Bear-Human Encounters Exploding: How Rangers Are Trying to Stop Them

The more people who visit the White River National Forest and other wilderness areas in Colorado, the greater the chances of encounters with bears, who seem increasingly unafraid of humans. For these reasons, White River has released emergency orders for each of the last two summers requiring that visiting backpackers…

Toxic Spill Questions, Concerns Haunt Animas River “Open House”

It’s been a rough time for people who rely on the Animas River in southwestern Colorado, ever since the August 5 blowout at the Gold King Mine that released three million gallons of toxic, heavy-metal-laced gunk into the river. A consortium of businesses, public agencies, environmental groups and other stakeholders…

Wild Horse Roundup: Two Deaths, “Zeroed Out” Herd?

As the U.S. Bureau of Land Management sees it, last month’s removal of 167 wild horses from a rugged, remote area in Rio Blanco County was a success, easing the strain on damaged rangelands and substantially reducing a herd that had become too large to be sustainable.  Wild-horse advocates tend…

Eight Best Bike Trails in Colorado’s National Forests

In our 2012 post featuring ten Best of Denver bike rides, we showcased a number of locations chosen with mountain biking in mind. Now, the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit partner of the U.S. Forest Searvice, has upped the ante. The organization recently posted about eight mountain bike rides not…

Styrofoam Recycling Coming to Colorado Thanks to Alpine Waste

Alpine Waste and Recycling has expanded the capacity of its Denver recycling plant, more than doubling its ability to process single-stream recycling material. “Alpine Waste and Recycling has invested in the future of recycling,” says Brent Hildebrand, the company’s vice president of recycling. “In investing in that future, we’ve also…

Animas River Disaster: Problems at Mine Site Date Back Decades

There are half a million abandoned mine sites across the western United States, including more than 23,000 in Colorado. Many of them have the potential to expose high-country waterways to runoff from a highly acidic brew of tailings, mine dumps and metal ore. Last week’s dump of millions of gallons…

Alamosa “Healthy Living Park” Reaches Funding Goal

It took months of work by local activists, working in conjunction with a statewide land trust, a national conservation group, and other funding partners, but the backers of an innovative “healthy living park” in the heart of Alamosa have finally secured the money to complete the acquisition of 38 prime…

Children of the Storm Remember the 1965 Denver Flood

Most of the Denver residents old enough to remember the 1965 flood were, of course, quite young at the time — some in their teens or twenties, others mere children on the night the South Platte brought the city to its knees. To a kid, an event of such magnitude…

Rocky Flats Should Ban Burns Forever, New Petition Says

More than sixty years ago, when the federal government decided to build a nuclear weapons plant, it picked an eleven-acre spot on the Front Range northwest of Denver, a landscape studded with farms and ranches — and just sixteen miles upwind of a major city. When it opened in 1952,…

Browns Canyon Monument Designation Greeted by Glee and Grousing

The campaign to seek national monument designation status for a rugged stretch of canyons, meadows and forests between Buena Vista and Salida, which recently shifted from a long-running battle in Congress to a call for executive action, is about to pay off. President Barack Obama is expected to announce this…