A March heat wave shattered several records for high temperatures across Colorado. the source of at least 70% of the state’s stream flows and water in reservoirs, is the worst on record. Cities along the Front Range have enacted water restrictions.

At a time when snow in the mountains usually has barely begun to melt, several ski resorts have closed. And ranchers are looking for hay in case the rangeland and pastures can’t provide enough food for their cattle this summer.

Problems for Colorado’s cattle industry will ripple through the state’s economy. The state’s cattle herd was the nation’s 10th largest in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Beef is the state’s top agricultural export, totaling $1.26 billion in value in 2025, the Colorado Department of Agriculture said.

Beef, fresh and frozen, is Colorado’s No. 1 export overall.

“The producers that are in the business now are here for a reason. It’s because they continue to be optimistic. They just keep saying, ‘You know, it has to rain one day,’ ” said Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the

But ranchers are also keeping their eyes on the sky and the forecasts. Karney Spaur said most ranchers have drought plans, which include stockpiling hay and moving cattle around to give the grass time to grow. Worst case scenario, ranchers might end up selling part of their herd.

In past dry spells, people have trucked their cattle to other parts of Colorado or other states in search of greener pastures. The problem this time is the broad sweep of the drought will make those places harder to find.

“What I haven’t seen in my lifetime is the widespread drought all throughout Colorado and the West, for that matter,” Karney Spaur said.

In most areas, cattle producers with federal grazing permits on U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land have received letters saying to expect reductions in use of the sites unless conditions change, Karney Spaur said.

“Most BLM-managed public lands in Colorado are in severe to exceptional drought,” Colorado BLM spokesman Steven Hall said in an email.

The BLM staff regularly communicates with permittees and with industry associations, Hall said. “Typically the BLM and permittee agree on changes to grazing use during drought.”

Conditions in the Rio Grande National Forest in southwest Colorado range from moderate to exceptional drought, according to the . Ranchers have been advised that if dry conditions continue, the grazing season might have to be shortened or the number of cattle on a site reduced for part of the summer in some areas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in an email.

Decisions will be made case by case and the Forest Service will work with ranchers to explore options, the USDA said.

Much of the federally managed land used for grazing is in western Colorado. On the Eastern Plains, several ranchers have grazing permits on state-owned lands.

Curtis Russell, Colorado Cattlemen’s Association president, ranches in Sugar City in southeast Colorado and is a member of a grazing association that leases state lands. While the area had a good grass-growing season last summer, Russell doesn’t expect producers to move their animals onto the state lands this season until it rains.

The State Land Board closely monitors drought conditions and manages grazing on a case-by-case basis in coordination with lessees, spokeswoman Emily Barbo said in email. The staff is in close communication with ranchers across the state, she said.

“Things are really trying to green up, but it’s just hard,” Russell said. “We had 90-degree days in March. It was pretty hard to keep moisture in the ground with the wind blowing and 90 degrees.”

Ranchers on the Western Slope were battling through a dry summer in 2025 when wildfires erupted and raced through the parched vegetation. The fires scorched some ranchers’ pastures and federal grazing allotments.

Off the charts

Retta Bruegger, a regional range management specialist with Colorado State University Extension, calls snowpack “money in the bank” for ranchers who depend on grasses and plants to feed their cattle. But with Colorado’s snowpack at its lowest-ever levels, the bank is close to tapped-out.

“To be perfectly frank, this year is off the charts in terms of what it looks like and how it’s setting up so far,” Bruegger said. “I think people will be making a lot of hard decisions.”

On a recent trip just over the Colorado border into Utah, Bruegger said the forage looked better than she expected. The outlook could change if the weather does.

“In the world of all possibilities, it could start snowing tomorrow and snow until June 1. I don’t necessarily think that’s going to happen, but that would change some things if it does,” Bruegger said.

Janie VanWinkle and her family ranch in Mesa County. They graze their cattle on land they own and on leases with the federal government, the city of Grand Junction and Colorado Mesa University. The bulk of their grazing in the summer is on Forest Service land and they’re not sure whether use of the allotment will be restricted because of the drought.

“We’ll be having a meeting with our Forest Service range specialist in the next month or so. We’re kind of waiting to see what the weather is going to do,” VanWinkle said.

She finds the uncertainty unnerving after the  forced the family off their usual allotment to another area. VanWinkle and her husband, Howard, spent 122 days on horseback, moving their animals from water to food and at times through flames. The firefighters worked closely with the family to keep them and the cattle safe.

“The good news is we didn’t lose a single cow in the fire,” said VanWinkle, whose son works with her and husband.

As the family heads into what could be another dry summer, wildfires are a concern. “We’ve never talked about this, but I know this is the fear that’s been in my son’s heart. It’s the fear that’s in mine and my husband’s: What if there’s another one?” VanWinkle asks.

The statewide snowpack was at 21% of median Wednesday, the reported. This year’s level is the worst since measurements were recorded starting in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

In addition, the snow water equivalent, the amount of liquid water stored in the snow, was 3.3 inches, just 22% of the 30-year median, as of April 1, said Russ Schumacher, state climatologist and director of CSU’s Colorado Climate Center. The previous low was 9.1 inches in 1987.

“That’s the metric we pay attention to for water because that’s the water that’s going to flow into the rivers” and increase soil moisture, Schumacher said.

A year when the water content is 70% to 80% of average in early April would be considered a bad year, he added. “This year, we’re looking at 20% of the average, which is so far beyond that.”

