Colorado Water Legislative Forecast | Audubon

Colorado’s 2026 legislative session kicked off this month—and it’s beginning underneath a dry winter sky and a good finances, creating robust circumstances on the bottom  and difficult choices on the Capitol. With a historic low-snowpack and a gradual begin to winter, the stakes for rivers, wetlands, and the birds and communities that depend upon them are clear. On the similar time, Colorado lawmakers are navigating an estimated $850 million state finances shortfall , which is able to make prioritization and partnership much more important. Audubon’s water priorities this session are centered on outcomes that assist birds and the wetlands, streams, and rivers all of us want—and on bringing folks collectively to seek out sturdy, workable options.

Colorado River Negotiations

Colorado is deep into the Colorado River negotiations  for practically two years with little seen progress. On this period of aridity, the perfect path ahead is flexibility and flexibility—the power to reply to hydrologic extremes, defend important environmental assets, and maintain communities complete.

The subsequent milestone is evident: if the seven Colorado River Basin states (AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, UT, and WY) can agree on a river administration plan by the federal February 14, 2026 deadline, Audubon will work with companions to assist Colorado succeed. We’re hopeful the states can attain settlement and keep away from authorized fights—as a result of in a courtroom, problem-solving and compromise are changed by authorized positioning, and the outcomes are sometimes worse for each communities and the river.

As we navigate this, we’ll maintain emphasizing what’s typically neglected: wholesome rivers and wetlands are important pure infrastructure for communities, and engines of the financial system. They stabilize flows, enhance water high quality, and maintain habitats that birds and folks depend on throughout the Basin.

Water Funding

With fiscal stress mounting, Colorado should use restricted {dollars} properly. In 2026, we’ll advocate for water funding insurance policies and investments that ship measurable resilience outcomes—tasks that cut back threat and supply a number of advantages, together with drought resilience, wildfire restoration, water high quality safety, and habitat for birds and different wildlife.

Audubon will work with companions to guard and strengthen funding pathways that assist:

• Wetlands and riparian restoration, with sensible implementation capability to help with planning and work on-the-ground, to construct drought, hearth, and flood resilience.
• Watershed-scale restoration efforts that defend water provides and habitat.

In lean years, we want commonsense investments that maintain Colorado adaptable.
 

Watershed Well being

Watershed well being is the throughline from headwater forests to the rivers that maintain our communities and migratory birds. A dry winter and low snowpack elevate the stakes for headwater forest well being, post-fire restoration, and floodplain operate—as a result of when landscapes are degraded, runoff comes sooner and dirtier, impacts are extra harmful, and late-season flows shrink

This session, we may also be very clear on protection: Colorado ought to defend current pathways that assist stream and wetland restoration. Throughout the state, restoration companions are already demonstrating early successes that enhance habitat, cut back erosion, rebuild floodplain operate, and assist working lands. These are win-win tasks, and we’ll proceed to work to tell the water group about these win-wins and advocate for the insurance policies and applications that assist and permit such work to proceed.   

Lastly, we’ll assist the rollout of Colorado’s Beaver Conservation and Administration Technique in a means that’s science-based and workable. Colorado Parks & Wildlife expects to publish the ultimate Beaver Conservation and Management Strategy  in late February 2026, and getting implementation proper will take many partnerships— collaborating with businesses, landowners, water managers, and practitioners so advantages could be realized whereas addressing official water and highway infrastructure administration wants to handle and cut back widespread beaver-human conflicts. 

What this implies for birds: After we defend watershed well being from forest to river—headwaters, riparian corridors, and wetlands—we defend the locations the place birds focus within the arid West: breeding habitat, migration stopovers, and the drought refuges that maintain populations in robust years. Species just like the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher and Yellow Warbler depend on dense, related riparian habitat tied to dependable floor water and saturated soils, whereas Colorado’s high-country streams assist birds just like the American Dipper, which relies on chilly, clear, flowing water year-round—and on rivers that keep related and resilient via drought and disturbance.

We’ll share motion alternatives all through the session so you’ll be able to lend your voice to defending and strengthening Colorado’s wetlands, streams, and rivers. When you haven’t already, be part of our Western Water Action Network  to remain within the loop and able to act when it counts.