2026
KIOSKS -
We worked with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Colorado Parks and Wildlife to create 2 wildlife kiosks along the I-70 corridor west of Grand Junction. Our group received a grant from The Sierra Club to fund the purchase of the metal and plexiglass parts of the kiosks, and to pay the artist. BLM employees and WSSC members coordinated on creating the posters. Thank you very much, BLM employees!
To see previews of 3 of the posters from the Prairie Dog Kiosk, go to our prairie dogs page. Here are the three posters for our Riparian Wildlife Kiosk:
First one is the left poster:
This is the Center Poster:
Here is the right poster:
The Prairie Dog kiosk is installed at North Pond, also called 6 & 50 Reservoir, west of Mack off of Highway 6&50. You can see it from the highway, and get to it by taking the dirt road south that passes under I70 to Rabbit Valley. Right after leaving highway 6&50, there is a large parking lot, and the kiosk is at its SW corner.
The second kiosk, with the above posters, is at the McDonald Creek trailhead. Take the main exit off I-70 to Rabbit Valley, and continue south on a fairly bumpy dirt road for a couple miles to the trailhead. Again, thanks to BLM employees for their help on these kiosks.
Books recommended by our WSSC members and Sierra Club
Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben -In Here Comes the Sun, climate activist Bill McKibben explores the rapid rise of solar and wind energy as a powerful, accessible alternative to fossil fuels. Highlighting global progress and grassroots efforts, he shows how renewable energy offers not just a path out of the climate crisis but a chance to build a fairer, more democratic world. Despite resistance from the fossil fuel industry, McKibben argues that this solar revolution is our best hope for a sustainable future.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan - 2014 : At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife's birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, 'A Corona for Vivien'. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery. 2119 : Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, 'A Corona for Vivian'. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem's discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well. What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
We Are Eating the Earthe by Michael Grunwald - "Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we're going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can't feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland.
Eventually a Sequoia by Jeremy Collins - Not found in the library catalog - At first glance, Jeremy Collins’s Eventually a Sequoia hammers the visual senses almost to bewilderment. There are sketches, illustrations, photographs, and text—set in vintage typewriter font or scribbled by hand. Smears of vibrant watercolors offset line drawings and maps, landscape photos, and portraits. Collins’s graphic memoir is the type of book that catches your eye on a shelf or coffee table, luring you to flip through at random. That’s an enjoyable way to digest Collins’s adventures, to be sure. But for the full experience, I urge you to read it through to appreciate his gift for storytelling.
Nature's Best Hope , a new approach to conservation that starts in your yard. By Douglas W. Tallamy. This book explores the idea of creating wildlife havens in our backyards.
Behind the Bears Ears, by R.E. Burrillo. The text is a complete account of the history of Bears Ears, written in a conversational tone.
Path of the Puma -Jim Williams, Wildlife Manager
Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of our Planet. book by Ben Goldfarb. This book helps you understand the consequences that roads and driving have on wildlife.
A Walk in the Park - The true story of a spectacular misadventure in the Grand Canyon. Book by Kevin Fedarko .
This book is about the author's walk from the east end of the Grand Canyon to the west end, over 800 miles. It is very well written with excellent descriptions of the landscape.
Poetry Corner
High Desert
Out here, there is another way to be.
There is a rising brightness in the rock,
a singing in the silence of the tree.
Something is always moving, running free,
as quick and still as quail move in a flock.
The hills out here know a hard way to be.
I have to listen to it patiently:
a drumming canter slowing to a walk,
a flutter in the silence of a tree.
The owl's call from the rimrock changes key.
What door will open to the flicker's knock?
Out here there is another way to be,
described by the high circle of a hawk
above what sits in silence in the tree.
The cottonwoods in their simplicity
talk softly on, as hidden waters talk,
an almost silent singing in the tree
that says, there is another way to be.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
2025 Gingerbread Prairie Dog House, 3rd place winner!
Made by Janet Wyatt and Betsy Greslin. The competition was fierce!