Scientists, policymakers, industry and academic leaders will visit Colorado State University on Tuesday, Nov. 5, for a discussion on agro-defense with the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.
It will be held at the C. Wayne McIlwraith Translational Medicine Institute on CSU’s South Campus. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Agro-defense refers to protecting the nation’s agriculture, farmers and people against the threat and potential impact of serious diseases.
The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense was established in 2014 to comprehensively assess the state of U.S. biodefense, and to issue recommendations to foster change. The Commission is co-chaired by former Senator Joe Lieberman and former Governor Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security.
Event participants
Participants at the event will include:
Thomas Daschle, former Senate majority leader and panel member
Kenneth Wainstein, former Homeland Security adviser to President George W. Bush and panel member
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO, 1st District)
Tony Frank, chancellor, Colorado State University System
Alan Rudolph, vice president for research, Colorado State University
Amy Delgado, director of monitoring and modeling, Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Capt. Casey Barton Behravesh, director, One Health Office, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Keith A. Roehr, state veterinarian, Colorado Department of Agriculture
“Colorado State University is among the nation’s leading institutions in protecting our agricultural industries from infectious diseases,” said Alan Rudolph, vice president for research. “We aim to advance our ongoing efforts in preparedness that focuses on research in surveillance and diagnosis for disease, vaccine and therapeutics treatments development and remediation to enable return to normal operations after outbreaks such as the current global crisis experienced with Africa Swine fever. The Commission’s meeting at CSU will focus on the role of land grant innovation ecosystems and public-private partnerships in addressing one of the major challenges of our day.”
This event will also be webcast; registration for the webcast is encouraged.
DENVER – The Colorado Supreme Court on Friday appointed Steven Vasconcellos as State Court Administrator. Vasconcellos had served as interim State Court Administrator since July.
“We have as a group become convinced that Steven is the best candidate to lead the State Court Administrator’s Office and move the Judicial Department forward,” Chief Justice Nathan B. Coats said. “Steven has dedicated his professional life to the department and has unparalleled institutional knowledge and experience. We have been greatly impressed not only by his management of the office as Interim State Court Administrator over the last three months but also by his ideas for better serving the needs of the state’s 22 judicial districts.”
Vasconcellos was among more than 50 applicants for the position. Four finalists appeared in a town hall-style meeting telecast to Judicial Department employees across the state, and the Supreme Court accepted department employees’ comments before concluding its three-month search.
Vasconcellos began his career with the Colorado Courts in 1995, serving in numerous positions ranging from court clerk in Colorado Springs to director of the Court Services Division of the State Court Administrator’s Office. He was serving as the SCAO Chief Operations Officer when he was appointed interim State Court Administrator in July.
The State Court Administrator works closely with the Chief Justice, Supreme Court, and Court Executives to set the strategic administrative direction for the Judicial Department. The position has oversight over the State Court Administrator’s Office, which provides central administrative services through many divisions including Information Technology, Financial Services, Human Resources, Court Services, Legal, Education and Probation Services. The office also assigns senior judges as needed. The State Court Administrator is a liaison to advisory working groups and committees of justices, judges and administrators that provide recommendations and advice for policymaking, business practice change, and service delivery. The State Court Administrator serves at the pleasure of the Supreme Court. The annual salary for this position is $184,836.
The Colorado Judicial Department is the state’s largest unified criminal justice agency and includes the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, as well as the state’s district and county trial courts. The Judicial Department is also home to the Division of Probation Services, which is responsible for supervising more than 80,000 adult and juvenile offenders.
The Judicial Branch employs approximately 4,600 employees, including 425 justices, judges and magistrates. Last fiscal year, 777,000 cases of all types were filed in the state court system.
DENVER (October 24, 2019) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is issuing a summary of enforcement actions to Denver-area contractors completed over the last year to address noncompliance with the lead-based paint Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Rule. The RRP Rule protects the public from toxic lead hazards created by renovation activities involving lead-based paint and requires the certification of individuals and firms involved in these activities. Contractors working on homes built prior to 1978 must test for lead in paint, or presume lead is present, and apply applicable lead-safe work practices to minimize the risk of toxic lead exposure.
