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1 week ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Regan Mertz
Support for this Nonprofit Spotlight series comes from the Aspen Community Foundation, with a mission to inspire philanthropy and ignite collaborative action that leads to community-led change.
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1 week ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Joel Rose
The fragile state of the U.S. air traffic control system was easy to see during the recent outages in Newark. But it will be a lot harder to make up for decades of underinvestment and other mistakes.
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1 week ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Sarah Tory
On Tuesday, volunteers at Food Bank of the Rockies’ mobile food pantry in El Jebel doled out bags of groceries to a line of cars moving through the parking lot. On an average day, they see around 180 cars, serving as many as 600 people throughout the region. One of the volunteers, Cecilia Perez, has volunteered at the mobile food pantry for four years. “Today, we have a lot more people than we had before,” she said.
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1 week ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | James Dawson
An Idaho businessman tapped to become the new leader of the U.S. Forest Service faced little questioning over his past land disputes with the agency during his confirmation hearing. Michael Boren, who co-founded the multi-billion dollar investment firm Clearwater Analytics, has sparred with the Forest Service in recent years over his ranch in central Idaho. The property is within the protected Sawtooth National Recreation Area.
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1 week ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Luke Runyon
What used to be a calm stretch of the Yampa River near Craig, Colorado, now boasts a new set of rollicking whitewater rapids. They’re not the result of some new rockslide. The boulders in these rapids were selected to create just enough splashy holes to attract kayakers, and they act as the focal point of the city’s new effort to draw residents and tourists down to the river’s banks.
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1 week ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Regan Mertz
Pitkin County commissioners were hoping to discuss whether to proclaim June as LGBTQIA+ Pride Month during a work session on Tuesday. They did not get to it, and commissioners have expressed concern over potential federal funding cuts if they move forward with the designation. The White House cancelled grants to researchers focused on the health of gay, lesbian and transgender people in recent months.
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1 week ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Heather Sackett |Alex Hager
There’s an old catchphrase that Colorado kayak park proponents used in the early 2000s to sell the idea that keeping water in streams mattered just as much as water for big farms or new housing developments: “The greater the flow, the greater the dough.”“You would have thought it was an Economics 101 class,” said Glenn Porzak, a Boulder attorney who worked on behalf of the city of Golden and the towns of Breckenridge and Vail to secure the state’s first water rights for recreation.
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1 week ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Regan Mertz
The Wheeler/Stallard Museum held a celebration of life for Aspenite Robert Chamberlain Thursday evening. Chamberlain, an artist and photographer, donated hundreds of photo negatives and prints to the Aspen Historical Society in 2017 before he died in 2024. His photos showcased Aspen beginning in 1958, capturing the city’s early hippy, ski-bum culture to more modern winter sports competitions.
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2 weeks ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Alex Hager |Heather Sackett
David Hajoglou sat on the rocks next to a rushing stretch of river in Golden, Colorado. As he scouted a kayak route through the riffles and waves, he thought back to the first time he visited this spot, the Clear Creek Whitewater Park, nearly 20 years ago. “Boy howdy, did it kick my butt,” he said. “I swam a few times.
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2 weeks ago | 
aspenpublicradio.org | Regan Mertz
The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative was founded by local fire and forestry leaders, who recognized the importance of working together to protect the high-risk region from wildfire. It was founded as a program within the Aspen Institute and launched as a nonprofit in April 2024. A little over a year later, the nonprofit has implemented large-scale forest projects and led public education campaigns, among other efforts.