NEW HERD OF BISON WILL GRAZE COLORADO’S PLAINS
A dozen purebred American bison will begin grazing the hillsides near the Rocky Mountains this fall. Colorado State University has finalized an agreement with the required government agencies to release bison on 800 acres of the City of Fort Collins-owned Soapstone Prairie Natural Area and adjacent Larimer County-owned Red Mountain Open Space on Nov. 1.
The bison released into this corner of northern Colorado will come from a seed herd of genetically pure bison. The area was historically home to bison before they were hunted to near extinction. Cattle and bison were interbred for decades after efforts to restore the species were undertaken, and as a result, cattle genes are almost always present in bison. The animals that will comprise the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd have been quarantined for more than a decade, tested for bovine brucellosis, which affects bison, cattle and elk and can cause spontaneous abortions.
Assisted reproductive technologies developed at CSU will guarantee the bison are not carrying infectious disease, thereby reducing some of the potential conflicts with ranchers concerned with infection.
“I started with this project really excited by the science, the idea that we could use the bovine reproduction system in a different way,” Jennifer Barfield, the reintroduction project’s scientific leader, with Colorado State’s Animal Reproduction and Biotechnology Laboratory, said in a press release. “But I’ve developed this passion for the bison. … They’re so culturally important. The heritage they carry with them has been the extra motivation to make this work.”
The bison are currently housed at CSU.
FARMERS GET WATER AS FRACKERS RECEDE
Bids for leftover water from the Colorado River were received recently and for the first time in years, no oil and gas industry members submitted bids. The only bids received were for irrigation use by members of the agricultural industry.
The lack of bids from the oil and gas industry could have far reaching implications, none more so than the decline of drilling in northern Colorado in 2015. Early estimates suggest that there has been as much as a 30 percent decline in drill rig counts and other drilling markers this year.
The decrease is likely linked to the marked drop in oil prices over the last several months. As drilling operations decline, the demand for water in the industry declines as well — hydraulic fracturing fluids generally consist of 90 percent water, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
Every year, excess water from the Colorado River is auctioned off by Northern Water, a government dam and water resource agency, to the highest bidder. This year prices ranged from $10 per acre-foot to $100 per acre-foot. Oil and gas industry members were (and likely still are) easily able to outbid these prices in the past, beating out farmers and cities for the limited resources. Names of this year’s bidders were obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act request made by the advocacy group Save the Colorado.
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