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Shoshone Water Rights Could Bolster Fish, Wildlife and Recreation on Colorado River
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State, Approved, The Colorado Sun

Shoshone Water Rights Could Bolster Fish, Wildlife and Recreation on Colorado River

By Shannon Mullane | The Colorado Sun Allowing the state to use Shoshone’s water rights to help the environment could save fish and improve the aquatic environment, according to state studies. Colorado water officials will gather in Durango this week to decide whether a pair of powerful Colorado River rights can be used to benefit the environment.  The Colorado River District, supported by a broad Western Slope coalition, has entered into a $99 million agreement with Xcel Energy to buy two key water rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant, located on the Colorado River near Glenwood Springs. Part of the deal is to add a newly approved use to the existing water rights: keeping water in the river to help the aquatic ecosystem.  That environmental use, called an in-stream flow ri...
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Colorado Ranchers Face Lasting Struggles After Lee Fire Scorches 137,000 Acres
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Local, Approved, The Gazette

Colorado Ranchers Face Lasting Struggles After Lee Fire Scorches 137,000 Acres

By Jonathan Ingraham, Michael Braithwaite | The Gazette 'I've got some cattle whose feet are going to fall off, their backs so burnt that their hide is cracking and breaking,' one rancher said. Cattle feverishly mooed in the middle of the early August night, an unusual sound to hear at that hour.  Their unease was brought on by the Lee fire, which was quickly encroaching upon their enclosure at the 103-year-old Halandras family ranch, about 23 miles south of Meeker.  The wildfire that started from lightning strikes on Aug. 2 was devouring prime northwestern Colorado grazing land that the family — and other ranchers — rely on faster than emergency crews could contain a stable fire line. Regas K. Halandras recalled family members and ranch hands jumping into act...
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Polis Claims Trump Tariffs Hurt Jobs but Many See Benefits
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State, Approved, The Gazette

Polis Claims Trump Tariffs Hurt Jobs but Many See Benefits

By Marianne Goodland | The Gazette A report released Thursday by Colorado’s governor said President Donald Trump’s tariffs policy is disrupting the state’s economy and courting a recessionary scenario. State economists have, in fact, been sounding the risk of a scenario for a year — preceding both the White House’s tariffs changes and the congressional budget that Democrats blamed for Colorado’s $800 million deficit. As recently as June, analysts said the chances of a recession in the next year stood at 50% and climbing. Since Trump took office, tariffs have increased sevenfold to about 21% in Colorado, according to the report. Nationwide, it’s closer to 24%. A year ago, the tariffs averaged around 3%. The last time tariffs went that high occurred in 1910, Gov. Jar...
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Wolf Reintroduction Sparks Debate at Upcoming Colorado Town Hall
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State, Approved, The Gazette

Wolf Reintroduction Sparks Debate at Upcoming Colorado Town Hall

By The Gazette Staff | The Gazette Agriculture and outdoor recreation are considered two of Colorado’s most important industries. The outdoor recreation industry contributes over $65.8 billion and 511,000 jobs to Colorado’s economy, while the agriculture industry generates $47 billion and 195,000 jobs annually, according to the most recent data. Yet as Colorado Politics’ recent Rural Reckoning series indicated, these two powerhouses don’t always get the attention that industries do in the halls of the Capitol. A town hall on Tuesday, Sept. 9, sponsored by The Gazette and The Common Sense Institute, will dive more deeply into the importance of these industries to Colorado’s economic success, and the policies necessary to ensure they thrive. The Common Sense Institute is a non...
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Rio Grande crisis leaves farmers desperate and states divided
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Fortune, Approved, National

Rio Grande crisis leaves farmers desperate and states divided

By Susan Montoya Bryan, Morgan Lee | The Associated Press via Fortune A simmering feud over management of one of North America’s longest rivers reached a boiling point when the U.S. Supreme Court sent western states and the federal government back to the negotiating table last year. Now the battle over waters of the Rio Grande could be nearing resolution as New Mexico, Texas and Colorado announced fresh settlement proposals Friday designed to rein in groundwater pumping along the river in New Mexico and ensure enough river water reliably makes it to Texas. New Mexico officials say the agreements allow water conservation decisions to be made locally while avoiding a doomsday scenario of billion-dollar payouts on water shortfalls. Farmers in southern New Mexico increasingly have...
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From Colorado to California wolf conflicts fuel push to delist
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Grand View Outdoors, Approved, National

