Nature and the Environment

Fracking documentaries square off in Boulder tonight

Filmmakers Josh Fox and Phelim McAleer are having quite an argument, but mostly on film and not in the same room. Both men will be in Boulder tonight at the same time to present documentaries that claim to expose the truth about using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in natural gas drilling. But t ... More >>

Video: How to understand what prairie dogs are saying -- and if they think you're fat

This week's cover story, "The Dogs of War," examines increased efforts to eradicate prairie dogs around the metro Denver area -- particularly in Stapleton, where developers and park managers have found it easier to poison the pesky rodents than relocate them. That's stirred up outrage from advocacy ... More >>

How a plan for open space near Stapleton became open season on prairie dogs

Save the Earth

Rocky Mountain Greenway announcement today had a rocky buildup

At 2 p.m. today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will join Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and Governor John Hickenlooper to make a "major announcement" about the Rocky Mountain Greenway, and also celebrate the recent expansion that added 1,200 acres of wildlife habitate to Rocky Flats ... More >>

Fracking moratorium in Boulder County extended to June, residents placated -- for now

With the public speaking out overwhelmingly against hydraulic fracturing in Boulder County, the board of commissioners voted unanimously to temporarily extend the existing moratorium on processing drill permits until June 10, 2013. And while the decision didn't please everyone, many saw it as a step ... More >>

Fracking opponents' horror stories exaggerated, says FrackNation director in town tonight

The hydraulic fracturing process involves pumping chemicals into the ground to free oil and gas reserves trapped in tight shale formations. The debate over fracking's environmental risks isn't all that different; it's become a battle to squeeze a few facts out of stubbornly entrenched forces, amid a ... More >>

Winging It

The conversion story in Promised Land is sometimes a hard sell

Fracking the North Fork: Protests pour in over BLM lease plan

When Colorado native son Ken Salazar became Barack Obama's Secretary of the Interior four years ago, it was widely expected that he would steer a more "balanced" course through the energy wars across the West, pulling back on the drill-baby-drill mantra of the Bush years. It hasn't worked out that w ... More >>

Controversy over fracking continues despite industry's best efforts to bury it

Fracking-regulations battle on federal lands heats up

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is on record as saying that hydraulic fracturing methods to extract oil and gas "can be done safely," but he's not overly impressed with varying state rules overseeing the drilling process. He's been pushing in recent months for his department to tighten its req ... More >>

Fracking: Website tries to show oil and drilling are great for Colorado

Oil and drilling do wonderful things for Colorado, and government better stay out of the industry's way. This seems to be an underlying message behind a new web portal launched this week by the Western Energy Alliance, a Colorado-based group that represents hundreds of oil and gas companies in th ... More >>

Fracking: Aurora votes to "lease" water to Anadarko Petroleum

Gaylord Entertainment dumped its plans for a giant hotel/convention center/resort in Aurora, and GE has postponed its big new plant in Aurora -- if not ditched it entirely. But at least Aurora had control over one business deal: It had no problem selling its water to an oil and gas company.

Reptilian Pavilion

Why Colorado's forests are bugging out with beetles

Slide show: Meet the beetles: How Colorado's forests are bugging out

ExxonMobil's Rex Tillerson rejects "fear factor" in climate change research

Give Rex Tillerson some credit. At least the ExxonMobil CEO has avoided claiming that global warming isn't real, the way tobacco executives used to pretend lung cancer was just some weird, wacky, luck-of-the-draw disease that had no linkage to massive consumption of their product. Tillerson just h ... More >>

Photos: Denver Zoo's $50M Toyota Elephant Passage opens today

This is it, zoo fans. This is what you've been waiting for and dreaming of since you approved that $62.5 million zoo-improvement bond in 1999. Big, hulking male elephants -- up to eight of 'em -- living in City Park. Big, hulking male elephants and their big, hulking...trunks. Today is the day tha ... More >>

Top five Colorado-animals-behaving-badly stories

Yes, animals are adorable. But they can also be destructive, as witnessed by the havoc wreaked by a certain squirrel this week -- more on that below. The chaos-loving rodent inspired us to round up five recent stories about critters gone wild, in a manner of speaking. Count down our favorites below ... More >>

