Reduce Paths keep Color Shade ?

[StrongBeaver]

Any suggestions as how I can reduce the number of paths, yet still maintain the color shades as seen below.  I know parts are a little messy please ignore them.

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

The only thing that springs to mind is the intelligent path reduction tool in the VectorScribe plug-in. AI's own path reduction functions will only make this even more messy.

Mylenium