Activism

Welcoming the Wolf to Colorado’s Western Slope

Anna Tolette — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:48:21 +0000

Welcoming the Wolf to Colorado’s Western Slope Anna Tolette Tue, 11/12/2024 - 13:48

Dan Oberhaus

On a cold morning in December 2023, Joanna Lambert found herself surrounded by five gray wolves on Colorado’s Western Slope. For most people, this sounds like the stuff of nightmares. But for Lambert, a professor who teaches animal ecology and conservation biology at CU �鶹ӰԺ, it was a dream come true.

“I was so close to the wolves, I could smell and hear them,” Lambert said. “The whole experience was just extraordinary.”

For the first time in over 75 years, gray wolves were about to set foot on Colorado soil, marking the first time an endangered and federally protected species was reintroduced to its native habitat by a democratic vote. And this historic occasion was due in no small part to Lambert’s tireless — and often thankless — work advocating for this misunderstood apex predator.

The “Big Bad Wolf”

Lambert was elated as she watched the wolves bound across the snow-dusted field. But as the last wolf disappeared into the Coloradan wilderness, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of anxiety. After a decades-long career studying and advocating for endangered species worldwide, Lambert knew that releasing these wolves into the Rockies was just the beginning. The true test would be whether humans could learn how to co-exist with the wolves — and she had every reason to be worried.

Prior to the arrival of European settlers, North America was home to millions of gray wolves whose habitats stretched from modern Mexico into the Canadian north. The largest of any dog species — technically known as Canis lupus — gray wolves were despised by settlers, who viewed them as a threat to their livestock, big game, and personal safety.

“Western settlers brought all these myths and legends about the ’big bad wolf,’” said Lambert. “There’s something about gray wolves that evokes more fear, dread and loathing than any other species I have ever worked with.”

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, settlers systematically tried to exterminate gray wolves in the region. Their programs were devastatingly effective, and by the time gray wolves were officially listed as an endangered species in the mid-1970s, only a few hundred breeding pairs remained in the lower United States.

A vote decides

When Lambert arrived at CU in 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had recently delisted gray wolves as an endangered species in the Northern Rockies. This sparked controversy among conservationists, who argued that gray wolf populations were nowhere near the levels needed to justify delisting.

“Colorado is arguably the best place in the U.S. to reintroduce gray wolves,” Lambert said. “We have around 20 million acres of protected public lands, the most abundant elk population anywhere in the country, and a prime location to enable full latitudinal distribution.”

The lack of government support particularly troubled Mike Phillips, director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund, who was previously a state senator of Montana and former biologist with the National Park Service. When Lambert arrived in �鶹ӰԺ, Phillips was cooking up a plan to put the reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado to a state vote.

Lambert jumped on board and spent the next five years working with a political campaign team of scientists, nonprofit partners, pollsters, lawyers and citizen volunteers known as the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project (RMWP). By 2019, RMWP had enough signatures to get the initiative on the 2020 General Election ballot. Along with several RMWP colleagues, Lambert herself delivered those signatures to Colorado’s secretary of state.

She was also a spokesperson for the campaign. “Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be in television ads for a political campaign,” reflected Lambert. “I’m happiest in wild landscapes running around after animals, and there I was in the trenches of a campaign.”

The result was Proposition 114, which was voted into law by Coloradans in 2020. Beginning in 2023, it committed the state to releasing around ten gray wolves per year for the next three to five years.

Into the wild

The initiative was a landmark moment for ecological conservation, and it passed by the narrowest of margins — 50.9% in favor. When considering why some would be opposed to the measure, Lambert says that a lot of the opposition stems from concerns about personal safety (though gray wolves almost never attack humans) and impact on livestock producers.

For Lambert, these concerns echo the fears that once nearly drove gray wolves to extinction.

“We’ve lived with wolves and other apex predators through virtually all of our evolutionary history,” said Lambert. “That’s one thing humans are very good at — we’ve got a big brain and the tools to cope. It will just take time to attenuate the inherent fear that many folks have about these predators and to relearn how to share a landscape with them.”

Today, one of Lambert’s major research initiatives is investigating the different evolutionary trajectories of gray wolves and coyotes, the closest living genetic relative to the gray wolf. Unlike gray wolves, coyotes are increasingly co-existing with humans in urban environments. The question for Lambert is why, and the answer may have a lot to teach conservationists about how to tilt the odds in favor of successfully reintroducing the gray wolf throughout the American West.

