We held our board meeting in Elk Park on July 30 at the fire station. It was a great meeting with around 20 folks attending. We had reports from the county planner and county extension agent. We also had some good discussion about roads and their maintenance in the area. There were some concerns about weed spraying in the area as well.
I attended an Elkhorn Working Group field trip a couple of weeks ago. We looked at a fisheries project up on Muskrat Creek northeast of Boulder. They installed a dam several years ago in the creek just inside the Forest Service boundary as part of a road and bridge project. This dam keeps fish from getting any further up the stream allowing them to isolate the native cutthroat trout. Without this dam the cutthroat would eventually disappear because the more aggressive, non-native brook trout would choke them out. There are several streams in the Elkhorns with this same management to help save the native cutthroat trout species.
We had a very unusual mosquito season in Boulder this year. We treated the larvae more aggressively than normal at the beginning of the season which proved to be very effective. The wet and cold weather cycles during the normal mosquito season made it very difficult to schedule the adulticide spraying around town. We would have no mosquitoes for days and then they would be very active for one day. The mosquito crew spent a lot of time treating the grass in the parks around Boulder and the fairgrounds. This type of treatment seemed to be very effective as well. We learn a little more each year and seem to be getting more and more effective. I know we will never completely eliminate the mosquitoes, but I hope someday to be able to allow people to enjoy their time outside during mosquito season without getting carried away by these very hardy insects.