Fracking the North Fork Valley: Opponents exult as BLM defers drilling

Yesterday the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced that it would remove 22 proposed oil and gas parcels in the scenic North Fork Valley from a summer lease sale, opting instead to "conduct additional analysis...based on public input." And the public that's been deluging the BLM with input -- obj ... More >>

Air quality: The EPA tentatively approves Colorado's plan to reduce brown cloud

Some things about Colorado just don't change. But while the state has been the country's leanest, meanest anti-obesity machinefor years, it's struggled with, lived under and remain concerned about the brown cloud even longer. But this morning, Governor John Hickenlooper shared news that the State Im ... More >>

What the Frack?!: Grassroots group pushes for fracking moratorium in Arapahoe County

The first time Sonia Skakich-Scrima learned about fracking, she was reading the Denver Business Journal almost a year ago to date. What she read alarmed her, but what she Googled afterward tripled that. "I tried to understand why we didn't care about the environment or the aftermath," she says. "I ... More >>

Fracking is booming, but a friendlier name couldn't hurt. Drill, baby, drill!

The word of the year? Our money (and yours) is on "fracking," the shortened term for "hydraulic fracturing," a practice that shook neighborhoods (in some cases literally) around the country this year, and has fueled the oil and gas boom in northeastern Colorado. But if energy execs really want to dr ... More >>

What's good for the (Canada) goose isn't really good for Denver

An adult goose releases approximately one pound of poop every single day. This fact stays relatively unnoticed until wintertime, when thousands of Canada geese -- seemingly overnight -- come out of the woodwork and waddle onto your property and into your parking spot. Why are there so many? The trut ... More >>

Encana blasts EPA report linking fracking to Wyoming water pollution

Encana WY drill rig. ​In a telephone conference with journalists this morning, officials of the Canadian energy giant Encana sharply disputed an EPA draft report that linked the company's gas drilling operations in Wyoming to contamination of residents' drinking water, calling the report badly ... More >>

Fracking the North Fork: Paonia residents rally against drilling assault

​Thanks to the increasing push for more oil and gas drilling, communities once considered out of the fray are being drawn into the controversies over hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" -- even folks in the stunning North Fork Valley, an area better known for its organic farms, ranches operate ... More >>

Feather Your Nest

Fracking lovefest blooms from John Hickenlooper's gas play

​Yesterday, amid an unusually genial gathering of environmental and energy leaders, Governor John Hickenlooper unveiled new state rules requiring detailed disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") methods of drilling for oil and gas -- a major step toward transpa ... More >>

Fracking: Polluted water in Wyoming could spell trouble in Colorado

Colorado oil pads.​The release of an EPA report detailing suspected groundwater contamination from gas drilling operations in Wyoming comes just as Colorado is weighing tougher restrictions and wider disclosures about the hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" process -- and may serve as Exhibit A ... More >>

Fracking: Gas industry pours $747 million into lobbying and Congress

Colorado well pads. ​As the oil and gas industry has turned increasingly to hydraulic fracturing to extract reserves, fears about groundwater contamination from the toxic chemicals used in "fracking" have intensified. And that's prompted a $747 million spending spree by major industry players ... More >>

Reader: Shooting of a mother bear in Crestone was unjustified & state must be accountable

​Our story about the killing of a mother bear in Crestone by a Colorado Parks and Wildlife officer, and the current status of the two cubs she left behind, drew a response from the woman who owns the ranch where the shooting took place. Here's what she has to say.

Meet Bodhi, the Denver Zoo's first male elephant: Bring on the green weenie!

Bodhi.​The green weenie is here. The Denver Zoo has welcomed its first male elephant, a seven-year-old named Bodhi who hails from Ohio. Thanks to a new exhibit called Asian Tropics, the zoo will soon have space for up to eight male elephants -- a serious undertaking for a very moist reason.