In the meantime, Lambert believes that Colorado taking the reintroduction of gray wolves into its own hands bodes well for future conservation efforts in the state and across the nation. The journey, however, could be a long and winding one. In August, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials announced that two of the gray wolves released last year — along with three of their pups — would be relocated following a spate of attacks on livestock that local ranchers blamed on wolves.

While Lambert acknowledges this was a blow, she doesn’t see the relocation as a setback and says it’s important to keep sight of the bigger picture.

She says fewer than 0.01% of cattle in the northern Rockies are attacked by gray wolves, and that cattle are far more likely to die from eating larkspur weeds or even being struck by lightning than a wolf attack. And the majority of the reintroduced wolves, she says, are not causing any problems.

“The fundamental reality is that we are living through the sixth extinction crisis and we must learn how to live with wildlife,” said Lambert. “We are turning into a state that represents an alternative way of thinking about how to manage wildlife, and this should be a source of hope for everyone.”

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Illustrations by Anuj Shrestha

After an 80-year absence, gray wolves have returned to Colorado. CU’s Joanna Lambert discusses the implications — and why she fought so hard to make it happen.

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Filming the Frontlines: Jordan Campbell’s Journey Into Ukraine

Anna Tolette — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:44:53 +0000

Filming the Frontlines: Jordan Campbell’s Journey Into Ukraine Anna Tolette Tue, 11/12/2024 - 13:44

Audrea Lin

Journalist, photographer and filmmaker Jordan Campbell (Comm’91) is no stranger to the harshness of international conflict. He has reported from South Sudan, Libya and Iraq for publications like National Geographic and Men's Journal. He also founded Ramro Global, a film production company that documents the work of global health and humanitarian initiatives.

But his latest project, an upcoming documentary titled Ukraine Under Fire, is a personal labor — the origins and experiences of which are unlike anything he’s ever undertaken.

International storytelling

After graduating from CU, Campbell started working with outdoor company Marmot as a communications director. Always one to seek out new and interesting perspectives, he befriended a few of the company’s international representatives, becoming close to his Ukrainian colleagues Iryna Karagan and Pavlo Vasianoych.

Over the course of the next decade, Campbell found himself drawn to bigger stories, fueled by his university training in storytelling, geopolitics and political science. His career segued into global journalism and film.

Still, he remained friends with Karagan and Vasianoych. And when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, he quickly reached out to Karagan. Concerned, he asked if she would flee. Karagan’s answer was resolved: Not only was she staying put, she was staying “to defend our country.”

Her determination highlighted what Campbell saw as “the most incredible injustice, a David and Goliath story — of resistance, resilience and the quest for freedom, democracy and European integration.”

Documenting conflict

A month later, Campbell crossed the Polish border heading to Kiev, his camera in tow and post-apocalyptic sirens blaring. “It was a ghost town,” he remembered. In areas near Bucha that Ukrainian soldiers had just liberated from Russia, he saw evidence of violence alongside the burnt remains of tanks, buildings and cars.

He returned again that summer and embedded at a military hospital in Pokrovsk, a grisly scene of battered and injured soldiers. “It was a life-changing event,” he said. Campbell decided that the footage he shot would become part of a film, Ukraine Under Fire, that documents Russia’s invasion and Ukraine’s resilience, and includes Karagan and Vasianoych as subjects.

Between visits, Campbell spoke up about what he had seen. At the U.S. Senate Building, he presented before an audience of global politicians during the Parliamentary Intelligence Security Forum, speaking about Russia’s use of cluster bombs on civilian targets and what he believed was evidence of war crimes and genocide.

“What he’s doing by humanizing the conflict encourages people to take an interest and support the cause of the Ukrainian people,” said Dan Martinez, a retired Foreign Service Officer and Ramro Global advisory board member who facilitated Campbell’s participation.

Despite the inherent risks, Campbell continued to return to Ukraine, mitigating the dangers by following a few simple rules: “Make the best decisions you can possibly make, given where you are and who you're with,” and, “Pick the people you're going to be with very carefully.”

One such person he shadowed was Peter Fouché, a South African combat medic. During a frigid morning in early 2023, the two men patrolled a quiet hamlet near the front line, peering up at the sky for incoming drones. Fouché, burly and hardened, a Rambo-like figure cradling an AK-47, emerged from the broken shell of a little stone house. Then, he broke into tears.

