Centuries before prospectors flooded Ouray, Colo. in search of silver and gold, Ute Indians discovered the town’s true treasure: natural hot springs. Today, people flock to Ouray for those same “sacred healing waters.” And on an immaculate day in October, so did I, as part of a jeep caravan that toured the tidy town’s geothermal […]
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A watershed proposal
Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River tumbles 80 miles from its high-alpine headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park down to the South Platte River on the plains below. The upper Poudre is the only designated wild and scenic river in the state – but after it exits Poudre Canyon, 90 percent of its flow is siphoned […]
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Apache trout swim ‘full stream’ ahead
It is a pre-meditated killing, cold-blooded in every sense. Before night descends, the conspirators make final calculations. The next morning, they return with the lethal poison. Hundreds die, but to one federal agency their deaths are not in vain – the victims are non-native fish, taken out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as […]
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Public lands precedent?
Recently, the Utah Bureau of Land Management cancelled an oil and gas lease sale, citing the need to further study the impact of drilling on wildlife habitat. Conservationists think the cancellation – the first in over 25 years – sets a national precedent for protecting wildlife habitat from energy leasing. But the BLM disagrees and […]
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Hatching a plan for sage grouse
In 1834, ornithologist John Townsend described flushing hundreds of grouse from the sagebrush as he rode through the Green River Valley, and in the 1880s, naturalist George Grinnell reported flocks of the birds darkening the skies near Casper. But by 1906, Wyoming’s sage grouse population was declining, and, except for a few short-lived rebounds, it […]
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The road more traveled
Trevor Leach remembers riding horses on Bald Knoll Road as a child in the 1920s. During the ’60s, Arlene Goulding and her kids used the route for hunting trips. The testimony of these Kane County residents helped the Bureau of Land Management piece together the history of Bald Knoll Road, which laces across public lands […]
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Losing their luster
In the 1850s, “gold fever” lured hopeful prospectors to Colorado, but left most disappointed. Now people still flock to the state in search of gold, but instead of precious metal, they look for bright yellow aspen leaves. This autumn, however, those gold seekers, like the disenchanted souls before them, may find a depressing development: Colorado’s […]
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Red Mountain miracle
In the late 1800s, some 3,000 people lived and worked in the Red Mountain Mining District near the top of Red Mountain Pass between Silverton and Ouray. Just about every acre was clear-cut, built upon or mined. Today, the miners are gone and aspen trees and tundra plants have reclaimed most of the area. The […]
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Free range
Livestock foraging on 160 million acres of public lands could roam more freely than ever, thanks to a recent policy change at the Bureau of Land Management. On Aug. 14, the BLM granted eight new “categorical exclusions,” designed to speed up the approval process for a slew of activities on public lands, including grazing, logging, […]
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The great American cat fight
Phantom cat of forest and desert, the jaguar slinks through its surroundings, an optical illusion of tawny, sun-dappled fur. It manifests and evaporates with hardly a trace amid the darkness of South American rainforests and the shattered canyons of the arid Southwest. By the 1980s, however, a century of predator control, hunting and habitat loss […]
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From weapons to wildlife
The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant was once known for making plutonium triggers for the much-feared nuclear bomb. Today, Rocky Flats is seeking a new reputation – that of a wildlife refuge, where deer, elk, mountain lions and even bald eagles can roam in peace. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency certified the completion of the […]
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Super rodents build super habitat
Faster than a speeding coyote, able to leap small cacti in a single bound — two “superhero” rodents, the kangaroo rat and the prairie dog, thrive amid the heat and dry sand of the desert Southwest. Each creature influences its environment to an extent that far outweighs its size – a real-life version of Mighty […]
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Pipe dreams
By the time endangered spring chinook reach the mouth of the Methow River, a tributary of the Columbia, in late summer, they have traveled 500 miles and passed nine dams in order to spawn. Upstream, the Chief Joseph Dam, which lacks fish passage, blocks further progress up the Columbia. The Methow’s forested watershed offers one […]
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Love for the clay-loving buckwheat
By 8 a.m., the July day felt like a scorcher. Waves of heat rippled along the western Colorado adobe hills, shriveling plants and baking the soil to a fractured crust that crunched with every step. Two white tents peeking from between golden hills could have been a mirage, if it weren’t for the sizzle of […]
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A dustup over weed control
They race across the West covering 2,300 acres each day, devouring an area the size of twenty Wal-Mart superstores every minute. They reduce habitat for wildlife, dry up water tables and intensify the threat of wildfires on 35 million acres of public land. As the area covered by invasive plants grows, so does the amount […]
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Getting fresh with the West’s groundwater
That shot of hot air coming from the bottom of the refrigerator may soon serve a greater purpose than just warming your feet. A new saltwater distillation technique that uses solar energy and waste heat from appliances could provide remote Southwestern communities with clean drinking water. Researchers Nirmala Khandan and Veera Gude of New Mexico […]
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Turning the tide
One hundred and fifty years ago, the Indian tribes of Washington state signed treaties that were supposed to guarantee, forever, their right to collect shellfish from the beaches of Puget Sound. Not long after, the government started selling off the region’s most productive tidelands to commercial shellfish growers, who were never notified of the Indians’ […]
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Utah plans to join the Wild and Scenic Rivers System
For almost 40 years, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act has been protecting beautiful rivers in states across the West – except two. Utah and Nevada have yet to place any rivers on the Wild and Scenic list, which was started in 1968 to protect outstanding rivers from development. For Utah, however, that could change […]
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The perils of secrecy
Is the wolverine, the country’s most
enigmatic predator, in danger of extinction, or just
misunderstood?
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Making a killing to save Arizona’s desert bighorn sheep
Updated June 30, 2007 A mountain lion paid the ultimate price for his gluttony after helping himself to too many servings of lamb and venison near southwestern Arizona’s Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Earlier this month wildlife officials killed the lion as it guarded the fresh carcasses of two desert bighorn sheep and a mule deer. […]