Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

Colorado's boundaries encompass some 66.6 million acres, or over 104,000 square miles. Within this area, the type and extent of natural vegetation is determined by many factors, including elevation, climate, soils, disturbance patterns, and the ecological history of the landscape. Each change from lowland plain to mountain range to broad valley creates both habitat opportunities and barriers for plant species. The heterogeneity of the landscape provides...

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth...

Colorado Collection

Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America's lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of "Beaver Believers", including scientists,...