Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About Buying Raw Land in Colorado Answers to frequently asked questions from people interested in buying mountain land and ranch property in beautiful southern Colorado. That's less than 33,312,000 acres. Presently, conservation easements cover more than 500,000 acres of Colorado with another 650,000 acres in the pipeline waiting for the money to arrive to pay the present owners for conservation easements on their land. These numbers reflect easements held by the Division of Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, etc.
Land held by non-profit conservation groups lowers that figure even more.
They bought this land so that it would not be developed. The Forest Service has extinguished all private claims within an 18,000 acre area of the San Isabel National Forest around the Spanish Peaks and created a National Wilderness Area. There are also negotiations going on to increase the size of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. And lest we forget, there's the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument created recently in western Colorado out of BLM and private land. In each of these situations, the local folks who have been leasing these lands and making their livings off of them are now cut off.