An Idaho rancher’s hopeful wolf plan for Colorado

Tracy Ross

Reporter

Sneak Peek of the Week

Wolves haven’t attacked Glenn Elzinga’s cattle in a decade. Can he help Colorado ranchers?

A room full of ranchers stared at Glenn Elzinga as he told them one of the things he knows about living wolves at the Glenwood Springs library Jan. 27.

“Guys, these wolves are a change agent,” he said. “They’re gonna change your lives forever.”

Elzinga owns a ranch in central Idaho. A group of local wolf advocates had invited him to Colorado.

He and his family — wife and seven daughters — run around 500 cattle on 46,000 acres over a 70-section range permit about 5 miles from the Frank Church Wilderness. It’s huge, empty country. A lot of sagebrush, scrub oak and willow.

He said he didn’t used to see many wolves in his area. But in 1987, he said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined Idaho had to accept wolves “because we had a few remnant populations running around, some up in the northern Panhandle crawling in from British Columbia and Alberta.”

“I had loggers working for me at the time. I used to be a timber guy, and they would come in and say, ‘I saw a wolf today.’ Everybody pretty much hated federal agents,” Elzinga said. “And I’d heard some of the ranchers up and down the ranges having problems. And some were having big problems because these packs were located where they were in 2005.”

Elzinga has a warm delivery — talking about how his daughter, Melanie, who’d joined him, looks so much better than he does on a horse. Or how the interns he hires — room and board only — to help out the family in the summer have serious body odor. That seemed to help the ranchers in the library room stretch their legs, lean back in their chairs, smile. Which seemed important, because some of them have been going through hell.

Most recently — just a few days before — a reporter had written a story saying some of the new batch of wolves Colorado Parks and Wildlife trapped in British Columbia had been dropped off on a ranch near Aspen. Armed guys in camo trespassed onto the property. The owners escorted them off and the reporter corrected the story. But things were still tense. A new sign went up: CATTLE RANCH. NO WOLVES. NO TRESPASSING.

And Elzinga’s message — aside from “now you’re in it” — was one CPW, which many ranchers distrusted, and wolf advocates, whom many despised, had been espousing.

He said for a while, he and his family had managed to keep most of their mama cows and calves but then one day, “like a light switch,” the wolves were onto them. The Elzingas lost about 35 animals over about eight years, Glenn said. “That was $6,600 in 2005, in today’s money, quite a bit more.”. And the wolves had come into his valley “in the smack dab of winter,” because they follow game, but fill their diets with newborn calves when they’re available.

And then he gave the ranchers the information they had come for, about how range riding — keeping people on horses with cattle while they’re grazing — had made it so he and his family haven’t lost a single cow or calf in a decade, which, of course, is the kind of outcome ranchers want.

But the work it has taken the Elzingas to get there is a whole other part of this story. Some people believe it will work, while others don’t. It’s a great story either way, but you have to circle back to read it in The Sun Friday. Now go eat some jerky.

The Playground

Colorado has a new climate literacy certificate

National politics may be hard to stomach right now, but if you’re a kid who likes to rack up certificates you can thank state legislators for birthing a shiny new one that’s gaining traction in schools across Colorado.

It’s a bill with bipartisan support that last year resulted in the Seal of Climate Literacy Diploma Endorsement.

State Sen. Chris Hansen and state Rep. Barbara McLachlan sponsored it.

Gov. Jared Polis signed it in the last legislative session.

And now Colorado educators can offer a diploma endorsement to high schoolers who have completed a science class and another course that touches on issues related to climate change, plus hands-on learning designed to help them be better prepared for college, the military or the workforce. Individual school districts will maintain control of the endorsement by determining which course work and other criteria are required for their students.

A handful of states from California to Maine have adopted various climate literacy requirements and programs, according to Allen Best in Big Pivots.

The World Health Organization in 2018 was calling climate change the paramount challenge of the 21st century.

And with the takedown President Donald Trump is currently enacting on environmental regulations, many who think the future can’t withstand a pause in carbon-reducing mandates are saying we have to do more to fight climate change than ever.

A poll that preceded the climate literacy seal said a scant 5% of Americans had high literacy about climate issues and, believe it or not, they were oldsters not youngsters.

Knowing this, Lyra Colorado, a Denver group focused on preparing youth to build economically and environmentally resilient communities through education, hit the acceleration button.

When Lyra was writing the legislation for the climate literacy seal, the students at the agriculture-focused STEAD charter school in Commerce City found out about it and wanted to help.

Lyra CEO Mary Seawell met with them and they told her the seal was applicable to their curriculum because “in so much of what they’re doing they’re thinking about climate and how you create more resilient careers and workforce opportunities around agriculture.”

“And they basically were like, we’re already doing all of this, and we think every one of our students actually qualifies for this, so we said we wanted support STEAD for being exemplar in the state for this new seal of climate literacy as an early adopter and their students came and testified in support of the seal,” she said.

