Longtime Breckenridge, CO local works behind-the-scenes to protect Summit’s land

Leigh Girvin’s brand of local environmentalism is inseparable from her strong ties to the land.

Other conservation advocates focus on wildlife or water quality from an abstract sense of right and wrong. Girvin, who moved to Breckenridge, Colorado as a kid 43 years ago, points to land protection, especially in her beloved Summit County, as the foundation that encompasses all environmental issues.

“The land is the only thing that matters,” she said, referencing a line from “Gone with the Wind,” one of her favorite books. “Everything is interconnected, and it all ties back to the land.”

Girvin, 53, of Breckenridge, worked her last day on Tuesday, March 31, as executive director of the Continental Divide Land Trust, a nonprofit that holds conservation easements to forever protect land. A local conservation advocate for decades, she led the nonprofit for the last 13 years.

Summit County would look radically different without her often unheralded efforts against what she called the relentless juggernaut of development. “Land conservation is about what you don’t see. You don’t see the condos, you don’t see the roads, you don’t see the highways,” she said.

They might notice the meadows and the streams, the birdsongs and the elk bugles. But they don’t see the tireless work of people like Girvin.

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