Aspen Center for Environmental Studies - great horned owl
Meet two of the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies' educators: Jamie and the great horned owl. Vist us at Hallam Lake in Aspen, CO for naturalist guided hikes and environmental education programs year-round. aspennature.org
Black Bear Sniffing Around in Aspen
This video was captured in the back acres of the Hallam Lake nature preserve on November 26th, 2014. It's always exciting when bears get up close and personal with the cameras. Could this be the last black bear footage of the year? Stay tuned to our YouTube page to find out! Video captured at ACES at Hallam Lake in Aspen, Colorado. Footage edited by ACES Naturalist Matt Thomas.
ACES’ “trail cams” are motion sensitive cameras that we position on the preserve in hopes of spotting wildlife in their natural setting. These cameras can help scientists, naturalists, and nature-enthusiasts better understand wildlife habits. Each picture is stamped with a date, time and temperature, and these clues help us piece together a story.
Coyotes at Hallam Lake in Aspen
Our brand new trail camera caught some pretty cool footage of coyotes on the night of November 29th and the morning of the 30th. How many coyotes visited? Watch the video closely, and give us your best guess in the comments. The easiest way to tell if an animal is unique, is to look for any identifiable markings (like a skinny tail, or a patch of hair thats a different color or missing). Sometimes we are able to tell animals apart with our naked eye, and sometimes we can't! Video captured at ACES at Hallam Lake in Aspen, Colorado. Footage edited by ACES Naturalist Matt Thomas.
ACES’ “trail cams” are motion sensitive cameras that we position on the preserve in hopes of spotting wildlife in their natural setting. These cameras can help scientists, naturalists, and nature-enthusiasts better understand wildlife habits. Each picture is stamped with a date, time and temperature, and these clues help us piece together a story.
Aspen School District- ACES Environmental Education
Thomas Lovejoy Interview with Aspen 82
- Interview produced by Aspen 82 -
In March of 2016, Aspen Center for Environmental Studies hosted renowned tropical ecologist Thomas Lovejoy for a free Jessica Catto Dialogues lecture entitled, “The Land of Cinnamon and Gold: 500 Years of Amazon Exploration and Science.”
In this interview with Aspen 82, Dr. Lovejoy reflects on his experiences researching in the Amazon, thoughts about climate change, his hopes for reforestation, and more.
Watch Dr. Lovejoy's complete lecture here:
Dr. Lovejoy is a professor of Science and Public Policy at George Mason University, as well as an internationally renowned ecologist and conservation biologist who has worked at the interface of science and environmental policy in the Brazilian Amazon forest since 1965. He helped coin the term biological diversity in 1980 and co-created the popular public television program Nature in 1982. He is National Geographic Fellow and serves on the advisory board for the School of Global Sustainability at Colorado State University. He has served as senior advisor to the president of the United Nations Foundation, as World Bank’s Chief Biodiversity Advisor and lead specialist for the Environment for the Latin American region, as assistant secretary for Environmental and External Affairs at the Smithsonian Institute, as executive vice president of World Wildlife Fund-U.S., and on advisory councils in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.
ACES’ Jessica Catto Dialogues honor the environmental legacy of Jessica Hobby Catto through a speaker series featuring visionary thinkers and doers from all realms of environmental concerns. The series is supported by the Catto and Shaw families in Jessica’s memory.
Aspen Elementary- ACES Environmental Education
Mountain lion at ACES Rock Bottom Ranch site #1
In January 2010 motion cameras at ACES Rock Bottom Ranch site caught a mountain lion in action. RBR is a site of the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies.
aspennature.org
Black Bears Return to Hallam Lake
This video was captured on one of ACEs trail cameras on Thursday April 9th, 2015 at 2:23am.
The American Black Bear (Urus americanus) has been inactive in the Roaring Fork Valley for many months now, as they retreated to their dens to sleep through the long Rocky Mountain winter. In this period of extended inactivity (also know as torpor), the bears sleep for five to seven months without eating, drinking, defecating or urinating at all. Their heart rates drop to eight to ten beats/minute and their breathing rate drops dramatically, reducing oxygen intake by nearly half.
The Black Bear has just began to emerge now that spring has sprung and this is the first bear we've seen on Hallam Lake in 2015! For a period of about two to three weeks after waking and leaving their dens, they will have very little appetite or thirst, which coincides with the lack of food available to them in these early stages of spring. But in just a few short weeks, we'll see a large number of bears returning to their preferred feeding areas throughout the valley. There are an estimated 8,000-12,000 Black Bears in Colorado and several hundred reside in the ideal habitat within and surrounding the Aspen area. So be on the look out for these amazing creatures and remember to be Bear Aware!
