conservation
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Conservation, ranching and the land always win | GABEL
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Sue Anschutz Rodgers sat in her downtown Denver office, far from her beloved Crystal River Ranch, but surrounded by photos of the ranch and a wall of plaques, photos and newspaper clippings evidencing her long support of young people in agriculture and the National Western Stock Show. She is all class in winter white, a…
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Cloning: The latest in black-footed ferret recovery in Colorado and beyond
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For years, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers have driven out to the eastern plains in the middle of the night, a predator’s hunting hours, in hopes of spotting a pair of green, gleaming eyes. Officers are expected to do just that sometime next year, out on a sweeping ranch near Lamar. This is where they…
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Federal judge rules government violated law in authorizing Gross Reservoir expansion, plunging project into uncertainty
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A federal judge concluded on Wednesday that the government violated multiple laws when it permitted Denver Water to undertake a massive expansion of its Boulder County reservoir, throwing the project’s future into question. In a detailed order, U.S. District Court Senior Judge Christine M. Arguello acknowledged there was evidence of Denver Water’s need for a…
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Protection or overreach? In western Colorado, national monument proposal ignites controversy
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Sean Pond was around a small town of his native western Colorado when he spotted a man in a blue ball cap. Above the bill were the words at the center of an ongoing controversy: “PROTECT THE DOLORES.” Pond approached the man. “He said someone at REI just gave it to him and he liked…
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Bureau of Land Management’s do-over search for environmental records satisfied law, court says
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Two years after she ordered the Bureau of Land Management to redo its search for documents in response to an environmental group’s open records request, a federal judge now agrees the agency largely complied with the order. U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix originally found BLM did not fulfill its obligations under the Freedom of…
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Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes grows with land roamed by bison
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Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is now bigger. That’s thanks to the transfer of 9,362 acres of surrounding ranch land, as recently celebrated by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and National Park Service Director Chuck Sams during a visit to the San Luis Valley. The Nature Conservancy sold the large portion…
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Federal ideas reflect little progress toward solving Colorado River crisis
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The clock is ticking for the Colorado River, but solutions on how to save the river basin, which provides water to 40 million people in seven states and Mexico, still appears to be elusive, at least from the federal government. However, proposed solutions are starting to bubble up through Colorado agriculture’s community, including projects that…
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Dozens of state leaders urge Biden to preserve Colorado’s public lands
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Dozens of state politicians and local leaders wrote to President Joe Biden, urging him to use his executive powers to protect Colorado’s public lands by designating Camp Hale and a surrounding mountain range as a national historic monument. Camp Hale and the Tenmile Range are where the 10th Mountain Division trained for mountain and winter…
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Western cities are already learning to live with less water
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Urban areas in the West and water districts are working to conserve water from the Colorado River Basin as it continues to face its driest 22-year stretch in more than 100 years. (Video by Skyler Ballard) Mike Petkash’s shaggy black dog Brandy bounded across his backyard chasing after a tennis ball. She leapt up the…
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New initiative in western Colorado seeks answers to changing ways of sandhill cranes
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Well known are the sandhill cranes that grace the southern San Luis Valley every spring. Lesser known is the smaller population that migrates across the Western Slope, around Delta and Montrose. And more mysterious to experts on that side of Colorado: reasons for fewer sightings of the majestic birds over the past couple of decades,…