This past year, EPA reached agreements with five Denver-area contractors to settle violations of the RRP Rule: Metro Construction, Inc., Colorado Western Construction, Pappas Painting & Repair, Inc., Kelly Custom Painting LLC, and Coggeshall Construction, Inc. These cases resulted in more than $17,000 in penalties. Violations included failure to obtain EPA lead-safe firm certification, failure to maintain records documenting compliance, and failure to employ lead-safe work practices when conducting renovations on pre-1978 homes. In cases where violations resulted in contamination at a jobsite, EPA staff worked with contractors, and state and local environmental agencies, to facilitate cleanup measures to protect the public from lead exposure.
“Infants and children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of lead, and the disturbance of lead-based paint in older homes and buildings is one of the most common exposure pathways,” said Suzanne Bohan, director of EPA’s regional enforcement program. “EPA is taking a close look at neighborhoods where lead-based paint is present by providing residents with information on managing risks and making sure contractors follow the requirements that reduce exposure in homes.”
Lead exposure, even at low levels, can cause lifelong impacts, including developmental impairment, learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention span, hyperactivity and behavioral problems. EPA estimates that lead-based paint is still present in more than 30 million homes across the nation.
Many Denver-area homes were built before lead was banned from use in paint products in 1978 and there is a high potential these homes contain lead paint. EPA conducts inspections and provides compliance assistance to contractors to ensure renovations of these homes are done in a lead-safe manner in accordance with the RRP Rule. Cases often result from referrals, tips and complaints from consumers, state and local authorities, as well as from random inspections of residential renovations.
In addition to the five cases settled this year, EPA also issued 27 Notices of Noncompliance to contractors and provided educational materials to many others to promote compliance with the RRP Rule in the Denver area. These notices identify specific actions that contractors must take to ensure future compliance. The agency will continue to assess compliance associated with recent inspections and pursue enforcement action when appropriate.
DURANGO, Colo. – Twenty years after Colorado reintroduced the Canada lynx to the state, wildlife managers are monitoring the big-footed felines in the San Juan mountains using remote cameras and wintertime snow tracking.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife believe the lynx population is stable in the core area of the San Juan Mountains at about 150-250. Biologists know, however, that lynx have also dispersed to other mountainous areas of the state.
CPW released 218 lynx from 1999 to 2006 and all the animals were fitted with telemetry collars so each could be tracked. Before CPW stopped monitoring the collars in 2011, biologists documented that the reintroduced lynx and some offspring were reproducing and expanding their range. In 2010, CPW declared the reintroduction program a success
No monitoring was done for a few years, but CPW biologists always understood the importance of long-term study. In 2014, CPW biologists launched a 10-year monitoring project that is both high-tech and old school. The project is now in its sixth year.
“Successfully reintroducing lynx was one of the most significant projects Colorado Parks and Wildlife has ever accomplished and it’s important that we continue to learn how the lynx are doing,” said Scott Wait, senior terrestrial biologist in CPW’s Southwest Region. He was on the initial reintroduction team and is one of three lead investigators on the current study.
Because they are elusive and live in remote, high-altitude spruce-fir forests, estimating a precise population of lynx would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, CPW biologists use occupancy monitoring techniques. Occupancy, basically, is a record of the presence of animals in appropriate habitat. The current monitoring is being conducted within a 20,000 square kilometer area (9,600 square miles) in southwest Colorado
Biologists randomly selected 50 units for study, each measuring about 29 square miles and divided into quadrants. One cameras is placed within each quadrant.
In addition, during winter, biologists and wildlife officers survey the plots on skis or snowmobiles looking for tracks and picking up lynx scat and hair ‒ if they can find it ‒ for genetic analysis. Wait explained that most evidence of lynx occupancy is found through snow tracking because surveyors can travel long distances in multiple directions. Tracking is difficult, however, because it must be done within two days of a snowfall and some areas can’t always be accessed safely
For the remote locations, CPW staffers hike or go in by horseback during the warm months to place the cameras. At the sites, scented lures are placed and feathers are hung from branches as attractants.
