By Garrett Hanks Wolf Creek pass in the San Juan mountains of Colorado serves as the tipping point between the westward San Juan basin, home to the recently rediscovered San Juan cutthroat trout, and the Rio Grande cutthroat’s namesake river to the east. Unlike trout, bear, mule deer and other wildlife are unhindered by the ridgeline; their tracks freely cross the divide. Look north and you’ll notice the burn scar from the West Fork fire of 2013. Setting off south along the Continental Divide Trail, you quickly…
Measuring 20 miles long with nearly 100 miles of shoreline, it’s difficult to ignore Blue Mesa Reservoir. Sitting on the western flank of Gunnison County, Colorado’s largest body of water is a pivotal cog of the Colorado River Storage Project and the centerpiece of the surrounding Curecanti National Recreation Area, a sport fishing and outdoor…
We are broadly familiar with the plight of the salmon, hatching in freshwater, moving downstream as smolts and, entering the ocean. Their magnificent return to the rivers during spawning migrations, hundreds of miles up the Columbia and Salmon rivers, illustrates fish movements at a grand scale. Few people know the same phenomenon occurs with inland native trout such as the cutthroat
By pack mule and on foot, the Forest Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife members went in to save the previously thought-to-be extinct lineage. Less than 100 individual trout were removed and taken to the Durango fish hatchery for safekeeping and possible brood stock development.
In a first, a salmonid is on track for delisting from the list of threatened and endangered species
Roadless America’s Sporting Lands Trout Unlimited’s latest report, Roadless: America’s Sporting Lands, illustrates how our outdoor traditions depend on maintaining strong safeguards for roadless areas. The research, much of it provided by state and federal agencies, shows that maintaining large, unfragmented roadless areas is the most effective and cost-efficient form of conservation. In terms of…
While I’ve never met President Jimmy Carter, he’s been a part of my life for a long time. I came of age politically in the early 1970s when the end game in the Vietnam War still stoked furious debate and the constitutional crisis of Watergate brought down the Nixon presidency. Historians, presidential scholars, and politicians…
The Roan Plateau in northwest Colorado. Sharing creates advocates, while oversharing creates problems “To share or not to share…” If Hamlet were a fly fisher instead of just an angst-ridden 30-something pining for his dead father, this might have been what he uttered as he pondered the value of his own life. For, much like…
These men have worked on habitat restoration in countless areas around the Land of Enchantment over the course of their careers. And among their larger friend group of former colleagues – with which they continue to hunt, fish and travel to this day – their incredible campfire stories of adventure, danger and friendship continue to unite them in their respective retirements.
5/22/2001 Conservationists to Congress: Forest Service Must be Allowed to Leave Water in Forest Streams Conservationists to Congress: Forest Service Must be Allowed to Leave Water in Forest Streams Subcommittee presented with photographic evidence of dry streambeds in Colorado Contact: 5/22/2001 — — May 22, 2001 Contact: Charles Gauvin, TU President (703) 284-9401 Steve Malloch,…
