Author: Rachel Gabel

Rachel Gabel Wolves were not on the agenda of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting last week. There was nothing to discuss. Except there were some sharp comments from Commissioner Tai Jacober criticizing the decision to release the Copper Creek pack into Pitkin County. Jacober, a rancher from Carbondale, said the agency went against…

Rachel Gabel If there are faster ways to disseminate rumors around rural America than farm radio and Facebook, I don’t know what they are. Nebraska-based radio pundit Trent Loos heard rumblings the nationally recognized agriculture education program at Wiggins (Colorado) High School was on the chopping block and took to the air, encouraging stakeholders to…

Rachel Gabel Gov. Jared Polis signed SB25-128 “Agricultural Worker Service Providers Access Private Property”, into law last week at Marc Arnusch Farms near Keenesburg. It was a righting of a major wrong brought in 2021 as part of SB21-087, “Agricultural Workers’ Rights”, known as the Farmworker Bill of Rights. The portion of the 2021 law,…

Rachel Gabel Much of the land around Vail that is now developed as resorts, ski slopes and golf courses first belonged to sheep ranchers with Greek roots. By the 1960s, development was pushing them out of the valley and activists were bemoaning the negative effect on wildlife that took place when livestock grazing was replaced…

Rachel Gabel By placing one of his cronies in control of the State Land Board’s 2.8 million surface acres and 4.0 million mineral estate acres, the last thing standing between Gov. Jared Polis and his renewable energy goals — production agriculture — can be hamstrung. His appointment of Nicole Rosmarino as the new SLB director will solidify…

Rachel Gabel Jessica Presso is one of the proponents of the recently filed initiative, Wildlife and Ecosystem Conservation Commission, that required 19 pages of memo from the legislative services team to critique. That’s impressive for a title that should be a single-subject title voters can understand and cast a vote on either as a yes…

Rachel Gabel When it comes to criminal cases, only 5% end in dismissals, making the dismissal of federal theft of government property charges against Charles and Heather Maude all the more incredible. The Maudes are a young ranching family from Caputa, South Dakota, and the two were indicted separately about a year ago, forcing them…

Rachel Gabel Carnivores, cortisol and crap seem a fitting starting point when seeking to quantify the financial losses to livestock producers by wolves. A Wyoming-based outdoorsman recently compared placing wolves in Colorado to placing a trout in a bathtub, an analogy I just can’t get out of my mind. The same analogy could be used…

Rachel Gabel Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commissioners Jessica Beaulieu and Jack Murphy were sued by Safari Club and the Sportsmen’s Alliance for violating open meetings laws. The state of Colorado has now reached a settlement with the groups after Beaulieu and Murphy penned an opinion piece supporting a ballot measure to ban “trophy hunting” of…

Rachel Gabel I’m a sucker for metaphorical layers in lyrics, being a dealer in words myself. When Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, the chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources who isn’t particularly known for his zingers, compared the Endangered Species Act to the Hotel California, where “you can check out any time you like,…