10-week-old Elizabeth Ann is being raised at a Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret breeding facility in Fort Collins. She’s a genetic copy of a ferret named Willa who died in 1988.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Mitigation “bank” near Greeley will offset wetland damage, meet Clean Water Act rules
Developers often dropped by unannounced at the Allely farm to ask if the family would consider selling their 70-acre property south of Greeley at the confluence of the Big Thompson and South Platte rivers. The answer was always no — the Allelys did not want their land, which had been in the family since in […]
Proposition 114 explained: What’s at stake with the effort to reintroduce gray wolves in Colorado
There are gray wolves to the north and gray wolves to the south. Colorado voters will decide in November whether the roaming predators should have a home in the middle of the country. Proposition 114 asks voters to direct Colorado Parks and Wildlife to reintroduce wolves in western Colorado beginning in 2023. The idea is […]
E-bike access riling Colorado public lands users as BLM plans rule to open non-motorized trails
After a couple days of hard hiking last fall, Tim Brass thought it was time to track down a motor. He was bowhunting in a trophy unit near Creede, and plenty of other hunters were using a motorized trail for swift access. His friend offered an e-bike. Brass got his elk. “Best hunting experience of […]
Could Colorado see the return of grizzlies, wolves and wild bison? Here’s how Montanans coexist with them.
KALISPELL, Montana — The latest grizzly bear killed by Montana officials was a relatively small, 278-pounder who ate 40 sheep and lambs in a two-week span, unfazed by four guard dogs and a range rider on a four-wheeler who tried to chase it away. The bear, euthanized July 19 outside of Great Falls, was the […]
This Colorado ranch-made-lab is turning beetle-kill trees into lumber in the name of forest health
Trinchera Blanca Ranch has three 14ers, large elk herds and thousands of acres of dying trees that are fueling a thriving business and new experiments in forest health management.
Interior Secretary Bernhardt came home to Colorado — and the swamp monsters were waiting for him in Vail
VAIL — Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is looking at every job in the Bureau of Land Management to determine two things: Is the role essential? And does it need to be based in Washington, D.C.? Once the newly confirmed secretary finishes answering those questions, he said, he can support the push to relocate the land […]
Colorado wildlife officials are reluctant to OK gray wolf reintroduction. So advocates want voters to do it.
After 40 years of battling to restore wolf populations in the Southwest, Northern Rockies and Great Lakes states, the legal, political and biological war for wolves is coming to Colorado. But this time it could be voters — not federal and state wildlife managers — pushing the only state in the Rocky Mountains without wolves […]
Superior weighs drilling moratorium, open space purchase to stop U.K. company’s Rocky Flats plan
Superior’s board of trustees, searching for a way to block a proposed plan to drill 31 wells in the community, edged toward a six-month drilling moratorium and purchasing the drill site for public open space at a meeting Monday night. “We are unified in our opposition to this,” Mayor Clint Folsom said at the work […]
First efforts to revive populations of Colorado’s state fish seemed fruitless. Then the greenback cutthroat trout surprised everyone — again.
HERMAN GULCH — It has been a long road — or river — to recovery for Colorado’s state fish, the greenback cutthroat trout. First, the species was considered extinct. Then it was rediscovered, reproduced and reintroduced to waterways across the state for decades, only for scientists to learn through genetic testing in 2012 that they […]