As temperatures climbed under a blistering sun, about 35 Colorado Parks and Wildlife aquatic biologists, staff and volunteers headed up a steep mountain trail last week, each loaded with large bags of water filled with 200 or so squirming, black Boreal toad tadpoles.
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With his sidearm sticking out from under leather chaps, Justin Krall swung up into the saddle of his mule, Speedy, and gently nudged it up the Cottonwood Creek trail as he tugged the reins of his other mule, Jenny, following behind.
On Jenny’s back were two large saddle tanks packed with about 2,000 rare Hayden Creek cutthroat trout and pressurized steel canisters pumping oxygen into the water. Krall, a District Wildlife Manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), was helping the agency’s aquatic biologists move the fish about six miles up the steep trail to the upper reaches of the creek.
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In a muddy creek drainage on a chilly Sunday evening in May, Colorado Parks and Wildlife terrestrial biologist April Estep looked for a rock large enough to brace a piece of steel rebar she had hammered into the soggy ground.
Read moreRainbow trout, cutthroat, walleye and other game fish are turning the tables on the people of Colorado.
Thanks to huge, visually stunning images adorning Colorado Parks and Wildlife hatchery trucks, the fish are now doing the catching – eye-catching, that is.
Read moreColorado Parks and Wildlife biologists on Saturday wrapped up a grueling month spent trapping lesser prairie chickens on their breeding grounds – also known as leks – in five counties of western Kansas. It was part of a four-year effort to re-establish the colorful birds on their native sand sagebrush and grasslands in Colorado.
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Hopefully, eight orphaned bear cubs are now sleeping peacefully on Pikes Peak, snug inside artificial dens built by Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers, staff and volunteers during a recent snowstorm.
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A Gunnison River rainbow trout after it was caught last May during spawning operations by Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists. Because they are resistant to deadly whirling disease, Gunnison River rainbow trout are being spawned so that strain of rainbows can be stocked in rivers across the state. Photo by © Bill Vogrin/CPW
A recent survey by Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists found rainbow trout thriving in the Arkansas River near Salida offering a hopeful sign for wildlife conservation efforts aimed at overcoming whirling disease, which decimated trout populations in Colorado after its discovery in the 1980s. Read more
Every year is ‘year of the bird’ for CPW raptor specialist April Estep. Photo by © Bill Vogrin/CPW.
From the passenger seat of a pickup truck going 60 m.p.h. down a southeast Colorado highway, April Estep scanned the landscape using her hand to shield her eyes from the blinding dawn sun.
Estep, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) wildlife biologist and raptor expert, was staring intently, searching for prairie dog colonies in passing fields. Read more
It didn’t look like the typical nitty-gritty work of wildlife conservation.
For a few chaotic minutes, it looked like the “Bighorn Sheep Rodeo.” And it seemed the Colorado Parks and Wildlife wranglers were losing. Read more
Mystery surrounds bald eagles as CPW parks celebrate the national symbol.
There’s a mystery surrounding Colorado’s bald eagles. The birds migrate through Colorado every year by the hundreds, roosting, hunting, fishing, nesting and producing new chicks. But recently they’ve migrated away from a favorite viewing site and no one is quite sure why.
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