LoDo goes ape as Gorilla Run raises money for Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund

Eric Gruneisen​Last weekend, zombies filled downtown. This weekend, it was gorillas -- 1,200 of them, all participating in the eighth annual 5K Gorilla Run, which benefits the Denver-based Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund. That's more runners than there are mountain gorillas left in the wild ... More >>

Denver has struggled with ozone levels for thirty years, and the fight isn't over yet

How to get my job: Reptile Caretaker

​It takes a certain type of person to step into an alligator pen or to play with a giant snake, but Jay Young of Colorado Gators Reptile Park in Mosca does just that, every single day. We caught up with him to see if our fantasies of living in reptile utopia -- riding giant tortoises and wrest ... More >>

Beaver Fever! Sherri Tippe gives a dam about Colorado's beaver population

Video: Sherri Tippie leads a beaver-trapping mission

Get Buzzed at Cross Pollination

Fracking contamination "inconceivable," says John Hickenlooper -- but EPA disagrees

​Governor John Hickenlooper has walked a taut tightrope on energy issues since taking office, pushing for more natural gas drilling in a state already leading the region in drilling starts, while at the same time nudging the industry toward greater disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic ... More >>

Denver Zoo staff to travel to Vietnam to help Asian elephants, Michael Jackson monkeys

MJ? Is that you?​ This month, four Denver Zoo staff members will travel to Vietnam to help two endangered species: Asian elephants -- up to twelve of which will one day live in the zoo's new Asian Tropics exhibit -- and Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys, an extraordinarily endangered species of monkey ... More >>

Creature Comfort

Fracking Aurora is a natural gas: Kenny Be's Worst-Case Scenario

​ On Thursday, June 23, 2011, the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission will explain how hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations on the former Lowry Bombing Range comply with Arapahoe County's 2007 Sustainable Growth Objectives. It will be an easy sell...

Wanted: homing-pigeon trainer for MCA Denver

Dress for Success

Denver Zoo buries time capsule in Asian Tropics, new elephant and tapir exhibit

​ When it's finished in the spring of 2012, Asian Tropics, the Denver Zoo's ambitious new exhibit, will be home to elephants, rhinos, leopards, flying foxes, fishing cats, otters, gibbons, tapirs and... a time capsule made by middle-schoolers.

So many alpacas! SO MANY ALPACAS!

The alpaca contemplates.​The middle east may have its camels, which are admittedly pretty awesome, but here in the Americas we have llamas. And also alpacas, which are kind of like mini-llamas. Unlike llamas, though, alpacas are not for carrying things; specifically, they are bred for their ha ... More >>

Jared Polis and Diana DeGette try to tighten regulations on fracking -- again

"Gasland"​Representatives Diane DeGette and Jared Polis are taking another run at tightening federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing, a natural gas drilling technique also known as fracking. Introduced this week by the Colorado twosome and fellow Democratic rep Maurice Hinchey from New Yor ... More >>

Oil companies love horizontal drilling in Weld County: Simpsons' Mr. Burns would approve

​Weld County is undergoing an explosion in the number of oil and gas companies using a technique called "horizontal drilling" to get at deposits deep in the Denver Basin, according to the Greeley Tribune. Which puts us in mind of a certain Simpsons episode.

Gas-drilling oversight bill killed by the House: What's the fracking point?

Gas well pads.​A bill that sought to increase the reporting process for water-quality complaints related to oil and gas drilling in Colorado died quietly at the statehouse yesterday, with Republican lawmakers insisting that the industry's use of hydraulic fracturing fluids, or "fracking," pose ... More >>

Beaver Lady Sherri Tippie explains how to give a dam, save a river

Sherri Tippie.​Twenty-five years ago, hairdresser Sherri Tippie persuaded Aurora officials to let her trap beaver that were gnawing trees on a golf course and relocate rather than kill them. Since that first trapping session, ecologists and water authorities have increasingly come to see bea ... More >>

Wolverines in Colorado: Should we welcome the beasts back?

​There's currently one known wolverine in the state of Colorado, but there soon could be a lot more. Eighteen months ago, one of the giant weasels wandered into our state, where wolverines have long been absent. He was implanted with a tracking device and given a name: M56 (awww...). Today, h ... More >>