The Southern Rockies

A comprehensive field and natural history guide to the Southern Rocky Mountains

Whitewater of the Southern Rockies covers 400 runs in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Wyoming. This is the most comprehensive catalog of class I-V+ kayaking and rafting sections ever compiled. Three hundred full-page color photos, a user-friendly design, succinct river descriptions, and precise beta-boxes make this the whitewater guidebook of choice. At once a rediculously well researched and layed-out guide and a coffee table style book complete with the most stunning collection of whitewater photography ever compiled into book form, this is a must have for anyone living in the West and serious about whitewater kayaking and rafting. Each section is complete with maps, detailed information about the runs and access to them, as well as logistics, and complete with color photos and pertinent beta regarding flow rates and seasons.

More than a field guide, this work offers cultural and botanical essays that present useful and fascinating facts about 75 species of wildflowers, including strategies for survival, plant evolution, origins of common and scientific plant names, family characteristics, and their roles in human history.

The State of the Southern Rockies Ecoregion report provides a preliminary examination and layout of the ecological health of the Southern Rockies. The report examines land use history, social and economic settings, native biodiversity status, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem conditions, and protected lands and roadless areas in the ecoregion. It also encourages a long-term, landscape-scale framework within which to promote further conservation planning and ecosystem management efforts in the Southern Rockies.

World-renowned for their striking beauty and high mountain topography, the Southern Rockies are one of North America's gems. The Southern Rockies Ecoregion contains a diversity of life. From alpine tundra to ponderosa pine forests and sagebrush grasslands, over 500 vertebrate species find their home in the Southern Rockies as well as a rich variety of plants and invertebrates including over 270 species of butterflies and 5,200 species of moths. It is able to obtain this abundance partially because of its continuous stretches of wild, remote and undeveloped lands. And yet, this biodiversity is threatened, as are many wild places in North America, due to human expansion and development: native species have been extirpated; old growth forests logged, wild and powerful rivers dammed and polluted, and land degraded. The Southern Rockies Wildlands Network Vision calls for ecological restoration that is based on healing these ecological wounds: the Vision identifies these wounds to the land and then considers anthropogenic causes for each, addressing not only the symptoms and the disease, but also the root cause(s) of the illness. The injuries to the Southern Rockies that have been identified by the Vision include: * Loss and Decline of Native Species * Loss and Degradation of Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystems * Loss and Alteration of Natural Processes * Fragmentation of Wildlife Habitat * Invasion of Exotic Species * Pollution and Climate Change The current state of the Southern Rockies indicates that conservation planning and work is imperative. This Vision is a comprehensive look into that work, which is based in rewilding. It provides six goals and tangible implantation tactics relating to those goals in order to make the Vision a reality. These goals include protecting and recovering native species and their habitats, reducing pollution, controlling and removing exotic species, maintaining ecological and evolutionary processes and restoring landscape connectivity. The Vision is a prescription for the future. It recognizes that national parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges have accomplished a great deal for nature. But over time, protected areas have been surrounded by roads and degraded landscapes. Now, the protected areas are too isolated to sustain viable populations of large animals, let alone many ecological and evolutionary processes. The Southern Rockies Wildlands Network Vision is a conservation blueprint and collaborative effort of the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, the Denver Zoo, and the Wildlands Project for the Southern Rockies of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico.

How and why we should save wolves in the Southern Rockies.