“Cats are very curious and very sight-oriented. So the odors and fluttering feathers, hopefully, bring them past the cameras,” Wait said.
The cameras take pictures when movement and heat are detected. Besides the photos, the cameras also record the time, date and temperature.
CPW crews go back to the areas as soon as possible in the spring to retrieve the cameras so that photos can be downloaded into a specialized database. More than 100,000 photos are taken each winter season and sorting through them is an exacting process. Besides lynx, the cameras capture hundreds of pictures of elk, deer, bears, mountain lions, coyotes, birds, etc. While animals in all the photos are identified, looking for photos of lynx is the highest priority. To assure correct identification, two people look at each photo.
Not surprisingly, few cameras get a glimpse of a lynx. On average, only 8-14 cameras capture a shot of a lynx throughout the winter. Biologists employ statistical techniques and use the snow-tracking results in combination with the images to estimate the occupancy rate of lynx in southwest Colorado, explained Eric Odell, species conservation program manager for CPW. He is based in Fort Collins and one of the principal investigators.
“We can’t feasibly make a precise population count, so we monitor for occupancy,” Odell said. “Through our monitoring, the photos and snow tracking, we can look at trends to determine where occupancy is going up or down. We assume that if more areas are occupied by lynx that means the population is doing well and expanding. Conversely, if occupancy is declining, we assume that fewer lynx exist on the landscape and reproduction is not keeping pace with mortality.”
The monitoring, Odell said, is showing that the population in the San Juan Mountains is stable. But lynx have also expanded outside of the core area as CPW regularly gets reports of sightings in the central mountains. Considerations are in place to expand monitoring to other areas of Colorado.
Whether by camera or snow tracking, the monitoring work is challenging. Two years ago little winter tracking could be done due to sparse snowfall. At the camera sites, because they are placed at angles in anticipation of deep snow, the cameras were pointed too high in many locations to see animals on the ground. Last year the abundance of snow buried many cameras and also kept some tracking sites off limits because of avalanche danger.
“There are a lot of variables we have to deal with,” Odell said. “But that’s the nature of wildlife surveys. We made a huge commitment to reintroduce lynx to Colorado 20 years ago and we continue that commitment.”
CPW would like to know about sightings of lynx throughout the state. Go to this link to file a report: https://cpw.state.co.us/learn/Pages/SOC-LynxSightingForm.aspx. Reports must be filed from a computer. Lynx live at 8,000 feet and above. Large feet are their distinguishing characteristic. Some people confuse bobcats and lynx as both have pointed ear tufts.
Friday, October 18, 2019 — The U.S. Census Bureau is recruiting workers for temporary jobs in advance of the 2020 Census and is hosting multiple recruiting and hiring events for Colorado jobs next week. The events will feature information on what jobs are currently available and the requirements and duties of each job.
The Census Bureau is looking for 500,000 census takers across the country to join a team that offers great pay and flexible hours. The National Recruitment Campaign week will kick off with a news conference on October 22 in Phoenix.
Check out the listings below to find a Colorado recruiting event near you. Media should RSVP to Laurie Cipriano at lau or text 720-891-2497.
Boulder
What: 2020 Census Jobs for Students Recruiting Event
DENVER — Dish Network will locate its new wireless headquarters with at least 2,000 full-time employees in Colorado and T-Mobile will significantly build out a statewide 5G network, particularly in rural areas, under agreements the Colorado Attorney General’s office announced today. The companies agree to pay up to a total of $100 million if they fail to meet these commitments.
Because of the substantial benefits that Coloradans will gain from these commitments, the Attorney General’s Office will end its participation in a multistate lawsuit it joined in June to halt the T-Mobile and Sprint merger. The U.S. Justice Department recently approved the $26.5 billion merger, in which Dish agreed to acquire the companies’ prepaid businesses and get access to T-Mobile’s network for $5 billion, making it the fourth largest nationwide wireless carrier.