Colorado has been hot as well as dry.

“That heat wave in March was just astonishing in terms of how unusually warm everything was across the state,” Schumacher said.

It was Colorado’s warmest March on record, according to the . Averaged across the state, the month was 13.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average and 4.3 degrees above any previous March.

Relief might come this summer in the form of El Niño, the weather phenomenon that warms the ocean surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

“Globally, it tends to raise temperatures. Here in Colorado, that tends not to be the case. We tend to be wetter and somewhat cooler, later in the summer and fall,” Schumacher said.

The said April 9 that the chance of an El Niño was 61% and a one-in-four chance that it might be strong.

David Gottenborg, whose family owns Eagle Rock Ranch in South Park, is hoping for a change. Park County typically doesn’t get a lot of moisture in winter, but this winter was even drier than usual. And warmer.

“We sit on Tarryall Creek and we’re running about 15, 14 cubic feet per second versus normally about 30 or so. So we’re about half,” Gottenborg said.

The Gottenborgs, who raise cattle and hay, irrigated a little in the last couple of weeks.

“Irrigation season typically starts April 1. In most years, it’s almost kind of a moot point because our head gates are frozen,” Gottenborg said.

Not this year. And there’s no ice now in Tarryall, a tributary of the South Platte River.

Besides cattle, hay is one of the Gottenborgs’ main income sources. They partnered with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to donate 48 tons of hay in December to Western Slope ranchers whose land was burned by the Lee wildfire last summer.

But their hay crop was down last year and they’ve halted sales for now.

“The old-timers here in the valley, they would always keep at least half of what they would need the following year in their stack yards. We’re trying to do that,” Gottenborg said.

The ranch gets calls almost every day from people looking to buy hay. Gottenborg said a woman told him that she had contacted more than 30 people. “We had to tell her ‘no’ as well.”

Karney Spaur of Colorado Cattlemen said she’s heard of hay selling for $300 to $350 a ton. This time of year, she said $150 to $175 a ton is more the norm.

One bright spot for ranchers is that in large part because of low cattle numbers nationwide.

“If you have to sell cows, it’s a good time to sell cows because they’re worth a lot of money,” said Russell, the rancher from Sugar City. “On the other hand, if El Nino comes in like they’re talking about this summer and we get a lot of rain and people have already sold cows and need to buy cows back, it’ll cost a lot of money.”

Maloy has long criticized this southern Utah national monument that was halved by President Trump during his first term, then restored under President Biden. One million awestruck visitors come here every year and spend money in the two Utah counties surrounding the monument, whose towns total less than 14,000 residents. Yet Maloy discounts data showing the economic value of preserved public lands. She neglects the world-class scientific value of these 1.9 million acres, detailed in Biden’s proclamation.

Rep. Maloy’s attack is wily. She and the rest of the congressional delegation know there’s too much public support to ask President Trump to again chop down the monument����ap size. Nearly 3 out of 4 Utah voters are on record as wanting to keep Grand Staircase-Escalante protected as a national monument.

So Utah politicians are betting the public won’t pay as much attention to management retrenchment as they would to downsizing. They’re using a controversial tactic to force the Bureau of Land Management to abandon the current Resource Management Plan–a blueprint for how the BLM puts the presidential proclamation into effect on the ground.

But monument supporters are paying attention because management plans matter.

After President Biden restored the boundaries of Grand Staircase in 2021, the BLM worked with the public for two years to create the 2025 Resource Management Plan, listening to every conceivable collaborative partner. Such plans guide decision-making for years, and this true compromise keeps ranchers’ grazing permits in place while also factoring in a warming planet, persistent drought, the need for biodiversity, and a sustainable future.

Now, Rep. Maloy has obtained an opinion from the Government Accountability Office to treat the 2025 plan merely as a “rule” that Congress can overturn. This unprecedented allowance can’t be challenged in court and permits the Utah delegation to use the Congressional Review Act to kill the conservation-based plan and bar the agency from issuing any “substantially the same” plan in the future. The Trump-era plan that would take its place leaves much of the monument unprotected from extractive industry and off-road vehicles.

Maloy says that emphasizing conservation “undercuts rural economic development.” From 2001 to 2022, however, real per capita income grew by 41 percent in the monument����ap counties.

She says that local residents and “trail users” oppose the Biden plan. This is cherry-picking. Motorized trail users always want greater access, even though the Biden-era plan left more than 800 miles of dirt roads and trails open for motorized vehicles.

When Maloy talks about “deep cultural traditions” being disrupted by the current management plan, she isn’t listening to Indigenous people who have made this place their home since time immemorial. The six Native Nations of the Grand-Staircase Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition oppose her move, noting that without the “clear roadmap for protection and conservation” provided by the current management plan, “our ancestral lands and … cultural sites within the monument would be at greater risk of looting, vandalism, graffiti, and degradation.”

To support their attacks, Utah’s politicians use their timeworn template to argue exclusively for “the needs and voices of the people who live and work on this land.” These politicians, however, listen only to county commissioners and legacy ranchers, not to a much broader constituency.

This is Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, not Grand Staircase County Park. The environmental, scientific, interpretive, and Indigenous values and potential of these public lands have national and international importance.

This new attack on Grand Staircase-Escalante from Congress–along with a parallel attack on Minnesota’s Boundary Waters—would set a national precedent with no public input that could upend public lands protection for years. Even the deeply conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation said it fears a “Wild West” for land-use planning if Congress acts on Maloy’s radical approach.

