Nederland Appoints Guardians for Boulder Creek Watershed
The town of Nederland, Colorado, located in the mountains west of Boulder, has appointed two guardians on behalf of Boulder Creek and its watershed, whose rights they previously recognized via town resolution. This move is being celebrated as the first time people have been appointed legal guardians for Nature within the U.S.
Earth Law Center worked with our friends Save The World’s Rivers (formerly Save the Colorado) and Boulder Rights of Nature on the town's foundational Rights of Nature resolution, which passed in 2021 (with similar resolutions subsequently adopted by the Colorado towns of Ridgway, Grand Lake, and Lyons). Since then, Save the World’s Rivers Executive Director Gary Wockner and Nederland residents have been working to give the creek and watershed a voice in local governance, which is now put into effect.
The town’s board of trustees created a guardian subcommittee consisting of two individuals, the first two being local residents Alan Apt, an author and former board member, and Rich Orman, a retired lawyer. The guardians are tasked with writing a report at least once every 12 months “on the health and state of the Creek and Watershed,” to include summary indicators for the watershed such as water quality, wildlife habitat and corridors, recreation and visitor impacts, wetlands protection standards, native species and noxious weeds, stormwater management, and impacts of industrial and commercial activities on the creek and watershed.
The guardians are further tasked with including in their report “recommendations for advancing and ensuring the welfare and sustainability of the Creek and Watershed,” with reference to opportunities for:
● Improving water quality
● Enhancing healthy wildlife corridors and habitat, and wildlife protection
● Increasing wetlands protection and wetlands restoration
Having seen communities in Florida and Ohio pass Rights of Nature laws in recent years only to have them preempted by state-level legislation, Nederland decided to take a measured approach, in part by not giving the guardians the authority to sue or be sued on behalf of the creek or watershed.
“We’re working within the confines of the Colorado and U.S. legal systems, and nibbling away at them,” said Wockner in this Inside Climate News article on the new measure. “It’s absolutely a long game, but there are a lot of people who think this way.”
U.S. law has long recognized the need for legal guardians to represent the interests of, for example, children and incapacitated adults, and it has extended “personhood” to corporations and other non-human entities, but the Earth law application of these legal concepts in the U.S. has faced stiff headwinds. Nevertheless, the precedents set by other countries and Indigenous nations, as well as growing interest from communities in widely varying areas, demonstrates their workability and promise.
With endless possibilities of who can serve as a guardian or proxy for Nature, and how, in jurisdictions that acknowledge personhood or rights for Nature, one of the biggest takeaways from Nederland’s Boulder Creek guardianship structure is that we can learn by doing. We are excited to see where this goes and hope it inspires other governments in Colorado and beyond to take similar measures.
