Welcome to the May 2026 Keep Routt Wild Newsletter!

Hello, Keep Routt Wild followers!

In this month’s newsletter we have updates on three topics.

First, we are happy to announce that Matt Holloran has joined our Board of Directors. Read about Matt’s background in our first article.

Second, we report on noxious weeds, their impact on habitat, and what you can do about them.

Third, we remind our readers about the numerous seasonal wildlife closures in the area, and why they are so vital.

Read about these three news items below, along with our standard section of “What We’ve been Reading and Watching”, summarizing conservation news from the region.

For those who are unfamiliar with Keep Routt Wild, we are a community organization dedicated to the preservation of wildlife and wild places in Routt County. To find out more about Keep Routt Wild, go to our website, or follow our nearly daily postings on Facebook.

We are a 501(c)3 non-profit, and we humbly ask you to consider a donation to Keep Routt Wild here. Thank you.

Matt Holloran Joins KRW Board

We are pleased to announce that Matt Holloran has joined our Board of Directors.

Image above shows Matt in the field working on a study for protecting sage grouse.

Matt was raised on a cattle ranch outside of Steamboat and has dedicated his career to the conservation and management of wildlife and their habitats in Routt County and throughout the intermountain West. He earned a PhD in zoology and physiology studying wildlife responses to human modifications of their habitats (he’s pictured here with a male sage-grouse captured for research purposes). He is currently employed by the Bureau of Land Management as a Natural Resource Specialist out of their Fort Collins office. With over 30 years of experience managing and researching wildlife populations, including designing and implementing habitat restoration and enhancement, he brings a strong science background to the Board of Directors. He enjoys exploring, gardening, blacksmithing, and rafting with his wife and two daughters.

For the record, Matt will recuse himself from relevant BLM topics that come to the KRW Board. We appreciate his integrity and look forward to him serving on the Board.

We also wish Jeff Yost well. Jeff is resigning his position on the Board, but will continue to serve as an Advisory Board member.

Noxious Weeds: The Emerging Habitat Threat

Noxious weeds are a growing threat to wildlife habitat and working lands in Routt County. These non-native weeds and grasses out-compete native vegetation wherever they take hold. Worse yet, they deliver little or no nutritional value, leading to habitat loss wherever they become establishe.

Many of these noxious weeds are spread by humans or livestock. Boots, tires, and hooves prove to be an efficient transportation mechanism from one infestation to another pristine location to start another infestation. These locations and methods of transmission are called “vectors.” With high infestation rates around Emerald Mountain and Howelsen Hill, people recreating in that location serve as a primary vector that propagates weeds to pristine locations on our public lands, private working lands, and neighborhoods.

To fight this epidemic, Keep Routt Wild is embarking on an education campaign about noxious weeds in coordination with the Routt County Weed Abatement Program. Perhaps you’ve heard us on Steamboat Radio with Public Service Announcements about this growing threat, and what you can do about it.

KRW Board member Cedar Beauregard joined Routt County Weed Education and Enforcement Technician Andrew Dean recently to be interviewed by Brian Harvey of Steamboat Radio on the topic of noxious weeds. We highly recommend listening to the 19-minute interview below, which we illustrated with images as a video. The three of them turned a mysterious topic into an interesting discussion about this threat- and what you can do! Click on the image below to bring up the interview on YouTube:

Click the image above to listen and watch the 19-minute noxious weeds interview.

The interview offers numerous resources for the identification, reporting, and mitigation of noxious weeds in Routt County. More information can be found on the KRW Noxious Weed page here, or Routt County’s weed page here.

Even better, come to the County shop on Routt County Noxious Weed Day Saturday May 30th, from 8:00AM to 12:00PM. The location is 2300 County Shop Road in Steamboat Springs. This is a free, drop-in event open to the public to assist residents with weed identification, calibration, and noxious weed management on their properties. Come with your photos and/or clean and functioning handheld or backpack sprayer with appropriate PPE to receive free pre-mixed herbicide. More details can be found here, just scroll down to 2026 Routt County Noxious Weed Day section.

Click the image above to go to the KRW Seasonal Closure web page.

We’d like to remind our followers that Spring seasonal closures are now in effect, many starting May 15. This is a season when many wildlife give birth to their offspring, and a period when human disturbance may be fatal. Studies performed by CPW in the Vail/Eagle area discovered that the number of surviving elk calves dropped by 40% from the disturbance caused by simulated recreational hiking, often without the hikers even knowing they had disturbed or even seen an elk calf. This most likely is due to humans tipping the balance towards predation, causing elk calves to move locations and are then subject to increased predation. An analysis of the CPW study shows this happens approximately 5% of the time an elk cow or calf moves locations due to human disturbance. You can read about these studies on our scientific studies page here.

To find out where these closures are on local Forest Service and BLM lands all in one place, go to KRW’s Seasonal Closure page. There you will find links to maps articulating the dates and locations of the closures. You will also find general closure guidelines for six iconic species: black bear, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, mule deer, and pronghorn.

What we’ve been reading and watching

(Click on any title to read the article.)

Migrating wildlife need lots of space between houses, research shows

“In a paper published May 11 in the Journal of Applied Ecology, a team of Wyoming-based researchers and biologists outlined generally, and in some cases exactly, how much berth these animals give houses and other buildings. … The results are stark. … In rural areas with a structure every 190 acres, on average, wildlife avoided wandering through spaces less than 1.2 miles wide, and never squeezed through spaces narrower than about 150 feet. … Merkle noted that this doesn’t mean houses must be at least 1 mile apart to accommodate big game migration. Instead, the study supports the idea of developing houses in clusters instead of broadly scattering them across a landscape. Using migration data, a developer could, for example, place 50 houses in a subdivision on 1-acre lots instead of on 5-acre lots, leaving the rest of the property open for migration."

Two of Gov. Polis’s nominations for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission withdraw before final Senate vote after committee contention

“John Emerick and Chris Sichko both pulled out of the confirmation process for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission after their nominations were rejected by the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. … Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, the committee’s chair, said he was concerned the two seats were “a clear attempt (by the governor) to move the commission in a direction that is not within the mainstream of Colorado.””

Colorado’s wolf reintroduction hits “inflection point” as program leader steps down, population dwindles and conflicts increase

“During opening remarks to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission on Thursday, Eric Odell, CPW’s wolf conservation program manager, said a requirement of the agency’s annual report on wolf restoration “is to give an anticipated timeline to recovery.” But at this stage, he said, “I cannot provide a definitive timeline, and that’s an honest reflection of where we are in the implementation of wolf restoration.” … The wolf management plan defines a self-sustaining population as roughly 150 to 200 wolves. It has a goal of releasing 30 to 50 wolves over a three-to-five-year period.”

Trump administration cancels rule that made conservation a ‘use’ of public lands

“The Interior Department is canceling a rule that put conservation on equal footing with development, as President Donald Trump’s administration eases restrictions on industries and seeks to boost drilling, logging, mining and grazing on taxpayer-owned land. The 2024 rule adopted under former President Joe Biden was meant to refocus the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees about 10% of land in the U.S. It allowed public property to be leased for restoration in the same way that oil companies lease land for drilling.”

Quote of the Day

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