The exhausting years-long battle to protect the resources and restorative magic of Grand Staircase-Escalante can wear out supporters. But this place gives us no choice but to speak up once again. Staying silent puts federal agencies in an impossible position and places all of our public lands at risk. Let your members of Congress know that preservation of the monument requires leaving the current resource management plan in place.

Stephen Trimble is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He’s been hiking in Grand Staircase and writing about Colorado Plateau conservation for 50 years.

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But in the face of unnecessary radicalism, we urge policymakers not to entrench themselves in their positions but to take a moderate approach that accepts the reality that, on both sides of the issue, there is ground to give.

CPW acting director that her staff has received anonymous threats over two mountain lions who were euthanized following a fatal attack on a runner. And after the release of 15 gray wolves into Colorado, CPW staff were followed during operations and threatened with violence.

We expect healthy and robust debate about Colorado’s wildlife management practices, but both sides of these issues have gone crazy. This outlandish and harassing behavior must stop.

Hunting is a vital part of our wildlife management, our economy and our Western culture as is Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s ability to euthanize animals who pose a threat to humans. The Denver Post editorial board opposed a ban on mountain lion hunting in 2024’s Proposition 127. But we also supported the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado in 2020’s Proposition 114. The wolves are native to Colorado and could help our ecosystems find the right balance between predator and prey.

From this middle-ground position, we can call for both sides to simmer down.

Because from our vantage of impartiality, we can see plainly that mountain lion hunting needs much more regulation to protect the apex predator from being overly culled. The ban simply went too far.

And we can see plainly that the reintroduction of wolves has not gone well for the wolves or for the ranchers whose livelihoods have been impacted by wolf depredation.

Neither of those realizations requires a revolution. A strongly worded letter to state officials or reintroduction of ballot measures to change state law could suffice in both instances of policy failure.

Accusations that CPW staff is acting inappropriately or that they are out to get Coloradans who have different ideas for how our wildlife should be managed are both inappropriate and inaccurate. There is no conspiracy to protect mountain lion hunters or the guides who make money pursuing the big cats for clients. There is no conspiracy to chase Colorado ranchers off of public lands with marauding bands of gray wolves.

What we do know is that a Colorado woman was recently killed by a mountain lion while on a heavily used trail near an established neighborhood in Estes Park. The tragic death followed months of reports of mountain lions that appeared to no longer fear humans. Euthanizing those animals was the right decision.

Hunting lions can contribute to the animals retaining a natural fear of humans and dogs. Not banning hunting was the right call. However, the tragic death also shouldn’t lead to vehement anti-lion sentiment like we are seeing with gray wolves.

Apex predators are a critical part of our ecosystem, and while they always pose a risk to humans, managing them, not eradicating them, is the right path.

Gray wolves were naturally entering Colorado’s northern territory before voters decided to accelerate their reintroduction in 2024. Last winter 15 wolves were released in Colorado, and since then, 11 have died. Of the 10 wolves that were released in 2023, an unknown number have survived. The state tracks 19 wolves via collars and knows of at least four packs that are having pups. The mortality of introduced wolves is unacceptable, but so are the continued threats to hunt and slaughter the wolf population. We support hunting lions because the population is stable and needs to be managed. Until the wolf population stabilizes, the animals must be protected.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials are doing their best to manage our wildlife and protect our ecosystems. Any conversations about wolf and lion populations and protections must start and end with that truth.

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The PPORA is a collaboration of land managers, stakeholders, conservation and recreation partners that is implementing a plan for improving public land management across numerous jurisdictions in the region. It announced its vision plan and the grant application last August.

“Today marks the moment when years of regional planning and collaboration move into action,” said Becky Leinweber, PPORA executive director, at a news conference Tuesday. “It����ap about managing outdoor recreation, conserving natural resources and stewarding the Pikes Peak region with intention.”

A major goal of the PPORA is to complete the 63-mile Ring the Peak Trail around Pikes Peak, long a dream of outdoors enthusiasts in the region. Currently there are two gaps, one of five miles on the northeast aspect of the Pikes Peak massif, another of eight miles on its southwest aspect near Cripple Creek.

The $2.5-million grant will be used initially to fund 10 projects including:

• Realignments of Ring the Peak Trail segments in the North Slope Recreation Area on land owned by Colorado Springs Utilities, where it has three reservoirs located along lower sections of the Pikes Peak Highway south of Woodland Park
• New trail and trailhead construction on the Ute Pass Regional Trail that will eventually close the five-mile gap in the Ring the Peak Trail northwest of Manitou Springs
• Develop 15 campsites and improve infrastructure at Red Canyon Park near Canyon City, located on the Gold Belt Scenic Byway
• Conduct environmental analysis and archeological studies required before developing Ring the Peak corridor campsites managed by CPW
• Enhance bighorn sheep habitat in the Dome Rock State Wildlife Area, located west of Pikes Peak near Mueller State Park

PPORA is one of 21 Colorado Outdoor Regional Partnerships funded by CPW and GoCo. Gov. Jared Polis instituted the regional partnerships initiative in 2020 to enable state-supported collaboration in efforts to preserve public lands and recreation opportunities.

“When we set up the regional partnerships, we really had this kind of collaboration in mind,” Polis said of PPORA. “This is in many ways the highest profile, successful outcome of that work. There’s a lot of great work being done across the state, but none have the significance in the United States of America as Pikes Peak. It����ap really exciting to work with the Pikes Peak region to help make this a reality.”

