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…
There are about 2,250 toxic mine sites in Colorado, according to Mark Rudolph, project manager at the Summitville Mine Superfund cleanup site. These toxic waste-emitting mines have degraded landscapes throughout the state, but the EPA’s Superfund program has proved effective in remediating these sites and giving them new futures. At Summitville, mine operators poured liquid…
DENVER- At the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge, site managers routinely spray pesticides with unknown effects on the site where a $2.1 billion chemical cleanup took place. “We spent billions of dollars to cleanup a chemical and now we are spraying another,” said David Lucas, manager of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge. The refuge…
COMMERCE CITY–Surrouded by a city undergoing a population boom, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is a place for both wildlife and people. It may also be the birthplace for the next generation of conservationists. The refuge plays a key role in the conservation of wildlife including migratory birds and endangered black-footed ferrets. It’s…
DENVER –This wildlife refuge along Colorado’s Front Range just north of Denver is an emerging oasis for black footed ferrets and bison where rangers also promote conservation to children. The 15,000-acre refuge once was home to a chemical weapons factory in WWII. Later shell leased the land and produced pesticides including DDT. Then in the Cold War, the army produced nerve agent called sarin, a deadly gas. The place…
SUMMITVILLE- The historic mine here, sits 12,000 feet elevation with open scars from over a century of mining. Like thousands of abandoned mines around western Colorado, the remanences of the boom and bust gold rush are crippled mine camp houses and informative plaques about mining’s glory days. The land was first used by the Ute…
