Gilpin County adopts 2025 Community Wildfire Protection Plan

Gilpin County commissioners on Feb. 11 adopted the county'wide 2025 Community Wildfire Protection Plan, a multi-agency, grant-funded roadmap intended to guide future mitigation projects and grant applications.

The plan, introduced by Jennifer Cook of the Office of Emergency Management on behalf of the sheriff's office, summarizes wildfire risk across the county, includes a watershed risk assessment and an evacuation-route risk analysis, and contains a more visual story map to help residents review findings. "There is a story map, and we'll make sure we have a link on our website to that for folks to just kind of go through and more it's more visual, lots of maps, some general watershed risk assessment," Cook said.

Commissioners praised the plan and the many organizations that contributed to it, including the Colorado State Forest Service, U.S. Forest Service, Clear Creek Watershed and Forest Health Partnership, Boulder Watershed Collective, local power companies and local fire and watershed stakeholders. Cook and commissioners noted the plan was developed with public input, including two public events and opportunities for review and comment.

The plan was supported in part by a U.S. Forest Service grant; commissioners said the grant covered a significant portion of the cost of producing the plan and that it creates a foundation for future grant applications and programming. County staff said several suggested edits were limited to the introduction and would be incorporated into the final version.

The board voted 3-0 to adopt the plan. The county said it will link the story map and final plan on the county website and on partner pages as appropriate.

The plan provides a technical and programmatic framework for future mitigation work, but commissioners and staff reiterated that individual projects will still require separate project-level approvals and funding decisions.