Pikes Peak regional partners have been in discussions with CPW officials for more than a year to identify areas where it can assume a management role. Most of the land is owned by the U.S. Forest Service and Colorado Springs Utilities.

“We’re a state where the federal government owns more than a third of our state (land),” Polis said. “They are very hands-off, and have very little ability to work with locals dynamically and quickly to do things. Things take a long time going through Washington. By having this kind of collaboration, we want to be able to provide more active management to meet the local community needs through Colorado Parks and Wildlife.”

What that might look like is still under discussion, though.

“We’ve been having ongoing meetings every month, working towards having a short-term agreement in place – hopefully sometime this summer — which would firm up what we hope to accomplish in the long term,” said Frank McGee, director of CPW’s southeast region. “Anytime we do something with the federal government, there are extra layers of planning and processes that we have to go through. That����ap going to take a period of years.”

In the meantime, CPW stands ready to help in any way it can.

“We’re not trying to take anything over from anybody by force,” McGee said. “We are trying to work with folks to have a mutually beneficial partnership and help them with things they have identified as needs we can help with.”

The note on “Void if Altered” rules says that stickers, coverings, or other alterations could make the pass useless. The internal email detailing the changes, which was obtained and first reported , appears to have been prompted by a Boulder artist’s popular stickers that were offered as alternatives for the new design.

Trump’s face is set to adorn the American the Beautiful parks pass, alongside George Washington, starting Jan. 1. A new, internal email from department business specialists Allison Christofis and Jeff Beauchamp to regional National Park Service staff specifically mentions stickers on the front of the pass, SF Gate said.

“Defacing the pass in any way, including writing on it or adding stickers or other coverings, is a form of altering the pass,” the policy reportedly reads. “Altering a pass can cover up important information and required security features necessary to prevent fraud.”

The Denver Post was not immediately able to verify the document. (We will update this story if the department responds.)

McCarty, who’s already gotten orders for nearly 8,000 stickers, said the new guidance should be posted publicly if it becomes official park policy.

“At the end of the day the goal (of the stickers) is not to make life harder for rangers, because they’ve already got it hard enough right now,” she told The Denver Post on Tuesday. “But you would think if these were the new rules, they’d post them where you can read them, instead of having people just showing up to a national park and potentially being turned away for something they’ve already paid for.”

A public lands group, the Center for Biological Diversity, last month filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department over the design of the new park passes, saying physical changes violate an act that relies on an annual photo contest that is supposed to determine the images — and to highlight nature over people.

McCarty is selling her stickers through her ach, and since launching on Dec. 10, she’s been struggling to fill thousands of orders that have arrived. With “every dollar” going to the National Park Foundation, the vinyl, full-color stickers depict McCarty’s paintings of a brown bear against a verdant field and Denali’s mountain majesty; a furry pika — a much-loved resident of Rocky Mountain National Park — with a flower in its teeth; and a wolf howling majestically against the Grand Tetons.

“I’m just one person in this, and it couldn’t have happened without many people,” she told The Denver Post last month. “I’m blown away by the number of people who see this as a chance to use their voice and choose things they want to see. The National Parks are our lands and every single one of us owns them. … I get so much joy from art and the National Parks, and this has been a great way to combine my passions.”

However, McCarty explicitly warns that covering Trump’s face completely — despite being a “bold, peaceful protest” — is at your own risk. Using a clear card sleeve, with the sticker on the front and the details showing on the back, is “most cautious.”

Or, if you cover most of it, her stickers “have backing in sections so you can leave some on and lift to show the pass underneath,” .

Delivery time for McCarty’s stickers is currently running about four weeks due to “experiencing a high volume of orders and fulfilling them with the help of volunteers,” according to McCarty’s website.

Environmental groups have repeatedly raised objections in the past year to the White House’s drive to open National Parks to oil drilling, road-building and other development, as well as laying off employees and cutting budgets.

In June, a nonpartisan U.S. Senate rulekeeper blocked Republican-backed public land sales of more than 14 million acres in Colorado that were eligible as part of a larger Western lands provision. A budget bill had called for the sale of between 0.5% and 0.75% of the 438 million acres managed by the BLM and USFS, The Denver Post has reported.

This story was updated at 11:40 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 6, to include comments from Boulder artist Jenny McCarty.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the former Colorado U.S. senator and congressman who served first as a Democrat and then as a Republican, died of natural causes Dec. 30 at his ranch in Ignacio, Colorado at age 92.

A member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Campbell grew up poor and spent part of his childhood in a California orphanage, yet he led a life of excelling. He became a judo champion in 1963, winning a gold medal at the Pan-American Games; served in the Air Force for four years where he earned his GED; went on to get degrees in physical education and fine arts at San Jose State University; and honed skills as a silversmith and jeweler. His Western belt buckles were prized.

He entered politics in 1982, first serving as a state legislator. He was next elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving rural Western Colorado from 1987 to 1993, then was elected to two terms in the U.S. Senate.

When Senator Campbell switched from being a registered Democrat to a Republican on March 3, 1995, “the switch was shocking and traumatic to his staff,” said Ken Lane, his longtime chief of staff. He quit soon after Campbell’s announcement.

