Tour 2: Gustav Swanson Natural Area

Fort Collins is located where several ecozones, or large-scale ecosystems, meet. Here in northern Colorado, the mountains meet the plains and the river meets the prairie, and in these ecozone boundaries, wildlife thrives. Bears, mountain lions, and golden eagles, great blue herons, deer, and elk, big horn sheep, bison, and prairie dogs, locusts, beavers and rainbow trout – all these animals have called this landscape home, and many still do. For most of the region’s history, the land was far more populated by wildlife than by people.

Today, you’re very lucky if you happen to spot a deer or golden eagle in the middle of town, and you’re more likely to see a squirrel or raccoon. However, amid the offices, intersections and housing developments, there are pockets of natural spaces where the creatures that used to call all of Fort Collins home can still be found. Gustav Swanson Natural Area, just blocks away from Old Town Fort Collins, is one of those places.

People have been enjoying what is now Gustav Swanson Natural Area since 1887, when a private company purchased the land to create a “park and pleasure grounds” for the public. Later, the land was used as an archery range, a treatment plant, and then a city dump before becoming a Natural Area in 1988. Today, Gustav Swanson Natural Area is home to 180 plant species, 46 bird species, 9 mammal species, 4 amphibian species and 3 fish species – not bad for a little under 12 acres in the middle of downtown Fort Collins!

Photo by Karl Manderbach

Gustav Swanson, Pioneering Conservationist

Born in 1910, the same year the Junior Audubon Club was formed, perhaps Gustav Swanson was destined to become one of the country’s leading ornithologists and conservationists. Growing up on a farm in Minnesota surrounded by wildlife probably didn’t hurt either.

Swanson belonged to a generation of naturalists that came of age when the ideas of modern environmental ethics and wilderness conservation were just beginning. Going to school for degrees in education and then a doctorate in Zoology, Swanson worked and taught in the field of wildlife management throughout the country, eventually heading the newly established Department of Conservation at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1948. It was in New York that Swanson and his family began practicing “wild husbandry,” creating mini-wildlife habitats on his 88 acre farm and using the wild populations that lived on them as an outdoor classroom for his conservation students.

In 1966, Swanson and his family came to Fort Collins so Swanson could work as the head of the Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology at Colorado State University (CSU). While at CSU, Swanson continued his tradition of using outdoor wildlife habitats, becoming a strong figure in the ongoing national wildlife conservation and preservation movements. Even after Swanson stopped teaching at CSU, his drive to teach people how to successfully and practically coexist with nature continued. After retiring, Swanson and his wife, Dr. Evadene Burris Swanson, created the first “Backyard Wildlife Habitat” in Fort Collins to be recognized by the National Wildlife Federation, supporting a tradition of environmental stewardship that continues in the Fort Collins community today. Swanson was also instrumental in focusing community attention on the importance of the Cache la Poudre River and wetlands to the natural heritage of Fort Collins. In 1988, he was recognized for his work in the establishment of the 12-acre Gustav Swanson Natural Area—a “living research site" for studying alternative landscaping and management methods.