SUMMIT COUNTY — Tom Kroening’s tireless advocacy for wildlife has been felt throughout the High Country, from residents troubled by backyard bears to county officials seeking to preserve the environment yet encourage growth.

Now after 12 years as the voice for wildlife and the nature-loving conscience of the community, the local game manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife has accepted a promotion that will take him to the state’s northeastern plains.

“It’s hard to leave,” Kroening said earlier this week, looking out over the Lower Blue from a trailhead near Ute Pass Road. “This is such an amazing area, and it’s been great working with the people here. One of the first things I noticed when I came from Fort Morgan is people are very conscious of wildlife. They want it here. There are many conservation-minded land owners.”

Many local development proposals were shaped by Kroening’s input, sometimes behind the scenes with written reviews and sometimes with well-timed comments at public hearings.

Those comments always included realistic and specific suggestions for ways to avoid or mitigate wildlife impacts, said county planning director Jim Curnutte.

“He’s a wonderful person,” Curnutte said. “He’s very passionate about protecting wildlife.”

Kroening said he was drawn to wildlife management at an early age.

“I had a good friend whose dad worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” he said, adding that he held some temporary wildlife jobs during college, while working toward a wildlife-biology degree at Colorado State University.

Married for 24 years with two sons in college, Kroening was born in Delta and raised in Broomfield and Arvada. He previously worked for the division in Fort Morgan, so his new post won’t be all new territory.



Development issues

The communities in Summit County have done a good job protecting wildlife and habitat the past decade, but it will require more hard work in the face of development pressure and population growth simply to maintain the status quo, Kroening said.

His persistence and calm, measured approach was exemplified in the battle over resort development at Keystone near the mouth of Jones Gulch.

Along with federal biologists, Kroening urged caution, citing the importance of the valley as a potential movement corridor for lynx and other sensitive forest animals.

“At the time, people had a hard time believing there were any lynx in the county,” said former Summit County Commissioner Gary Lindstrom.

Kroening led commissioners and planners on a site visit to explain how the narrow valley at the eastern end of the resort helped provide forest cover for shy critters trying to move between larger patches of good hunting and breeding territory.

The development proposal ultimately failed, and the land was turned into open space.

Since then, lynx have been spotted at Keystone several times, and it has become more clear that Jones Gulch probably is an important corridor for the rare cats.

“I worked with several wildlife managers over the years, and he was probably the quietest, most professional and most effective,” Lindstrom said, explaining how Kroening always took time to brief county officials on wildlife issues.

But Kroening’s most visible role in the community was dealing with day-to-day wildlife issues, in areas such as managing hunting and fishing activities and perennially campaigning to avoid encounters between humans and bears.

One of the biggest challenges has been educating newcomers who move to the mountains each year, he said.

“Changing peoples’ behavior is a huge deal,” he said. “It doesn’t happen quickly, but we’ve had some successes.”

As an example, the upper part of the Wildernest residential area has in recent years fully bought into the need for bear-proof trash bins.

As a result, the bear problems in that area have “practically gone away,” Kroening said.



Rare species

His work also has included challenges associated with protecting sensitive and rare species, including lynx and boreal toads.

During his time in the county, Kroening noted the decline of the boreal toad, most likely due to a widespread fungus that has devastated amphibian populations around the globe.

This past summer, Kroening’s toad surveys turned up only one solitary animal, high the North Fork valley, just below Arapahoe Basin ski area.

Kroening said that, if he were staying in Summit, one of his priorities would be to work with the state’s boreal-toad recovery team to try and re-establish a population in some of the historic breeding sites known to be free of the chytrid fungus.

“It will continue to take a commitment to wanting to have those species around, and to doing the research so we know what it takes,” Kroening said.

One regret, he said, may be the failure to broker an agreement between the Colorado Department of Transportation and local landowners to build a wildlife underpass on Colorado 9 between Frisco and Breckenridge.

Bears, deer elk and small mammals are killed regularly on that stretch of road, and Kroening had suggested that a wildlife crossing would improve connectivity and reduce roadkill.

The widening of Highway 9 will worsen the problem, he said. A herd of elk in the Ten Mile Range crosses the highway on its way to over-winter in South Park. Reducing connectivity means some of those animals will spend winter in harsher conditions, possibly resulting in more winter-kill, he said.

“Right now, maintaining the movement corridors is really important,” he said, explaining that many of the county’s native animals move east and west across the county, south of I-70.

Preserving the county’s wildlife especially means protection areas identified as key winter range — places where deer and elk can find some food even when snows are deepest.

Those areas include parts of Tenderfoot Mountain, the Soda Creek drainage, south-facing slopes in the Swan River valley, and parts of the Barton Creek drainage, near Breckenridge, Kroening said.

Beetle kill

As hard as it is to watch high country forests turn brown and gray, Kroening said there’s a bright side from a wildlife standpoint.

While the forest die-off will hinder some animals from using lodgepole forests in the short term, he said subsequent regeneration will lead to more diversity of vegetation and improved habitat in the long run.

The dense, over-mature stands of lodgepole are relatively sterile, providing little food for animals.

As aspen grow in some of those areas, it will improve forage for deer and elk, subsequently drawing larger predators, including bears, coyotes and even mountain lions, he said.

Currently, only 2 to 5 percent of the county’s forests are comprised of aspen. That is certain to increase in coming years, benefiting songbirds and providing the vegetation needed for beavers to build dams and lodges. That, in turn, could increase wetlands in some areas, adding to the overall environmental benefit of the lodgepole decline, he said.

“You can already see, in some of the open areas that died a few years ago, more brush growing in,” he said. “In general, that’s good for wildlife.”

Bob Berwyn can be reached at (970) 331-5996, or at bberwyn@summitdaily.com.