Lane said there was lots of speculation about why Campbell became a Republican. A major irritant for Campbell, Lane recalled, was what the senator called the “elitist” attitude of Democratic leaders in Denver and Boulder, who found him too moderate. Campbell’s main support always came from the union stronghold of Pueblo, in southern Colorado.

It was known that Republican Senator and majority leader Bob Dole courted Campbell to make the switch, and once he did, Campbell was appointed chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Campbell relished the job, advocating for Tribal rights and spurring the creation of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historical Site in Colorado, where two of his ancestors had been killed by U.S. soldiers.

Dea Jacobson, who worked in his Grand Junction, Colorado office when he was a Democrat, called him a force of nature. “He could do anything he put his mind to,” she said. He was a licensed pilot, and he also earned a commercial driver’s license, which he used in 2000 and 2012 to drive huge Colorado Christmas trees to the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Though his party changed, Jacobson said, Campbell’s politics remained the same: “He was pro-choice, pro-union and, despite criticism from some environmentalists, he backed key legislation protecting Colorado’s public lands.” Over the years, Campbell became known as someone who’d horse trade to get the bills he cared about passed.

One of his major victories was passage of the Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993, which designated or expanded 19 wilderness areas. The landmark legislation had been 13 years in the making. Campbell also worked on the creation of Great Sand Dunes National Park and helped make the Black Canyon National Monument a national park.

Campbell had a major impact on Colorado’s Four Corners region. Working with the Tribes he changed the Animas–La Plata water project to protect the free-flowing Animas River, despite criticism from environmentalists over the pumping of water uphill into a dry basin. The deal fulfilled long-overdue water rights held by the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes.

I’d called Campbell last October when I was writing a column about changes coming for the reservoir named after him — Lake Nighthorse — authorized by Congress in 1968 as part of the Animas-La Plata Project. I’d been told Campbell was in poor health, but he answered the phone, later telling me, “I’m suffering from old persons’ problems so I’m not following water wars these days. But don’t forget what Mark Twain said about water: ‘Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.’”

Jacobson wasn’t surprised that Nighthorse was affable in our conversation. “He loved newspaper people,” she recalled, and when they were on the road in rural Colorado, “he liked to stop in at a town’s weekly paper.” Though he didn’t drink, he might also visit a local bar or café to start a conversation with locals. Before long, she said, “he was holding court.”

Lane’s recollection was equally warm. “Ben was funny, irreverent and endearing, and he connected with people of all backgrounds.”

A private memorial service will be held by his family at their ranch in Ignacio, Colorado. He is survived by his wife Linda, his children Colin and Shanan, and four grandchildren.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

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The move puts in a bind as the utility tries to figure out how to comply with the order after years of planning to shutter its 45-year-old Unit 1 plant — and after a Dec. 19 malfunction caused an outage at the unit that will be expensive to repair.

“Tri-State has a policy of 100% compliance, and we will work with Unit 1 co-owners, and federal and state governments to determine the most cost-effective path to that end,” Tri-State CEO Duane Highley said in a news release Wednesday. “We are continuing to review the order to determine what this means for Craig Station employees and operations, and the financial impacts.

“As a not-for-profit cooperative, our membership will bear the costs of compliance with this order unless we can identify a method to share costs with those in the region,” he added. “There is not a clear path for doing so, but we will continue to evaluate our options.”

The order, issued Tuesday night by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, was criticized by Gov. Jared Polis, who said it will cost utility ratepayers more money because the plant needs millions of dollars in repairs to be brought back online. Colorado does not have an emergency need for electricity, the governor said in an emailed statement.

Environmentalists said reopening the old plant would harm public health as it pumps climate-changing carbon emissions into the air and goes against Colorado’s plan to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025.

“This order will pass tens of millions in costs to Colorado ratepayers, in order to keep a coal plant open that is broken and not needed,” Polis said in a statement. “Ludicrously, the coal plant isn’t even operational right now, meaning repairs — to the tune of millions of dollars — just to get it running, all on the backs of rural Colorado ratepayers! … Today’s action flies in the face of this careful planning, is inconsistent with market forces, and will hurt Coloradans.”

The emergency order will keep Tri-State’s Unit 1 at the Craig Station in Moffat County open for at least another 90 days. Tri-State has until Jan. 20 to explain to the energy department how it plans to get Unit 1 running and to provide an update on environmental and operational impacts, according to the order. Wright could also renew the order.

Tri-State, which co-owns the Craig Power Station with several other utilities, has planned to close Unit 1 since 2016 for economic reasons and to comply with federal and state emissions-reduction requirements. The company has based its operational and maintenance decisions on that plan and has adequate resources to maintain power reliability, the Westminster-based company’s news release said.

Unit 1, which opened in 1980, stopped operating Dec. 19 after a valve failed and caused an outage, the company said. Now Tri-State and the other co-owners will need to repair the valve.

As a result of the order, retaining Unit 1 will require additional financial investments in operations, repairs, maintenance and, potentially, fuel supply. All those factors will increase costs, the company said.

Tri-State is planning to close two other coal-fired units at the Craig Station in 2028.

President Donald Trump’s agenda is to increase the nation’s use of fossil fuels, and since he took office in January, he has set about trying to save the dying coal industry through executive orders, large sales of coal from public lands, regulatory relief and offers of hundreds of millions of dollars to restore coal plants.

Colorado is just one of five states in which Wright, who is from Colorado and the founder of an oil-and-gas fracking company, has ordered coal plants to stay open. On Dec. 23, he issued orders to keep open two coal-burning power plants in Indiana.

