At the base of the foothills, not far from the burn-scar reminder of the massive High Park wildfire a decade ago, Scott Godwin enters a greenhouse where warm air whispers of early summer, white sprinkler pipes dangle overhead and blue sky shimmers through the translucent roof.

In this 6,400-square-foot space, one of three on the grounds of Colorado State University’s Foothills Campus, thousands of tree seedlings poke their heads from rows of cylinders neatly arranged by type — aspen, Colorado blue spruce, alder, Rocky Mountain juniper among them — and bask in climate-controlled bliss. 
Godwin points to a matrix of containers that have sprouted a riparian species called Geyer willow that eventually will be planted to stabilize stream banks along a new stretch of the Colorado River that bypasses the problematic Windy Gap Reservoir near Granby. It’s just the kind of project he hopes will revitalize not only the landscape, but the state’s 66-year-old seedling tree nursery that nearly became a casualty of the pandemic.

“Once COVID hit,” says Godwin, who started in September as the new nursery manager, “it just kind of knocked the legs out from underneath it.”

But in a time of surging wildfires that turn massive swaths of Colorado’s forests to ash, and beetle kill that has claimed still more woodlands, the roughly 135-acre Colorado State Forest Service Seedling Tree Nursery has reimagined its future, just as its crumbling infrastructure and outdated business model forced a reckoning. Now, bolstered by wide political support that already has delivered $5 million toward long-overdue improvements — with more potentially on the way in this legislative session — the nursery is positioning itself to take a new and expanded role in reforestation efforts.

Read the full story at The Colorado Sun.