Give a Dam Beaver, a local nonprofit, is hosting a couple events in June.
June 3rd 10:30 am – Durango Public Library Family/Children Beaver Presentation
“Join us and Grandma Beaver on the Durango Public library’s Riverside Patio for a fun and interactive presentation about the importance of beavers to healing our local watersheds.”
Beaver Festival – June 14th, 2025, Saturday, 10am – 3pm at Rotary Park:
Give A Dam is thrilled to host Colorado’s first Beaver Festival on June 14th, 2025! This event will bring together beaver believers, restoration practitioners, educators, artists, and curious community members for a day of fun, learning, and connection. Music lovers too! Colorado’s best conscious reggae band, Niceness will be performing along with a Traditional Celtic band and contra dance with Tom Ward’s Downfall. There will be a Beaver Theater to boot! An audience participation (including you!) theater enacting the history of beaver watersheds and how humans are partnering with beavers to restore our streams!!!
PLEASE COME DRESSED IN YOUR FAVORITE BEAVER WETLAND COSTUME to participate in Beaver Theatre!!!!
Beaver NatureTheatre at Beaver Festival:
Come participate in an interactive theater recreating the role that beavers play as the guardians of the waters, rivers and creeks. Beavers are nature’s solution to drought, fire resiliency, water filtration and the return of many species that rely on beaver wetlands for habitat. Fun for all ages.
In this theater the “audience” gets to play the role of the creatures that are in the beaver-created wetlands while the narrator tells the story of how beavers are the keepers of the waterways. For example if the the child in the audience or student group is wearing brown they get to be a beaver or otter in the water, if they are wearing blue they get to be a dragon fly, if they are wearing orange they get to be our native cutthroat trout, if they are wearing multi colors they get to be a songbird, green they get to be frog in the pond, etc.
While Earth Day was in April, Earth Day Durango is publishing a list of related events all year. Here’s what’s coming in June and July. Click here to see the list and the details.
You’ve heard about electric cars and buses. You may have heard about heat pumps and induction stoves. Why are experts pushing us to switch from fossil fuels to electricity, even though some of our electricity still comes from fossil fuels? This is sometimes referred to as beneficial electrification.
Basic recycling can be hard in a state like Colorado. Our far-flung and mostly small communities, not to mention our mountainous highways, makes collecting and recycling materials economically unfeasible. But Colorado has figured out not only how to collect the materials but also to spawn enterprises to upcycle them. And they’re not just collecting typical Blue Bin recyclables. They’re also working on textiles/clothing, tires and roofing.
To survive in today’s world, it requires a lot more than reading, writing and arithmetic. You have to be media-literate and environmentally literate. Separate fact from misinformation.
Just in time for Memorial Day sales and summer picnics. Consider an electric full sized grill. Cleaner burning, better for the climate, and easier to use.
According to Rocky Mountain Institute, many communities are seeing increased traffic since 2020 but some states, including Colorado, are bucking the trend with smart public policy that facilitates convenient transportation options.
The state projects that its commuters will save over $40 billion in net benefit due to the new, safe, and affordable infrastructure funded by the policy, primarily from savings at the pump and avoided crashes and traffic. Many of these cost-saving strategies are already underway, from new Bus Rapid Transit lines in urban Denver to additional e-bike units in the rural Roaring Fork Valley bikeshare system.
Project SunShare brings affordable rooftop solar power to working homeowners in Southwest Colorado who otherwise couldn’t afford it. This close-to-home initiative is a shining example of how we can work together to create a more sustainable and equitable future.
By helping these income-qualified households, we contribute to their energy independence and reduce their utility costs, resulting in years of significant savings. By making solar power more accessible, we aim to lower energy bills, reduce carbon footprints, and contribute to a healthier environment for future generations.
It’s starting to warm up. Nothing is more refreshing than a glass of ice tea with a sprig of mint. Did you know you can make tea in the sun? It’s best to use loose tea (green, black, herbal) and a tea ball to avoid microplastics. Afterward, keep the jug in your fridge for a healthy, sugarless beverage.
At Earth Day Durango, the Climate Group presented to people who came by their booth the list of the most powerful things households can do for the climate. What are you already doing? What do you want to try next?
At Earth Day, people who stopped by the booth indicated which of those 20 practices they had already done and which ones they wanted to work on in 2025. Take a look. Remember, this is not a scientific study, but it is indicative of what people have done and want to do.
The top actions people had already taken included:
#1 eating a plant-rich diet,
#2 reducing food waste and
#5 using LED lightbulbs.
#14 reducing plastic
Quite a few had put solar on their roofs (#3)
Eating a plant rich diet and reducing food waste were also the actions most often checked as something they wanted to work on this year.