Polis signed the bill in May and within a week, Seawell said Durango School District had awarded the endorsement to 16 students.

Lyra has been working with several other school districts in partnership with the Colorado Department of Education to help them give the opportunity to their students.

Seawell estimates as many as 21 other school districts may have the climate literacy seal by the end of the school year.

“I don’t want to say I know exactly where this is going to go, but the student demand piece is what we’re really interested in,” she said.

Read more in Colorado Sunday this weekend.

The Outsider has a podcast! Veteran reporter Jason Blevins covers the industry from the inside out, plus indulges in the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The Guide

Enviro groups boo Burgum

In more politics, The Mountain Pact, which works with local elected officials in over 100 mountain communities across the Western U.S., is booing out-the-gate secretarial orders by Trump’s Department of the Interior pick Doug Burgum, the former North Dakota governor known as a darling of the oil and gas industry.

Burgum’s decrees are included under the “Unleashing American Energy” order that “directs the removal of impediments imposed on the development and use of our Nation’s abundant energy and natural resources by the Biden administration’s burdensome regulations.”

“By removing such regulations, America’s natural resources can be unleashed to restore American prosperity,” the order says. “Our focus must be on advancing innovation to improve energy and critical minerals identification, permitting, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, distribution, exporting and generation capacity of the United States.”

All with the written goal of providing “a reliable, diversified, growing and affordable supply of energy for our Nation.”

But Mountain Pact says the orders could result in fewer protections “as part of the Trump Administration’s broader scheme to sell off our public lands, national heritage and outdoor access to the wealthy and well-connected that will block access to regular Americans for hiking, camping, hunting and fishing.”

That’s a mandate that the Interior Department complete “a mere 15-day initial review of all lands withdrawn from fossil fuel and mining development, including hundreds of national monuments, as a precursor to offering up more public land for oil and gas leasing,” Pact’s news release said.

Among those monuments are Bears Ears and Escalante-Grand Staircase in Utah, the protections for both of which have been the subject of ongoing litigation for years.

Some Colorado leaders are decrying Burgum’s orders. Greg Poschman, Pitkin County commissioner, said monuments “engender respect for the land and history,” preserve riparian areas and give Americans places to which they can “flee the heat.”

Other conservation groups had mixed reactions.

The National Wildlife Federation said “it looks forward to working with Burgum collaboratively” on “stewarding America’s lands and waters so wildlife can thrive, rural communities prosper, and all Americans can enjoy opportunities for hunting, fishing, hiking, and other outdoor recreation.”

And the Conservation Lands Foundation said Burgum, knowing “thousands of jobs and millions of people depend on funding from the Interior department to keep our water clean, protect communities from wildfires, and help endangered wildlife,” must “make it clear to Westerners that he will keep those funds moving,” even if the White House tries to cut them off.

In Their Words

Doug Schnitzspahn wants to open your container

After 15 years as editor of Elevation Outdoors magazine, veteran journalist Doug Schnitzspahn is launching a new endeavor. It’s a podcast called Open Container and it’s hosted by the Rock Fight Network. Schnitzspahn says it aims “to recast narratives about the outdoors,” and with him at the helm it should. “EO” is just one of many projects he’s helmed over his career that began at the plucky Hooked on the Outdoors, which ran from 1998 to 2006 and made one Colorado Sun reporter believe writing about outdoorsy stuff could be a career (Hint: It wasn’t Jason Blevins). So far he’s talked to Mount Everest-summiting industry leaders, ski-mountaineering political candidates, singers who found healing in the desert and writers who were Forest Service bosses. We caught up with him while he was sipping something. From a container.

Colorado Sun: Why are you doing this?

Schnitzspahn: I’ve always loved interviewing people. When those interviews go to print there’s still 80% of the conversation left on my recorder. In the podcast we can bring those full conversations to life.

Sun: Why does it matter?

Schnitzspahn: “Open Container” is about rethinking narratives, about sharing new voices and perspectives on the old outdoor story. There’s not enough of this in classic outdoor media.

Sun: What void does it fill in the outdoor industry?

Schnitzspahn: We want to be the NPR or Ezra Klein of outdoor podcasts. We’re not seeing that long conversational approach out there.

Sun: Favorite guest so far?

Schnitzspahn: All of them!

Sun: Of course. No, really.

Schnitzspahn: I really can’t choose one. You’ll have to listen to all of them.

Sun: Why does it feel like the outdoor industry is in a freefall?

Schnitzspahn: Two answers. On a business level, the industry is still trying to figure out how to go forward after COVID, which created a big boom and then dried up leaving manufacturers with overstock. And with an administration hell-bent against public lands and conservation in office, the industry feels powerless to protect what it cares about even more than business.

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