Colorado

Quietly waiting for you in our national forests and grasslands are what remains of long past civilizations and cultures. Some of these sites still have direct spiritual or cultural meaning to folks today while others are a complete mystery of what once was of a vanished people. Yet, in both cases...

In 2012, USDA designated 2,245 counties in 39 states as disaster areas due to drought, or 71 percent of the United States. Many of the country’s livestock producers faced the ultimate decision – liquidate or figure out a way to survive. Ranchers across the state had planned to graze their livestock...

By Tom Fry, Western Conservation Director, American Forest Foundation Tom Fry is the Western Conservation Director of the American Forest Foundation (AFF). AFF and the U.S. Forest Service hold a long-standing partnership in pursuit of protecting and conserving the important forest benefits that come...

Guest Post by Hannah Ettema of the National Forest Foundation. It was like stepping back through time on the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. Some 200 years ago, when bison prominently roamed the Illinois landscape, kicking up dust as they ran in the herd before settling against a back-drop of...

New greeters welcome visitors to the USDA-APHIS National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) in Fort Collins, Colorado. They are big, hairy, and far from shy. Twelve bison are housed on Colorado State University (CSU) land adjacent to NWRC’s front gate. These bison are part of a collaborative...

The following guest blog describes how one state education department used a USDA Team Nutrition grant to develop training to help schools implement programs that promote student wellness and to meet updated meal standards. By Heather Hauswirth, RD, Program Specialist, Office of School Nutrition...

As a society we do not expect children to learn to write without paper, we do not expect them to learn to cook without access to food, and we certainly would never expect them to learn to read without books. It’s simple: in order to learn, one must have the proper tools and experiences to do so. At...

Grass is a big deal in football – a really big deal. Nearly every day of the week, untold millions of people watch players step out onto lush, green fields painted with white. All aspects of the game are tough. Even growing and maintaining a real turf grass field has its challenges, like freezing...

What do raccoons, vampire bats, and mongooses have in common? All are wildlife species that are commonly associated with rabies and can potentially expose people, pets and livestock to the deadly virus. The significant impact of rabies on public and animal health will be the focus of the 26 th...

Environmental markets—the buying and selling of ecosystem services like clean air and water, and wildlife habitat—help more private landowners get conservation on the ground. Markets attract non-Federal funding to conservation, complement USDA’s work with agricultural producers, and can yield...