It is time to break out those hiking boots and mountain bikes – natural trails around Durango are opening after an above-average winter for snowfall kept them closed longer than expected.
Signs restricting access to Twin Buttes, Horse Gulch and Dalla Mountain Park will be removed Wednesday, allowing residents and visitors to access the miles of natural trails around Durango.
Conditions on trails are expected to be fair after a couple of wet days that may have made a mess of paths that stayed dry last summer, said Mary Monroe Brown, executive director of Trails 2000, a Durango-based nonprofit that builds and maintains trails.
But it was hard to say Tuesday what condition may exist on trails – even Trails 2000 employees were barred from accessing them during the wildlife closure, Monroe Brown said. Up-to-date conditions, reported by Trails 2000 employees and volunteers, will be posted on the Trails 2000 website.
Trails in open spaces around the city were closed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the federal Bureau of Land Management all winter to avoid disturbing wildlife stressed by the lack of vegetative food, Monroe Brown said.
The trails were scheduled to open April 16, but wildlife managers extended the closure because heavy snow kept animals from venturing up slopes for food, Brown said.
“Because there is such a high volume of snow in the high country, there’s probably still wildlife down here who were foraging,” Monroe Brown said.
Animals, particularly big game like deer and elk, rely on nutrients eaten over the summer and stored in their bodies to survive through the winter. When wildlife flees from humans or their pets on a trail in their habitat, they burn calories in excess.
The closures are particularly beneficial to pregnant deer and elk, which stand a better chance of survival without human interaction over the winter, according to the BLM.
“When animals flee due to disturbances caused by people, calories are used that are needed to survive through the rest of the winter,” the BLM said about Durango’s wildlife closures. “The closure areas prohibit all public access until conditions allow for wildlife to move back to higher elevations.”
bhauff@durangoherald.com
