Join Wild Connections Board member Karl Ford for a presentation:
Colorado Trail in the Wild Connections Area.
Karl is a Triple Crowner, having completed 8,000 miles on the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail and Continental Divide Trail long distance hikes. He has also one and a half completions of the Colorado Trail.
He will show slides of his 2020 250-mile hike along the Colorado Trail and also discuss the status of protected and proposed Wilderness Areas and other Wild Connections activities along this segment of this world-class Trail.
With Colorado Parks & Wildlife Director Dan Prenzlow
Tuesday, March 2 at 5 p.m.
In November, Colorado voters narrowly approved Proposition 114, initiating a managed reintroduction of gray wolves by 2023. Now what? As state agencies and local communities prepare for the species’ return, important conversations continue about the anticipated impacts on agriculture, recreation, tourism, land use, and more. What path will the reintroduction take over the next few years? And how do managers plan to balance both human needs and ecological considerations?
Explore the road ahead with Colorado Parks & Wildlife Director Dan Prenzlow, a Colorado native and a 33-year veteran of the agency. He’ll discuss the short-term practical implications of the ballot initiative result and then share some of CPW’s longer-term goals and vision for bringing wolves back to the state.
This free public webinar is presented by the Institute for Science & Policy and Colorado State University’s Warner College of Natural Resources, in partnership with the Center for Collaborative Conservation, the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence, CSU Extension, and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The event will also be livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube.
Colorado’s Record-setting 2020 Fire Season in the Context of the Past 6,000 Years
Thursday, March 4th at 6:00pm MST
Speaker: Philip Higuera, Associate Professor of Fire Ecology, University of Montana
Colorado’s record-setting 2020 fire season exemplified a decades-long trend of increasing fire activity across the West, well-correlated with climate change and increasingly paired with devastating human impacts. In this presentation, I will help make sense of such extreme events by drawing on the long-term perspective gained from paleoecological records of climate, fire, and forest history in Colorado subalpine forests spanning the past 6,000 years.
Paired with contemporary observations and fire ecology, we will learn what aspects of ongoing change in subalpine forests are “business as usual,” what aspects are unprecedented, and what we can anticipate as forests continue to adjust to a rapidly warming world.
Speaker Bio: Phil Higuera is an associate professor at the University of Montana, where he directs the PaleoEcology and Fire Ecology Lab and teaches courses in fire and disturbance ecology. Research in his lab spans western North America and has revealed how fire activity varies with climate change in recent decades and the distant past, and how forest ecosystems have responded to these changes. Phil spent the summer of 1999 as an ACES naturalist, before heading to graduate school at the University of Washington. Since 2006, varying components of his research have focused on fire history and ecological change in Colorado forests, in Rocky Mountain National Park and beyond.
Expanded habitat is good for wildllife. Mule deer, Jean Smith
In mid-January new rules regulating oil and gas development in Colorado went into effect increasing protection of 12.7 million acres of wildlife habitat across the state.
Go to Rocky Mountain Wild's story map and zoom in to Wild Connections region to see how this plays out here. When you turn the "old rules" and "new rules" on and off, you will be struck by the increase in protections for both the Arkansas and S. Platte tributaries and mainstems.
Wild Connections Climate Planning video
January 26, 2021 Zoom presentation
available on YouTube
Alison Gallensky presented Wild Connections approach to climate modeling and how various scenarios might play out in key locations in our region. View the 50 minute video at the left or go to YouTubehttps://youtu.be/EpEKzo9ay4k
Current Biodiversity modeling from Interactive Map. Click image to go to the map.
Interactive Map
The many data layers that are used in the climate planning project can be utrned on or off in the Interactive Map at
Wild Connections recognizes that our region is the acnestral lands of the Ute, Arapaho and Cheyenne peoples.
Virtual Journeys
Go to a roadless area
Fly Over Grape Creek Wilderness Area Threatened by proposed mining
EcoFlight will take you over the Grape Creek area where a mining company is proposing to mine various minerals. Already there are impacts from helicopter activity that droped in an exploratory drill rig and water was pumped out of Grape Creek to service the rig.
Arkansas Canyon Wild Areas
Fly over the exceptional wildlands in the Arkansas Canyon with EcoFlight
Wildcat Canyon
Take a short journey down to the South Platte River in Wildcat Canyon
Listen to a podcast
Bob Falcone talks with Jim Lockhart and John Stansfield in this podcast
Hiking With Bob podcast
On one of two episodes this week dedicated to groups participating in the 2020 Indy Give campaign, Bob talks with Jim Lockhart and John Stansfield from “Wild Connections”. They discuss what the group does to preserve public lands for recreation, and their work with land managers and other groups. They talk about what areas and issues are concerning them now, and how you can support their work via the Indy Give campaign.
Jim Lockhart in the woods
Two Connections for One.
KGNU radio broadcast 88.5 FM
Roger Wendell, host of KGNU's "Connections" radio broadcast, and Jim Lockhart, WC president, talk about Wild Connections' conservation work. Go to https://www.kgnu.org/connections and scroll down to December 4, 2020.
View a webinar or film
President L. B. Johnson signs the Wilderness Act at the White House, September 3, 1964 Photo Wilderness Watch.org . Click above to go to the video.
Celebrate the Birthday of the Wilderness Act with Prose & Poetry A Wild Connections 25th Anniversary Indoor Outing
"Celebrating the 56th Anniversary of The Wilderness Act" with readings by Wild Connections members is onYouTube. Hear from Howard Zahniser, Aldo Leopold, W. E. B DuBois, Richard Nelson, Edward Abbey, Mardy Murie and Terry Tempest Williams, and Wendell Berry.
View of james Peak, Samuel Seymour 1820
First Known Man’s and Woman’s Ascents of Pikes Peak John Stansfield, Storyteller and Writer, recounts the fascinating history of the early adventurers on Pikes Peak. Ute people, Edwin James of the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, and Julia Archibald coming west with her family are featured.
Click the image to go to the YouTube video
Celebrate 25 years of protecting wildlands in central Colorod
Explore some of Wild Connections' history and accomplishments with photos and maps.
Wild Connections' mission is to identify, protect, and restore wildlands, native species, and biological diversity in the Arkansas and South Platte watersheds. They are the ancestral lands of the Ute, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other indigenous peoples.
