIGAIL L AFLEUR-SHAFFER
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T R U ST F O R P U B L I C L A N D I N C O LO R A D O A N D T H E S O U T H W E ST
Honoring Culture While Strengthening Community At their best, community schoolyards reflect the people and cultures they serve. They provide space for learning, recreation, and gathering while strengthening connections among students, families, communities, and the places they call home. This year, Trust for Public Land and Santa Fe Indian School celebrated the opening of the first phase of a newly transformed Tribal schoolyard in New Mexico. Developed through a participatory, community-centered design process, the schoolyard reflects Indigenous culture, promotes outdoor learning, and strengthens connections to land and place. Owned and operated by the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico, Santa Fe Indian School serves approximately 700 students on a 115-acre campus. Students helped envision a schoolyard that celebrates Indigenous foodways, culture, and environmental stewardship while creating opportunities for recreation and outdoor learning. The first phase introduced natural play structures and plantings of local trees and shrubs. It also helps address flooding that has periodically affected the campus, using timber donated by Taos Pueblo to redirect floodwater away from the schoolyard. The next phase will build on that foundation with an outdoor classroom; spaces for traditional Pueblo agriculture and foodways; new and improved areas for kickball, basketball, and volleyball; Indigenous art; and an outdoor kiln for the school’s Clay Mother pottery program, supporting both art and language learning. What began as a community vision is now a place where students can learn, families can gather, and Indigenous traditions can continue to thrive. Rooted in cultural knowledge and shaped by community voices, the Santa Fe Indian School’s yard will serve generations of students and families while serving as a powerful blueprint for future Tribal schoolyards throughout the Southwest and beyond.
Santa Fe Indian School students and community celebrate the opening of their new Tribal schoolyard in November 2025. PHOTOS BY THOMAS LOVATO
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Protecting the Places That Define Us Across the Four Corners, we work alongside communities and partners to protect the landscapes that support local economies, outdoor recreation, wildlife habitat, and quality of life.
SOARing in Colorado Springs In Colorado Springs, we continue advancing the Security, Open Space, and Agricultural Resilience (SOAR) initiative, an ambitious effort to conserve more than 100,000 acres critical to the region’s economy, agricultural heritage, outdoor access, and military readiness.
Saguaro National Park In Arizona, Trust for Public Land continued its decadeslong effort to protect and connect lands in and around Saguaro National Park. In 2025, TPL acquired and transferred 20 acres for permanent inclusion in the park, advancing a long-standing community vision of connecting Saguaro National Park with Sweetwater Preserve and other protected lands.
A major focus of the initiative is Bohart Ranch, a 48,000-acre landscape east of Colorado Springs that supports working ranchlands, native grasslands, wildlife habitat, and military training operations. To date, more than 11,900 acres have been acquired and protected, helping preserve a landscape that is central to the identity and resilience of the region.
The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse of the four U.S. deserts, but its sensitive habitats are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, invasive species, industrial expansion, and urban development. Protecting individual parcels—including private properties surrounded by public land—helps reconnect fragmented landscapes, preserve wildlife corridors, and give species room to move and adapt. This acquisition marks TPL’s sixth project with Saguaro National Park since 2016 and contributes to more than
As Colorado Springs grows, SOAR is helping ensure that the landscapes, livelihoods, and outdoor traditions that define the region remain part of its future.
2,350 acres protected in and around the park. These efforts strengthen wildlife connectivity, expand outdoor access, and help preserve one of the nation’s most iconic desert landscapes.
Upper Sullivan’s Canyon When Upper Sullivan’s Canyon faced the threat of private ownership, climbers, community members, and conservation partners came together to protect one of western Arizona’s most beloved recreation destinations.
Saguaro National Park. PHOTO BY ISTOCK
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Working alongside the Prescott Climbers Coalition and the Town of Chino Valley, TPL helped preserve a landscape known for its unique basalt formations, cultural history, outdoor recreation opportunities, and connection to the Verde River watershed. Today, Upper Sullivan’s Canyon remains a place where visitors can climb, hike, birdwatch, and explore centuries of human history.
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Building Momentum for the Future Conservation Finance Major conservation challenges require long-term solutions. Trust for Public Land’s Conservation Finance team helps communities create sustainable funding for parks, trails, land and water conservation, wildfire resilience, and outdoor access. In Colorado, TPL and coalition partners are working toward the ambitious goal of securing $500 million for conservation, parks, trails, and open space by the end of 2027. The growing Colorado Land & Water Coalition supports a proposed statewide measure that would generate recurring funding for wildfire prevention, land and water conservation, outdoor recreation, and access to nature—without raising taxes.
Bonneville Shoreline Trail - Mill Creek, UT.
5,000 Projects and Counting! This year, TPL completed its 5,000th land protection project at Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain State Park. When more than 500 acres adjacent to the park faced development pressure, TPL and its partners acted to protect the land and expand one of Colorado’s most popular outdoor destinations. The project preserves scenic landscapes, strengthens wildlife connectivity, and creates opportunities for future recreation near one of the state’s fastest-growing communities. Five thousand projects later, we remain focused on the goal that has guided us for more than five decades: creating a future where everyone can experience the joys and benefits of the outdoors.
PHOTO BY ISTOCK
Bonneville Shoreline Trail For more than two decades, TPL has worked alongside partners to advance the vision of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, a transformative recreation corridor along Utah’s Wasatch Front. This year, we launched the BST Toolbox Project, a new planning effort designed to identify priority trail gaps, guide future acquisitions, and accelerate progress toward completing the trail.
Palladium Foundation Rocky Mountain Fund The Palladium Foundation Rocky Mountain Fund continues to support conservation efforts across Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Thanks to dedicated philanthropic partners, the fund is helping protect landscapes, strengthen communities, and connect more people to the outdoors throughout the Mountain West.
The project brings together land ownership information, environmental data, cultural considerations, and acquisition planning into a unified framework. TPL is also continuing efforts to advance National Scenic Trail designation, which could unlock additional resources and partnership opportunities. This momentum builds upon more than two decades of conservation partnerships and accomplishments in Utah. In recognition of TPL’s lasting contributions to conservation and outdoor access across Utah, the Wasatch Mountain Club honored us with its 2026 Conservation Award. TRUST FOR PUBLIC L AND IN COLOR ADO AND THE SOUTHWEST
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THANK YOU for helping create parks, protect special places, and connect more people to the outdoors throughout Colorado, the Southwest, and beyond.
COLORADO AND THE SOUTHWEST ADVISORY BOARD Dennis Carruth, Chair
Steve Coffin
Beverly Griffith
Chris Miller
Jonathan Adelman
Greg Felt
Allegra “Happy” Haynes*
Kimberley Sherwood
Tara Alderfer
Anna Forkner
Scott Ingvoldstag
* Also a member of TPL’s
Dr. Kara Buckley
Ken Gart
Peter Kirsch
National Board of Directors
Jim Petterson Vice President, Mountain West Region jim.petterson@tpl.org
Join us Your gift ensures everyone has access to the outdoors. Every park we create, schoolyard we transform, trail we extend, and landscape we protect is thanks to supporters like you.
Angela King Director of Philanthropy, Colorado and the Southwest angela.king@tpl.org 3333 Larimer St Denver, CO 80205
tpl.org/donate
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