Rocky Mountain National Park supporter a loss in his retirement - ReporterHerald.com
Rocky Mountain National Park will say goodbye to one of its biggest supporters and protectors today.
Curt Buchholtz, who has been executive director of the Rocky Mountain Nature Association for the past 26 years, retires today.
The nonprofit organization he led was founded in 1931 to produce brochures for the park. By the time Buchholtz took over in 1985, it also offered classes and seminars as well as items for sale at park visitor centers.
But under his leadership it grew to become a means to organize people to protect the park, eventually starting significant fundraising efforts that generated more than $20 million to protect and improve the park.
The money has been used to buy land next to the park where development was threatening, including the Lily Lake area on the east side of the park and the Kawuneeche Valley on the west side. It was used to retain water rights for the popular Lily Lake.
Funding also went to build or rebuild more than 30 miles of trails, including creation of the park's first wheelchair-accessible trails.
Buchholtz led efforts to restore historic buildings and to create visitor centers at the Moraine Park Museum, Lily Lake and the park's west entrance. He also envisioned a visitor center at the Fall River entrance to the park, and worked with owners of a nearby business that had burned to create that visitor center on land just outside the park, persevering even when it took an act of Congress to allow a Park Service visitor center on private land.
And looking to the future, the Nature Association now is raising $10 million for its Next Generation Fund, an effort that aims to encourage coming generations to be good stewards for the park. That funding will pay for programs to inspire children to love, respect and protect nature.
Now he is turning over his responsibilities to the next generation.
"Stewardship is doing something important today that matters long after tomorrow," Buchholtz writes on the Nature Association's website, encouraging others to do what they can to help the park.
Though not many people will be able to contribute on the level Buchholtz did, his work through the years shows that people do not need to work directly for the National Park Service to help the park.
And Rocky Mountain National Park is better because of his stewardship.
30 Sep, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFLnunHvrAT-7VK1KpMteJ6UEol9Q&url=http://www.reporterherald.com/opinion/editorial/ci_19008173
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