Environmental groups are over its use of the Federal Power Act, arguing the president is abusing his power because there is no national emergency in supplying electricity.

On Wednesday, Colorado Energy Office executive director Will Toor said the state does not have an electricity shortage that would warrant invoking the Federal Power Act to keep Craig Unit 1 open.

In a statement, Toor said the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a nonprofit with international regulatory authority that monitors the power grid, has found no short-term or long-term reliability risks in the Rocky Mountain region. Craig Unit 1’s closure follows a careful planning process that determined replacing or repairing the aging coal-burning plant would cost more than investing in newer, more renewable forms of electricity, he said.

“These orders will take money out of the pockets of Colorado ratepayers, and especially harm rural communities across the West who could be forced to absorb the unnecessary excess costs required to keep this plant operational,” Toor said.

But in his order, Wright wrote that he intends to keep Craig open because the electric reliability corporation has reported that the Rocky Mountain region has more variability in its electrical grid than other regions because of a large share of “wind and hydro in its portfolio.”

Wright cited a Western Electricity Coordinating Council assessment that said Colorado’s demand for power is expected to grow by 8.5%, to 36 gigawatts from 33 gigawatts, by 2034, and that shuttering coal plants will make it hard for the state to meet that demand.

“As described above, the emergency conditions resulting from increasing demand and shortage from accelerated retirement of generation facilities will continue in the near term and are also likely to continue in subsequent years,” the order stated. “This could lead to the loss of power to homes and businesses in the areas that may be affected by curtailments or power outages, presenting a risk to public health and safety.”

Still, Colorado officials and environmentalists said the energy secretary’s assessment is incorrect.

“The Trump administration is engaging in Soviet-style central planning, driven by ideology rather than the realities of the electric grid, that will drive dirtier air and higher electric rates across our state. These orders are unlawful and will not improve energy security in Colorado or the region,” Toor wrote.

Colorado environmental advocates, including , and the , denounced the emergency order as a move that will make the state’s air dirtier, harming public health and staining views from the state’s beloved parks.

The Colorado Air Quality Control Commission specifically cited Unit 1’s retirement as part of its plan to reduce haze in Colorado.

“This order puts our communities at risk and turns back progress that Coloradans have fought tirelessly for,” Jessica Herrera, in-house counsel for GreenLatinos, said in . “Once again, the administration is putting the fossil fuel industry before our health and well-being.”

Earthjustice, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to other environmental groups, said Thursday that it is prepared to take action to defend Colorado and to advocate for a just transition to cleaner energy sources.

“Keeping this dirty and outdated coal plant online will harm the health of surrounding communities and hurt all of our pocketbooks,” Michael Hiatt, deputy managing attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office, said in a news release. “This unlawful order will benefit no one but the struggling coal industry. We are prepared to take action to defend Colorado communities and ensure a just transition.”

Some of the most interesting – and least understood – adaptations, though, are by the animals that change color seasonally, from their summer coats or plumage of brown or gray to snow white, something that helps them match the environment around them.

Only 21 species worldwide are known to do this, almost all in northern climates, . Four of them live in Colorado: snowshoe hares, white-tailed ptarmigan, short-tailed weasels and long-tailed weasels (the latter two are often referred to collectively as “ermine”).

“It����ap kind of a rare adaptation,” said Hannah Rumble, the Community Programs Director for the , an Eagle County nonprofit that offers education and activities relating to nature and the environment. “So, it����ap really uncommon.”

The reasons , she explained. The primary purpose is camouflage, whether it����ap to hide from predators or, in the case of the ermine, to disguise itself from its prey. But scientists believe that a secondary advantage is warmth; after the animals molt in the fall, their fur and feathers grow back without the melanin that creates color, meaning they are hollow. The air in the hollow areas provides more insulation.

Why some cold-weather animals developed this adaptation and others didn’t is less well understood, but the change appears to be set off by the changing number of sunlight hours in the day as winter approaches (called a photoperiod), Rumble said.

Bridget O’Rourke, a public information officer for the Colorado Parks & Wildlife, pointed out that pikas use rock piles as a defense against predation, while black-tailed jackrabbits (relatives of the snowshoe hare) don’t change color because they live in the prairie or demi-desert environments where there is much less snow.

One modern-day problem with this adaptation is that, as the climate warms, there is less snow in their habitats. So, while the animals still turn white, they may not be camouflaged. This situation, when the environment changes faster than a plant or animal can adapt to it, is called a phenotypic mismatch. “There is a lot of concern for alpine species,” Rumble said.

So, where are you most likely to see Colorado’s color-shifting species? Here’s a general guide.

Ermine

Two kinds of weasels live in Colorado: the long-tailed weasel, which is fairly common on public lands throughout the state, and the smaller short-tailed weasel, which primarily makes its home in forested mountains. Both are brown in the summer and “a brilliant white” in the winter (aside from their black-tipped tails), according to Colorado Parks & Wildlife (CPW).

Colloquially grouped as ermine, weasels are sometimes seen from chairlifts by skiers at Vail and other resorts, as well as in Rocky Mountain National Park. But the best place to search for them in winter is from snowshoe or cross-country ski trails during the daytime when “they are more active, especially in the winter, to stay warm,” Rumble explained. At night, they go to their dens.

