Climate change is here.

A snapping turtle on the muddy bank of a pond. Walden Ponds, Boulder, CO. April 2026.

And this big guy (gal?) was hauled out of a pond warming up.

American goldfinch perched on a naked twig with blue sky behind.

A cinnamon teal, with its beak in the water, showing off its red-hot eye.

An American white pelican standing in shallow water drying off its wings.

Four great blue heron stacked in a tangle of branches in their rookery.

The #birds put on a show yesterday at Walden Ponds in Boulder, Colorado. American goldfinch, cinnamon teal, American white pelican, and great blue herons.

Protect Colorado from a nuclear boondoggle: Oppose HB 26-1337

Hey, Coloradans! We have wind, solar, and geothermal. We can build battery storage facilities.

And we already have lands poisoned by uranium mining.

We can go fossil-free without nukes.
act.sierraclub.org/actions/Colo...

Four books added to Utah’s banned list for schools, including one by a Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is among the latest titles banned from all Utah public schools, bringing the total to 32.

75% of the books Utah has banned from schools are written by women. Patriarchy lives!
www.sltrib.com/news/educati...

The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court

"Even as they debated the Obama plan’s possible burden on the power industry, in the entire chain of correspondence obtained by The Times, not a single justice … mentioned the dangers of a warming planet as one of the possible harms the court should consider.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Colorado River decline is increasingly dangerous for Grand Canyon's humpback chub. Record low pool elevations at Powell mean far more bass passing through the dam, and hydropower is urging BOR to end cool mix-flows that suppress bass recruitment downstream.

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...

🚨After months of fossil fuel industry lobbying, Republican lawmakers have introduced federal legislation that would give oil and gas companies immunity from any laws or lawsuits that aim to hold them accountable for their role in the climate crisis.

Time to get loud: 📣 NO IMMUNITY FOR BIG OIL 📣

Colorado River projected to deliver one-fifth of normal water to Lake Powell after ‘astonishing’ March heatwave An unprecedented March heatwave has forecasters shrinking already-low estimates for how much water will flow into the Colorado River during spring runoff, which is already well underway this year. The...

"Scientists with World Weather Attribution have determined that the heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of human-caused climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels."

The oil industry is killing the West's winter.

www.craigdailypress.com/news/colorad...

Image is of the Rio Grande river cutting through a rocky canyon in Big Bend National Park. The sky is dotted with colorful clouds at sunset. Text overlay reads, "No border wall through Big Bend."

The Department of Homeland Security has unconstitutionally waived dozens of laws to fast-track border wall construction through the #BigBend region of Texas.

So we're taking them to court to stop this land-grab.

More info: biodiv.us/4muUKmM

The feds are moving forward with plans to wall off the Big Bend region. Some reports say walls are "off the table" in the state park, but DHS hasn't canceled construction contracts or restored the legal protections they stripped.

Nobody is crossing here. Look at those cliffs.

Trump administration denies fire and flood disaster assistance for Colorado | Colorado Newsline The Trump administration denied Colorado's disaster declaration appeals, which would have opened up funding for wildfire and flood recovery.

TRUMP TO WESTERN COLORADO: DROP DEAD!

Trump administration denies fire and flood disaster assistance for Colorado coloradonewsline.com/briefs/trump...

Sweeping Forest Service Overhaul Puts Public Lands at Risk, Critics Warn The USDA plans to slash the Forest Service's research program by more than 70 percent and do away with its century-old regional structure.

Forest Service "reorganization" that will further gut short-staffed agency is not going over well with hunters and anglers.

fieldandstream.com/stories/cons...

Keystone XL's Second Coming? — This Time As A Wyoming-Bound Pipeline A Denver energy analyst says the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline isn't entirely dead. It's being resurrected in a new form, with Canadian segments feeding…

Remember the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline? And what a carbon bomb that would have been? It's being resurrected.

Who will stop it now?

#climate

cowboystatedaily.com/2026/04/09/k...

White House Confirms Forest Service Dismantling in Rebuttal The administration responded to our reporting with three claims. Their own scientists, their own union, and independent newsrooms contradicted all of them.

morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/white-hous...

‘It's incredibly bad’: No end in sight to Colorado River water crisis - WyoFile Emergency drawdown of Flaming Gorge is imminent, officials say. The water situation is crashing so rapidly that authorities can't confidently track the extent of it.

‘It’s incredibly bad’: No end in sight to Colorado River water crisis

The outlook for the Colorado River, and Lake Powell in particular, continues to worsen due to an historically warm winter and dismal snowpack.

#LakePowell #drought #water #HydroelectricPower #crisis 🧪
wyofile.com/its-incredib...

Time series showing Southwest U.S. maximum temperatures from 1895 to 2026, which is a long-term warming trend and record for 2026.

Sooooo, the Southwest U.S. was more than 5°F warmer than the previous March record high for maximum (daytime) temperatures.... 🫠

Graphic from www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monit...

U.S. Forest Service reorganization prompts concerns of further employee loss, impacts ahead of fire season After 35 years with the U.S. Forest Service, including 15 as the head of the White River National Forest, the country’s most-visited national forest, Scott Fitzwilliams is no stranger to the excesses of government bureaucracies....

"This is now more disruption and chaos."

Great detailed story on how Trump's DOGE cuts, piled on top of the recently-announced Forest Service "reorganization," threaten Colorado's national forests ahead of fire season. #forests

www.craigdailypress.com/news/u-s-for...

Climate warming. It's here.

NEPA and Its Discontents - The American Prospect What’s missing from the political conversation around America’s embattled environmental law?

"Limiting the public’s ability to sue when the executive branch operates outside of the laws passed by elected officials is an anti-democratic reform, particularly as the Trump administration has basically stopped enforcing environmental laws against polluters altogether."

Three snowy plover chicks huddle together on a beach near reeds. US Forest Service photo.

Good news for #birds!

A federal court ruled that the California Dep't of Parks & Recreation violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing motorized vehicle use that harms snowy plovers at Oceano Dunes, and limited that use. Go @biologicaldiversity.org!

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...

#birds

Calling @kendrawrites.com

I don't remember seeing an image of Earth before that captures the (thin, fragile, tiny layer of) atmosphere so clearly. I mean, look at that.

WA declares unprecedented fourth drought emergency in a row The fact that state officials started ringing alarm bells so early in the year underscores just how painful they expect the summer dry spell to be.

BREAKING -More than two months before the start of summer, Washington state officials are declaring a statewide drought emergency. This is the fourth drought in a row, which hasn't happened before in state history. It's bad, folks. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

A botanist searches for the seeds of the rare Death Valley Sage For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds.

I have been hiding in the desert, clamoring on rocks while taking tips from lizards on the best way to collect seeds from the Death Valley Sage. @npr.org came along for the ride and it was amazing.

www.npr.org/sections/the...

U.S. Forest Service unveils extensive closures of research facilities Cost-cutting move is expected to cause resignations and turmoil

What will happen to the 82 USFS experimental forests around the country? Many sites have decades-long experiments that are tracking how forests are changed by timber harvesting practices and climate change. As I say here, “you can't just pick up an experimental forest site and move it to SLC.”

“I tell you gentlemen that you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.” - John Wesley Powell in 1893.

The president’s 2027 budget proposal makes sweeping cuts across the Park Service budget, including a $736 million reduction (over 25%) to park operations, likely eliminating thousands more park staff after a year of severe losses.

More details: https://bit.ly/3PGkO2e

I don't have that data on hand. But with everything so dry now, they are likely to drop pretty fast during irrigation season.