From Colorado to California wolf conflicts fuel push to delist

By RMEF Staff | Grand View Outdoors As new wolf packs kill livestock in Colorado and California, support grows to delist wolves nationwide. Wolves released by way of a controversial ballot initiative in Colorado, opposed by RMEF, have experienced a rocky start, creating headaches for wildlife managers and ranchers alike and seeing mortalities in their ranks.  In late August 2024, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) announced it was trying to capture and relocate wolves from the Copper Creek wolf pack, which formed from animals CPW released in Grand County in December 2023. Months later, the pack had killed nine cattle and an equal number of sheep.   In early September 2024, CPW announced that wildlife managers had captured the two adult wolves and four pups that ma...
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CDC warns of flesh-eating parasite threat as travel spreads risk
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The Western Journal, Approved, National

CDC warns of flesh-eating parasite threat as travel spreads risk

By Richard Moorhead | The Western Journal Even the name is grisly — but the behavior is even worse. The parasite known as the New World screwworm, a type of fly larva that feeds on living flesh and can be fatal to its victims, has been confirmed as infecting a human in the United States, according to Reuters. While human infections are vanishingly rare, the discovery has the nation’s beef industry on edge. As the Associated Press reported, screwworms are a species of fly with females that seek out orifices of living mammals to lay their eggs — such as the eyes, nose, mouth, or bleeding open wounds. When the eggs hatch, the larvae then bury into the flesh of the host organism with sharp teeth that burrow in like screws — hence the name. PLEASE READ THE COMPL...
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Colorado farmers and cities face tough choices in looming water showdown
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Colorado farmers and cities face tough choices in looming water showdown

By Sharon Sullivan | The Colorado Sun STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — Colorado water officials announced Wednesday a rough plan to figure out how the state would handle an unwelcome specter in the Colorado River Basin: forced water cuts. Mandatory water cuts are possible under the 103-year-old Colorado River Compact in certain circumstances, mainly if the river’s 10-year flow falls too low. It’s a possibility that is one or two “bad years” away, some experts say.  Colorado, however, does not have a clearly defined plan, or regulations, for how exactly it would handle such forced water cuts. It’s time to start preparing, according to state engineer Jason Ullmann, Colorado’s top water cop. Over the years, Coloradans on both sides of the Continental Divide have asked about these “compact...
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Potholes and Broken Promises: Colorado’s Working Class Deserves Better
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Potholes and Broken Promises: Colorado’s Working Class Deserves Better

By Bobbie Daniel | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Drive a mile in Colorado and you’ll know the truth: our roads are crumbling, and so is the promise that the government would take care of this basic function. Families scrape by to keep their cars running while the same political elite who’ve run this state for twenty years pour billions into pet projects and leave working people holding the bill. Colorado’s highways were built the way a farm is built — ditch by ditch, fence by fence, harvest by harvest. Generations of Coloradans invested billions so our economy could function. From rural to urban, our families could get where they needed to go. But now the ditch and fence are broken, and instead of repairing it, the political class is off buying themselves a BMW. Nice ride, m...
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Colorado’s rural-urban divide revealed: 10 takeaways from the Rural Reckoning series
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The Gazette, Approved, State

Colorado’s rural-urban divide revealed: 10 takeaways from the Rural Reckoning series

By Vince Bzdek | The Gazette How bad is the rural/urban divide in Colorado? That’s what a team of reporters at Colorado Politics and The Colorado Network, our statewide collective of freelancers, set out to measure and understand. Through extensive interviews, data analysis and community voices, our journalists have documented the yawning gap between what rural areas contribute to the state through agriculture, energy production, tourism and outdoor recreation, and the attention, money and support they receive in the halls of the Capitol and the governor’s mansion. That gap has resulted in a host of unaddressed problems unique to rural Colorado. Our reporters also have found that culturally, the polarization between rural and urban has deepened so much that when it comes to pol...
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