outdoors

Sign up today!

The twelfth Annual Western Landscape Symposium will be held Saturday, March 17, 2018. The Symposium will be held at Pueblo Community College in the Fortino Ballroom and is an all-day event beginning at 9:00 a.m. and continuing until 3:30 p.m.

Conditions Report - Statewide

Rivers and Creeks

Park rangers get all kinds of questions from the millions of visitors Colorado Parks and Wildlife receives each year at our 41 state parks.

A good portion of my work each day involves answering those questions, which range from simple requests for directions to advice on hiking, camping or boating to inquiries about the history of a park. (I even end every Ranger Station by inviting questions from readers.)

We also get our share of silly questions such as: "Why do you let snakes live here?"

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site will be closed Wednesday, February 21, and Thursday, February 22, 2018. The purpose of the two-day closure is for annual staff and administrative planning purposes and will include both the park, located near Chivington, and the park's administrative office in Eads. Both the park and the administrative office will reopen Friday, February 23 at 9:00 a.m.

It didn't look like the typical nitty gritty work of wildlife conservation.

For a few chaotic minutes Monday, it looked like the "Bighorn Sheep Rodeo." And it seemed the Colorado Parks and Wildlife wranglers were losing.

But the tide turned quickly and soon the bucking bighorn sheep were subdued by about 100 CPW wildlife officers, biologists, staff and volunteers who swarmed some 30 sheep from Colorado Springs' Rampart herd trapped under a 70-by-70 foot net.

An anonymous tip prompted a poaching investigation by Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers that ended in the arrest and conviction of two Colorado Springs men for wildlife crimes.

February 8, 2018, in Fourth Judicial District Court, Yevgeniy Bikrev, 33, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of illegal possession of wildlife, hunting on private property without permission and hunting out of season. He was fined $2,259 by Judge Christopher Acker.

Bark beetles have caused widespread tree mortality on roughly one-fifth of Colorado's forestland over the past two decades. But the problem of dead and dying trees in the state's forests offers an opportunity: standing dead trees can hold value for years, and currently are being utilized by wood products businesses in efforts that support forest management efforts.

Conditions Report - Statewide

Rivers and Creeks

Due to high water levels being maintained in Lake Pueblo by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the staff of Lake Pueblo State Park has been forced to indefinitely close the South Marina boat ramp.