{"id":23321,"date":"2025-03-01T02:02:43","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T09:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/town-passes-resolution-in-support-of-mancos-conservation-district\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:34:11","slug":"town-passes-resolution-in-support-of-mancos-conservation-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/town-passes-resolution-in-support-of-mancos-conservation-district\/","title":{"rendered":"Town passes resolution in support of Mancos Conservation District"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jeff
Jeff Fowlds , natural resource technician for the Mancos Conservation District, right, talks to David Smilnak, basin salinity technician, at a stream in Mancos in August. Fowlds conducts monthly testing of riverbeds, riverbanks and stream water around Mancos to keep the Conservation District up to date on measures of the health of the Mancos watershed.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Mancos Town Board of Trustees on Wednesday, Feb. 26, passed a resolution to support the Mancos Conservation District and expedited a $30,000 allocation in light of recent federal funding cuts.<\/p>\n

The money comes from the town\u2019s general fund, and it\u2019s in addition to $35,000 it has already given the conservation district this year.<\/p>\n

Last year, the town awarded a total of $35,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really appreciate the partnership with the town,\u201d said Danny Margoles, the executive director of the Mancos Conservation District, at the meeting. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly valuable for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Feb. 14, the district received a termination letter for a $630,000 federal grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service that supported educational programs and ongoing projects.<\/p>\n

\"The
The termination letter the Mancos Conservation District received on Feb. 14 from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

That money also fully supported one position at the district \u2013 which it was forced to cut \u2013 and partially funds three others.<\/p>\n

Margoles said that the money from the town will help support the other three positions, which is \u201cimportant\u201d so they\u2019re able to keep staff that \u201cdo the community and agricultural producer-focused education and outreach work we had been completing through the grant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things like workshops, demonstrations and library lessons; in essence, to continue the work they had been doing all along.<\/p>\n

Even with the boost from the town, they\u2019ve cut back where they can and are being \u201cconservative with expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen one grant is frozen, it starts pulling pieces out of the house of cards,\u201d he said. \u201cIt makes doing work on the ground hard since we have to pull from other places to fill the gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because grants almost always require matching funds, and those matching funds have to come from somewhere: \u201cterminating the funds in one grant can impact executing deliverables with another grant.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NRCS money isn\u2019t the only money the district stands to lose.<\/p>\n

It also received a $1.8 million sub-award from the roughly $26 million of grant money the Southwestern Water Conservation District got in January.<\/p>\n

That money is up in the air now and was \u201cawarded but not contracted,\u201d so the conservation district didn\u2019t budget staff time for it. They did, however, \u201canticipate some of it in our annual budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

A $2.5 million WaterSMART grant from the Bureau of Reclamation is frozen money the conservation district had budgeted for, but that\u2019s threatened too.<\/p>\n

The district has already contracted and planned projects with that money, like three agricultural diversion upgrades that support fish passage in the river. It also set aside 650 acres of forest management for wildfire risk reduction, he said.<\/p>\n

Margoles said he\u2019s \u201coptimistic\u201d that the frozen grants will thaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to respond to the community\u2019s desires and goals,\u201d Margoles said. \u201cWe\u2019re just really appreciative of the relationship with the town.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

District reports a half-million dollars was cut from its budget<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,83,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78070,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23321\/revisions\/78070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23321"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}