ACES’ “trail cams” are motion sensitive cameras that we position on the preserve in hopes of spotting wildlife in their natural setting. These cameras can help scientists, naturalists, and nature-enthusiasts better understand wildlife habits. Each picture is stamped with a date, time and temperature, and these clues help us piece together a story. Find out more about Aspen Center for Environmental Studies by visiting aspennature.org.
The Future of Wildness
Author Dr. John Hausdoerffer will present on “The Future of Wildness” and read from his new co-edited volume Wildness: Relations of People and Place (U of Chicago Press, 2017). Co-edited with Gavin Van Horn from the Center for Humans and Nature, Wildness features creative nonfiction essays that explore the spectrum of wildness found in wilderness areas, on working landscapes, and in urban communities. The book merges culturally diverse voices to delve into the evolution of wildness, including Hausdoerffer and Van Horn, as well as Gary Snyder, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, Mistinguette Smith, Curt Meine, Julianne Warren, Robert Michael Pyle, Robin Kimmerer, Aaron Abeyta, Winona LaDuke, and Roderick Frazier Nash. Hausdoerffer's talk will also feature clips from his new documentary series Wildness that accompanies the book.
Dr. John Hausdoerffer is the Executive Director of the Center for Environment & Sustainability at Western State Colorado University in Gunnison, where he serves as a Professor of Environmental Sustainability and Philosophy. He is also a fellow with the Center for Humans and Nature. In addition to Wildness, Hausdoerffer is also the author of Catlin's Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature and the editor of Aaron Abeyta's Letters from the Headwaters.
Naturalist Nights are made possible through a partnership between Wilderness Workshop, Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES), and Roaring Fork Audubon.
Climate Change and Our Future in CO, Ian Billick
Naturalist Nights 2012 | Ian Billick
Ian's Naturalist night presentation focuses on what research at RMBL is telling us about climate change, including how streams, animals, and plants are responding to climate change. He will put this research into the broader context of what other scientists are seeing around the world. Home to one of the world's largest and oldest annual migrations of field biologists, RMBL is uniquely positioned to understand a changing world. Ian will also talk a bit about RMBL's colorful history and how it came to be a critical scientific institution shedding light on climate change.
Dr. Ian Billick is the Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. Ian first started attending the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in 1988 as a student. He conducted his graduate work on ants in Virginia Basin, above Gothic, eventually receiving his PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 1997. He held positions at the University of Houston and Truman State University before becoming the Executive Director of the RMBL in 2000. He edited The Ecology of Place, a collection of articles on the value of sustained research in single locations. He currently serves as the President of the Organization of Biological Field Stations and is leading a national strategic planning effort for field stations and marine labs.
Naturalist Nights are brought to you through a partnership between Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, Wilderness Workshop, and Roaring Fork Audubon.
Hallam Lake Beaver Family
On August 5, 2014 ACES' motion-activated trail camera captured videos of our resident beaver family at work at the Hallam Lake Nature Preserve in Aspen, CO. Here you can see a beaver family working on a small dam. Thanks to ACES Naturalist Matt Thomas for managing ACES trail cameras!
ACES’ “trail cams” are motion sensitive cameras that we position on the preserve in hopes of spotting wildlife in their natural setting. These cameras can help scientists, naturalists, and nature-enthusiasts better understand wildlife habits. Each picture is stamped with a date, time and temperature, and these clues help us piece together a story.
A Biologist's and Senator's Look at Wolf Recovery and Conservation
For all intents and purposes, wolves have been extinct in Colorado for nearly a century. If wolf restoration were accomplished, it would act as the arc stone for connecting the species from the High Arctic to the Mexican border. There is no other place in the world where one could complete restoration of such a critically-important, though much maligned, species across such a sweeping landscape. Led by Wildlife Biologist and Montana Senator Mike Phillips, this presentation is a start to a serious, thoughtful discussion about restoring the wolf.
From Cottonwoods to Cut Banks: Is River Restoration Working in the Desert Southwest?
Naturalist Nights 2016 | Shannon Hatch
Shannon will present on the Tamarisk Coalitions' work to improve lowland riparian areas in the West for the benefit of human and wildlife communities. In addition to highlighting the Tamarisk Coalition's work with collaborative efforts, the presentation will focus on studies undertaken to assess restoration success, including monitoring efforts to determine the impacts of tamarisk removal on streambank morphology.