“The West will be remembered for what they have done or have not done in this war,” Fouché said, staring directly into Campbell’s lens.

Capturing reality

The summer of 2023 was Campbell’s fifth visit to Ukraine — one he now describes as “disastrous.” He was with Fouché at the time, and their nerves were shot from exhaustion, PTSD and a relentless, soggy heat. He didn’t know it, but it would be the last time he’d see his friend.

As Campbell made plans to return, to embed with Fouché and his Ukrainian colleague Tatyana Millard, he learned that the two were killed near the frontlines. The duo were evacuating injured soldiers from the combat zone “like a superhero team,” Campbell said.

“That’s Peter’s essence right there,” Campbell remarked weeks after Fouché’s death, while reflecting on the footage he captured of the heroic medic and his piercing statement about the West’s role in the war. “That's the power of documentary film. It's that close.”

Campbell’s documentary, Ukraine Under Fire, is set to release in December 2024.

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Photos courtesy Oleg Avilov

In 2022, journalist, photographer and filmmaker Jordan Campbell (Comm’91) headed to Ukraine to report on the war. Now, he’s sharing his experiences in his documentary, Ukraine Under Fire.

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Honoring Los Seis de �鶹ӰԺ

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Honoring Los Seis de �鶹ӰԺ Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/04/2024 - 00:00

Allison Nitch

On May 27, 1974, Una Jaakola (Psych’73), Reyes Martínez (Law’73) and Neva Romero (A&S ex’75) were killed by a car bomb at Chautauqua Park. Forty-eight hours later, a second car bomb killed Florencio Granado (A&S ex’73), Heriberto Terán (A&S ex’73) and Francisco Dougherty at the corner of 28th Street and Canyon Boulevard.

These Chicano movement activists are known as Los Seis de �鶹ӰԺ.

They fought to achieve parity of racial representation within the student body — a need that persists today. This May marks the 50th anniversary of these tragedies, which remain unsolved.

In 2019, Jasmine Baetz (MFA’20) designed a sculpture in memory of the six killed. The university installed the Los Seis de �鶹ӰԺ sculpture by the Albert and Vera Ramírez Temporary Building Number 1 and Sewall Hall. It was added to the University Libraries’ Rare & Distinctive Collections in 2020.

Chancellor Philip DiStefano noted the sculpture’s place in the university archives “will help to provide current and future students, faculty and staff opportunities to learn more about an important chapter of Colorado and university history.”

Baetz, now a visiting professor in ceramics at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, told CU �鶹ӰԺ Today in 2020 that she hoped the community-created project would contribute to a climate in which the university can act with “honor, integrity and accountability toward BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) students, staff and faculty who were and are impacted by systemic racism at CU �鶹ӰԺ.”

When the sculpture was made part of the permanent collection three years ago, Baetz said, “It’s hard to accept that the killings of Los Seis have been silenced for so long. My hope is that the sculpture’s preservation will weaken our institution’s historical amnesia around civil rights struggles at CU �鶹ӰԺ.”

To recognize Los Seis and their fight for justice, CU �鶹ӰԺ is working to establish an endowed scholarship fund of $750,000 to award six $5,000 scholarships annually, each in the name of a member of Los Seis. Contributions to the fund support CU �鶹ӰԺ students who participate in organizations committed to increasing economic, racial or ethnic representation in CU �鶹ӰԺ’s student body.

The BUENO Center for Multicultural Education at CU �鶹ӰԺ administers the Los Seis Memorial Scholarship.

“The Los Seis Memorial Scholarship is about honoring the memory and fight for justice of Los Seis de �鶹ӰԺ, acknowledging the tragic events of the past and aiming to build a future where their courageous sacrifice inspires hope for future students to continue advocating for representation, educational equity and a just and inclusive society,” said Tania Hogan, BUENO Center executive director.

Donations to the Los Seis Memorial Scholarship Fund can be made here.

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Photo by Glenn Asakawa

This May marks the 50th anniversary of the Los Seis de �鶹ӰԺ tragedies, which remain unsolved. In 2019, Jasmine Baetz designed a sculpture in memory of the six killed.

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Activism

Welcoming the Wolf to Colorado’s Western Slope

The “Big Bad Wolf”

A vote decides

Into the wild

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Filming the Frontlines: Jordan Campbell’s Journey Into Ukraine

International storytelling

Documenting conflict

Capturing reality

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Honoring Los Seis de �鶹ӰԺ

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