Walking Mountains Science Center offers nature walks and backcountry hikes, both on snowshoes, at some of its four locations in Eagle County during the winter, including one at the top of the Eagle Bahn Gondola at Vail Mountain, and Rumble said she has seen both mammals on those walks. (The walks are free, but Vail charges $50 or more to ride the gondola.)

On the nonprofit’s Sweetwater Campus, she once saw a long-tailed weasel carrying away a cottontail rabbit (which is smaller than a snowshoe hare) that it had hunted and killed. “It was amazing to witness because there are not a lot of predators that go after something larger than them. A rabbit is three to five times heavier than a weasel,” she said.

Snowshoe hares

While it may not be easy to spot a snowshoe hare in the wild when they are camouflaged against the snow, their tracks are another matter. Almost comically obvious, the prints are made by their oversized, snowshoe-like hind feet, which help keep them buoyant in deep powder.

“Compared to a cottontail rabbit, their legs are huge… a lot bigger than you might expect,” Rumble said.

She suggested looking first for the tracks and then using a pair of binoculars to follow them with your eyes. Snowshoe hares can be found “across most of Colorado’s mountains, except for the southeastern Front Range (Pikes Peak area) and Sangre de Cristo mountains,” .

Like ermine, the hares are more commonly seen during the day when they are staying active. Cross-country skiing and snowshoe trails are good places to look.

White-tailed ptarmigan

While ptarmigan are difficult enough to find during the summer, where they live above 9,500 feet in elevation and blend in so perfectly that they seem to melt into the rocky slopes, they’re even more elusive in the winter, Rumble said, for the simple reason that very little of Colorado’s high alpine tundra is accessible to people at that time. “Alpine species stay there year-round, but most of us can’t get that high in winter.”

A member of the grouse family, ptarmigan are about the size of a pigeon, and they match the mottled color of rocks and scrub at high altitudes during the summer and the snow during the winter. Before winter, they can be seen (by sharp-eyed viewers with binoculars) near high-alpine lakes in the backcountry, as well as along Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, above timberline on peaks like Mount Blue Sky and Pikes Peak (both of which can be accessed by vehicles) and from high passes like Loveland Pass. Trail Ridge Road and Mount Blue Sky are closed in the winter, but Loveland Pass and Pikes Peak are open.

It takes a great deal of patience and luck to spot one, she pointed out, even when you are looking right at it.

But learning to maneuver the shiny red drill they use to tap into underground heat feels different. It����ap a critical part of the Colorado family’s new business, High Altitude Geothermal, which installs that use the Earth’s constant temperature to heat and cool buildings. At stake is not just their livelihood but a century-long family legacy of producing energy in Moffat County.

Like many families in Craig, the Coopers have worked in coal for generations — and in oil before that. That����ap ending for Matt Cooper and his son Matthew as one of three coal mines in the area closes in a statewide shift to cleaner energy.

“People have to start looking beyond coal,” said Matt Cooper. “And that can be a multitude of things. Our economy has been so focused on coal and coal-fired power plants. And we need the diversity.”

Many countries and about half of U.S. states are moving away from coal, citing environmental impacts and high costs. Burning coal emits carbon dioxide that traps heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet.

President Donald Trump has boosted coal as part of his agenda to promote fossil fuels. He’s trying to save a declining industry with , , and offers of to restore coal plants.

That����ap created uncertainty in places like Craig. As some families like the Coopers plan for the next stage of their careers, others hold out hope that Trump will save their plants, mines and high-paying jobs.

Matt and Matthew Cooper work at the Colowyo Mine near Meeker, though active mining has ended and site cleanup begins in January.

The mine employs about 130 workers and supplies Craig Generating Station, a 1,400-megawatt coal-fired plant. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association is planning to close Craig’s Unit 1 by year’s end for economic reasons and to meet legal requirements for reducing emissions. The other two units will close in 2028.

Xcel Energy owns coal-fired Hayden Station, about 30 minutes away. It said it doesn’t plan to change retirement dates for Hayden, though it����ap extending another coal unit in Pueblo in part due to increased demand for electricity.

The Craig and Hayden plants together employ about 200 people.

Craig residents have always been entrepreneurial and that spirit will get them through this transition, said Kirstie McPherson, board president for the Craig Chamber of Commerce. Still, she said, just about everybody here is connected to coal.

“You have a whole community who has always been told you are an energy town, you’re a coal town,” she said. “When that starts going away, beyond just the individuals that are having the identity crisis, you have an entire culture, an entire community that is also having that same crisis.”

Phasing out coal

Coal has been central to Colorado’s economy since before statehood, but it����ap generally the most expensive energy on today’s grid, said Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

“We are not going to let this administration drag us backwards into an overreliance on expensive fossil fuels,” Polis said in a statement.

Nationwide, coal power was 28% more expensive in 2024 than it was in 2021, costing consumers $6.2 billion more, according to a June analysis from Energy Innovation. The nonpartisan think tank cited significant increases to run aging plants as well as inflation.

Colorado’s six remaining coal-fired power plants are scheduled to close or convert to natural gas, which emits about half the carbon dioxide as coal, by 2031. The state is rapidly adding solar and wind that����ap cheaper and cleaner than legacy coal plants. Renewable energy provides more than 40% of Colorado’s power now and will pass 70% by the end of the decade, according to statewide utility plans.

Nationwide, wind and solar growth has remained strong, producing more electricity than coal in 2025, as of the latest data in October, according to energy think tank Ember.

But some states want to increase or at least maintain coal production. That includes top coal state Wyoming, where the Wyoming Energy Authority said Trump is breathing welcome new life into its coal and mining industry.