Shannon Hatch joined the Tamarisk Coalition in 2010 as Restoration Coordinator. Since then she has worked with partners on a variety of projects throughout the Colorado River Basin. She currently heads up local riparian restoration efforts in the greater Grand Junction area through the Desert Rivers Collaborative. Shannon was previously a Land Steward for a regional land trust and she held a number of field jobs with the National Park Service and the US Forest Service. Filipino by birth, Shannon lays claim to Colorado as her home state, despite a long-lingering crush on Montana. She received her MS in Environmental Science from the University of Idaho and her BA in Environmental Studies/Biology from Whitman College.
Naturalist Nights are brought to you through a partnership between Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, Wilderness Workshop, and Roaring Fork Audubon.
Balancing Outdoor Recreation with Wildlife Conservation in Protected Lands
Naturalist Nights 2017 | Sarah Thomas & Sarah Reed
Outdoor recreation has provided a major impetus for land protection in the western U.S., and key conservation policies and funding initiatives are aimed at ensuring public access to protected areas. Yet, a growing body of research shows that rapidly increasing recreation activity may undermine the conservation goals of public lands, negatively affecting species, habitats, and ecosystem processes. What makes this paradox even more complicated is that most recreationists care deeply about the natural environment and the places where they recreate, but are often unaware of the impacts of their own activities. This talk will present key findings from a global systematic review of the effects of recreation on wildlife, discuss challenges that outdoor recreation poses to land managers, and propose strategies to balance public access with wildlife conservation in protected lands.
Dr. Sarah Reed is an Associate Conservation Scientist with the North America Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society and an Affiliate Faculty member in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University. Sarah’s research investigates how land development and human activities affect wildlife and biodiversity, and she works with communities and government agencies to apply ecological science to inform conservation planning and land-use policy. She currently serves as Vice President for Programs of the Society for Conservation Biology and co-leads the Conservation Development Working Group at the School of Global Environmental Sustainability.
Dr. Sarah Thomas is a research affiliate at the University of Colorado, Boulder and principal of Sarah Thomas Consulting, LLC. Her work over the past fifteen years has focused on the social, political, and policy drivers of land use change, particularly in the U.S. West, and on strategies to ensure healthy local communities and environments. She has taught undergraduate courses on environmental policy at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Colorado, Boulder. She currently is a Board Member for the Wildlands Restoration Volunteers.
Naturalist Nights are brought to you through a partnership between Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, Wilderness Workshop, and Roaring Fork Audubon.
Recent Bear Activity at Hallam Lake
The snow is falling here in Aspen and the wildlife around Hallam Lake are busy preparing for winter. Around this time of year we get a lot of questions wondering when bears will start to retreat to their dens for a lengthy winter slumber.
Bears spend the extent of their winter sleeping in dens to avoid the cold temperatures and lack of food, but not many people know exactly what triggers this behavior.
Like many circannual rhythms (something an organism predictively does every year), hibernation is dictated by external stimuli in the environment, in this case, the day length. Once the days begin to get shorter and fall approaches, hormones are released that cause the animal to grow thicker fur, and to spend more time and energy searching for food. At some point towards the end of fall, the bear will enter a period of hyperphagia, where the bears will eat up to 15,000 - 20,000 calories per day! Soon after hyperphagia, the bear will enter a fall transition period, where it will begin to eat less, and drink and sleep more. Once a significant snow or frost occurs and food becomes less and less available, the bears will seek out a den and start to sleep for the winter.
Healthy sows (females) with cubs are always the first to go into their dens, followed by healthy boars (males). If a bear is too thin to retreat to the den for the winter, it will seek out food until the last possible minute.
Our trail cameras captured a few healthy bears this past weekend; one boar on November 13th, and a sow and cub on the morning of November 16th. There is a very good chance that this next storm will push these bears into their dens for the season, but we will have to wait and see to know for sure
ACES’ “trail cams” are motion sensitive cameras that we position on the preserve in hopes of spotting wildlife in their natural setting. These cameras can help scientists, naturalists, and nature-enthusiasts better understand wildlife habits. Each picture is stamped with a date, time and temperature, and these clues help us piece together a story. Find out more about Aspen Center for Environmental Studies by visiting aspennature.org.
