DENVER – Land conservation is a tricky business, and everything is a trade off, according to David Lucas, manager of The Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, outside metro Denver. Native insects most likely perish from the chemical-laden flea spray wildlife managers use, but the endangered mammals that live on the refuge stay plague-free. The…
COLORADO SPRINGS–As the first snows of winter blanket Colorado and launch ski season, ski industry leaders are facing a difficult challenge: a finite number of years left for people to get out and ski powder. The industry draws 56.5 million people, who spend $8.4 billion a year, to ski resorts around the United States, according…
CRESTONE– Colorado’s ceaseless efforts to get people outdoors and develop a recreation industry may be ruining ecosystems. In one high mountain valley, San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council (SLVEC) director, Christine Canaly, declares that enough is enough. If ecosystems collapse, Canaly argued in a recent interview, then both humans and other wildlife will be hurt.…
DENVER– The South Platte River is a critical resource in the Denver area over the past 50 years it has endured massive change development and abuse. But fishing groups, the Greenway Foundation and water users say they are committed to restoring natural processes. The Chatfield Reservoir built in response to a massive flood which deluged Denver in 1965, holds water that could be released to simulate fluctuating flows. What’s the incentive? Property values…
DENVER — During World War II, the U.S. Army used the Rocky Mountain Arsenal to produce chemical weapons. After 25 years of cleanup and remediation, it became a national wildlife refuge. Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tests pesticides on the refuge for Bayer AG, one of the largest pharmaceutical corporations in the world.…
SAN LOUIS VALLEY — Employees work from dawn to dusk at Medano Zapata Ranch. They’re clad in cowboy boots. Denim jeans. Patagonia jackets. They look like they should be at a bar in Denver. Instead, they’re young millennials going back to the land. “We’re training the next generation,” said Duke Phillips III, the ranch manager.…
DENVER- The Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge sits 8 miles northeast of downtown Denver. Prairie dogs sit watchfully on their hind legs while deer and bison keep their heads down mowing the prairie covering 15,988 acres. The skyline and smokestacks towering in the distance remind visitors of their proximity to urban life. This contrast…
GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK – Sand rips over 300 feet tall dunes in the San Luis Valley. You look down and feel as if you’re in a desert on Mars. You look up and see jagged snowy peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range. Protecting this unique ecosystem in a changing future is…
ROCKY MOUNTAIN ARSENAL REFUGE – Just outside of downtown Denver sits land that looks as if it has never been settled. Mammoth buffalo graze the plains, herds of deer seek shelter from the beating sun under trees, lone coyotes scavenge for prey, and prairie dogspeer up from holes. All the while skyscrapers and industrial emissions…
SUMMITVILLE — On a cold, windy day in late October, snow blanketed the remains of an industrial gold mine above timberline in the Rocky Mountains. It fell on the jagged, step-like grooves of a reconstructed mountainside. It covered a small bump in the landscape—the only evidence of cyanide waste, now sheathed underground in plastic. It…