Planning for the future

The Coopers have gone all-in on geothermal.

“Maybe we’ll never go back to coal,” Matt Cooper said. “We haven’t (gone) back to oil and gas, so we might just be geothermal people for quite some time, maybe generations, and then eventually something else will come along.”

While the Coopers were learning to use their drill in October, Wade Gerber was in downtown Craig distilling grain neutral spirits — used to make gin and vodka — on a day off from the Craig Station power plant. Gerber stepped over his corgis, Ali and Boss, and onto a stepladder to peer into a massive stainless steel pot where he was heating wheat and barley.

Gerber’s spent three decades in coal. When closure plans were announced four years ago, he, his wife Tenniel and their friend McPherson brainstormed business ideas.

“With my background in plumbing and electrical from the plant, it����ap like, oh yeah, I can handle that part of it,” Gerber said about distilling. “This is the easy part.”

He used Tri-State’s education subsidies for classes in distilling, while other co-workers learned to fix vehicles or repair guns to find new careers. While some plan to leave town, Gerber is opening Bad Alibi Distillery. McPherson and Tenniel Gerber are opening a cocktail bar next door.

Everyone in town hopes Trump will step in to extend the plant����ap life, Gerber said. Meanwhile, they’re trying to define a new future for Craig in a nerve-wracking time.

“For me, my products can go elsewhere. I don’t necessarily have to sell it in Craig, there’s that avenue. For someone relying on Craig, it����ap even scarier,” he said.

Questioning the coal rollback

Tammy Villard owns a gift shop, Moffat Mercantile, with her husband. After the coal closures were announced, they opened a commercial print shop too, seeing it as a practical choice for when so many high-paying jobs go away.

Villard, who spent a decade at Colowyo as administrative staff, said she doesn’t understand how the state can throw the switch to turn off coal and still have reliable electricity. She wants the state to slow down.

Villard describes herself as a moderate Republican. She said political swings at the federal level — from the green energy push in the last administration to doubling down on fossil fuels in this one — aren’t helpful.

“The pendulum has to come back to the middle,” she said, “and we are so far out to either side that I don’t know how we get back to that middle.”

___

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Throughout his political career, Pearce has worked to privatize and undermine our public lands. As a New Mexico congressman, he co-sponsored several bills to dispose of national public lands. This alone ought to disqualify him from running the agency charged with stewarding 245 million acres for current and future generations.

In a , Pearce argued that the federal government owns “vast” land holdings, “most of (which) we do not even need,” and called for a massive sell-off to pay down the national debt. Pearce’s vision for our public lands is not conservation or even balanced management — it����ap liquidation.

President Trump has been down this road before: During his first term, he nominated anti-public-lands zealot William Perry Pendley to run the BLM. Pendley never even received a hearing, and the White House dropped the nomination after his record was revealed. Pendley went on to write the public lands chapter of the now-notorious Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Pendley spent his career as a lawyer arguing that the federal government should not own public lands. Steve Pearce has gone even further. From inside Congress, Pearce spent 14 years undermining public lands, seeking to gut wildlife protections and sell off huge amounts of public land.

Pearce’s nomination comes as our public lands are being attacked from all sides. Over the last 10 months, President Trump has elevated officials such as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, both of whom view our public lands as nothing more than assets to monetize through drilling, mining and logging.

These officials are currently working to execute Trump’s vision of selling out public assets for private profit. Pearce would accelerate this effort, liquidating lands to the highest bidder–including corporations and luxury developers.

Even by recent standards, Pearce’s public lands record is radical. It is also unpopular. This spring, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee tried to include a public land sale provision in the sprawling budget bill, framing it as a housing solution. The measure would have mandated the sale of 2-3 million acres of BLM and Forest Service lands.

But Lee’s amendment triggered immediate backlash from hunters, outdoor recreation groups and Western lawmakers. Within days, he abandoned the effort. If the Senate rejected Lee’s market-rate sell-off as radical, it should be easy now to reject a nominee whose goal is to get rid of even more public land.

That brings us to the Senate Stewardship Caucus, co-chaired by a Republican, Tim Sheehy of Montana, and a Democrat, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. It launched last month to “advance bipartisan efforts to conserve the nation’s lands and waters” with science-based policy. The caucus has been applauded by hunting, outdoor recreation, and conservation organizations as a promising start for defending public access and wildlife.

Pearce’s nomination is the caucus’s first real test. If its members cannot draw a bright line at a nominee who has worked tirelessly to sell off public lands and weaken laws that protect them, then its vision of “stewardship” is nothing but empty branding.

The stakes are immense. BLM’s multiple-use mandate requires balancing energy, grazing, recreation and conservation under long-term land use plans grounded in science and public input. That mission collapses if the agency’s leader believes we must “reverse this trend of public ownership” of the very lands he is charged with managing.

Westerners understand what happens when responsible stewardship is abandoned. Rural communities lose the long-term economic engine that healthy public lands provide. Hunters, anglers and campers lose access they have relied on for generations.

Steve Pearce’s nomination is a referendum on whether Congress believes our shared lands still belong to all Americans. The Stewardship Caucus and every senator who claims to care about the West����ap outdoor heritage should reject Pearce’s nomination. America’s public lands are a unique legacy we pass down to future generations, not a portfolio to liquidate.

Aaron Weiss is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities and co-host of The Landscape podcast.

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