Warmer—But to What End? The Past, Present, and Future Climates of the Roaring Fork Valley
Naturalist Nights 2017 | Jeff Lukas
The invigorating climate of the Roaring Fork Valley—with mild summers, a long snow season, and abundant sunshine—drives year-round recreation and tourism, rushing creeks and rivers, hay meadows, and a vibrant palette of ecosystems. The Roaring Fork has also seen lower overall risk from many weather and climate hazards that are more prevalent elsewhere in Colorado, though maybe with luck having played a part.
But human-caused climate change has already warmed Colorado and the West, with yet more warming to come. A warmer atmosphere is a thirstier atmosphere, tending to pull more moisture from the snowpacks, the meadows, the streams and rivers, and the ecosystems. What change (if not loss) will the future climate cause in these key features of the valley? Will the future climate bring more risks for residents and visitors than the current climate, and in what ways?
Jeff Lukas is a Research Integration Specialist with the Western Water Assessment, a NOAA-supported research program based at the University of Colorado Boulder. For the past 15 years, Jeff has worked closely with water managers and other decision-makers in the Rocky Mountain West to help them understand and prepare for climate-related vulnerabilities. He was lead author of the 2014 Climate Change in Colorado report for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, summarizing the latest science on observed climate trends and future climate projections for the state. Jeff has a B.A. in Geography from the University of Colorado Boulder and an M.S. in Forestry from the University of Montana. (Photo by Ken Neubecker)
Naturalist Nights are brought to you through a partnership between Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, Wilderness Workshop, and Roaring Fork Audubon.
Mother Bear and Cub in the Fall
ACES trail camera at Hallam Lake recently captured a large mother black bear and her cub exploring the preserve.
By this time last year, the city of Aspen had reported hundreds of bear sightings. At Hallam Lake it seemed like we were seeing a bear or two every day throughout the summer. This year has been a different story with less sightings at Hallam Lake and in town. The apparent drop in urban bear encounters this year is likely due to the abundance of rain in the area throughout the spring and summer. Steady precipitation made for an abundant seed and berry crop in the mountains. When natural food sources are plentiful there is less need for bears to scavenge for garbage and non-native fruits in urban areas.
However as fall progresses and berry crops dwindle in the high country, it is likely that bears will move to lower elevations to find the 20,000 calories a day that they need to prepare for winter torpor. The Aspen-end of the Roaring Fork Valley is perfect bear habitat at this time of year with serviceberry, chokecherry and oak fruits prevalent through September and October at lower elevations. Bears also will also eat cultivated fruit trees like crabapples, root through unsecured garbage, or even enjoy your Halloween pumpkin!
We remind our community to be bear aware during this is especially crucial time for bears. More information about living with bears can be found here:
ACES’ “trail cams” are motion sensitive cameras that we position on the preserve in hopes of spotting wildlife in their natural setting. These cameras can help scientists, naturalists, and nature-enthusiasts better understand wildlife habits. Each picture is stamped with a date, time and temperature, and these clues help us piece together a story. Find out more about Aspen Center for Environmental Studies by visiting aspennature.org.
Black Bears Crossing Roaring Fork River
The recent storms haven't sent all the bears in Aspen into hibernation! Our trail cameras recently captured two different black bears crossing the Roaring Fork River right behind Hallam Lake. Given that most sows with cubs will already be in their dens by now, we presume that both of the bears are probably boars. These videos were captured on the morning and evening of November 24th, 2015. In 2014, the last black bear footage we recorded around Hallam Lake was on November 26th.
Bears Swimming at Hallam Lake
On September 5, 2014 ACES' motion-activated trail cameras captured two black bears, presumably a mother and cub, playing and swimming at our Hallam Lake Nature Preserve in Aspen, CO. Footage edited by ACES Naturalist Matt Thomas.
ACES’ “trail cams” are motion sensitive cameras that we position on the preserve in hopes of spotting wildlife in their natural setting. These cameras can help scientists, naturalists, and nature-enthusiasts better understand wildlife habits. Each picture is stamped with a date, time and temperature, and these clues help us piece together a story.
Cow Elk
Our new trail camera caught this footage of an elk cow in the back acres of the Hallam Lake preserve on Sunday, December 7, 2014. We've seen up to 11 elk at a time on the preserve this fall! Video captured at ACES at Hallam Lake in Aspen, Colorado. Footage edited by ACES Naturalist Matt Thomas.
ACES’ “trail cams” are motion sensitive cameras that we position on the preserve in hopes of spotting wildlife in their natural setting. These cameras can help scientists, naturalists, and nature-enthusiasts better understand wildlife habits. Each picture is stamped with a date, time and temperature, and these clues help us piece together a story.