“The State of Colorado joined a multistate lawsuit to block the T-Mobile-Sprint merger because of concerns about how the merger would affect Coloradans. The agreements we are announcing today address those concerns by guaranteeing jobs in Colorado, a statewide buildout of a fast 5G network that will especially benefit rural communities, and low-cost mobile plans,” said Chief Deputy Attorney General Natalie Hanlon Leh. “Our announcement today ensures Coloradans will benefit from Dish’s success as a nationwide wireless competitor.
Under an agreement with Dish, the company will locate and maintain its wireless headquarters at its Riverfront facility in Littleton for at least seven years. The company will also employ a minimum of 2,000 full-time employees working primarily on wireless at Dish facilities in Colorado including Riverfront, and their Inverness and Meridian facilities in Englewood. In addition, Colorado will be among the first ten states where Dish plans to deploy 5G broadband services by 2023. Dish faces up to $20 million in penalties if it does not meet its commitments to the state.
In a separate agreement with T-Mobile, Coloradans will benefit from improved 5G coverage in the state, especially in rural areas. The New T-Mobile has agreed to the following commitments:
Statewide Network Build Commitment:
Within three years of the closing date of the merger, New T-Mobile will deploy a 5G network in Colorado with at least 68 percent of the Colorado population having access to download speeds equal to or greater than 100 Mbps, and at least 76 percent of the Colorado population having access to download speeds equal to or greater than 50 Mbps.
Within six years of the closing date, New T-Mobile will deploy a 5G network in Colorado with at least 92 percent of the Colorado population having access to download speeds equal to or greater than 100 Mbps, and at least 93 percent of the Colorado population having access to download speeds equal to or greater than 50 Mbps.
Rural Network Build Commitment
Within three years of the closing date, New T-Mobile will deploy a 5G network in Colorado with at least 60 percent of the Colorado rural population having access to download speeds equal to or greater than 100 Mbps, and at least 63 percent of the Colorado rural population having access to download speeds equal to or greater than 50 Mbps.
Within six years of the closing date, New T-Mobile will deploy a 5G network in Colorado with at least 74 percent of the Colorado rural population having access to download speeds equal to or greater than 100 Mbps, and at least 84 percent of the Colorado rural population having access to download speeds equal to or greater than 50 Mbps.
Low-Price Mobile Plan Commitment
For at least five years following the closing date, New T-Mobile will offer new low-priced plans in the state that are available to all customers and provides:
Unlimited talk, text, and 2GB of data for $15 or less per month; and
Unlimited talk, text, and 5GB of data for $25 or less per month.
T-Mobile faces up to $80 million in penalties if it fails to meet its commitments to the state.
Hanlon Leh, Solicitor General Eric Olson, and attorneys from the Colorado Department of Law’s Consumer Protection Section negotiated the agreements with Dish and T-Mobile. Attorney General Phil Weiser recused himself from the matter.
Colorado State University will host a panel discussion and community conversation, Beyond Partisan Politics: Bridging Divides by Overcoming Our Echo Chambers, from 4:30to 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 8, in the Lory Student Center Theater on campus. The event is free and open to the public; online registration required at csutix.com.
The three panelists represent a diverse set of perspectives. While Joan Blades, founder of MoveOn.org and MomsRising.org, takes a progressive view, she advocates dialogue across difference through LivingRoomConversations.org. Similarly, John Gable, who works in Silicon Valley and earlier worked for Sen. Mitch McConnell, takes a conservative view, yet urges us to engage a full range of perspectives on issues through his startup AllSides, designed specifically to address the biases caused by “filter bubbles.”
Pedro Silva is a U.S. Air Force veteran and trained linguist who currently serves as an associate minister at the First Congregational Church Boulder, UCC. He has a passion for using expansive conversational models such as LivingRoomConversations to engage on subjects such as race, ethnicity, and political discourse.
The speakers will engage each other, telling their stories of working to create connection across differences that diminish the filter bubbles we all so naturally inhabit. They’ll discuss the tools they have developed to support that important work. After the panel discussion, the audience will have an opportunity to participate in a Living Room Conversation.
The Provost’s Ethics Colloquium and CSU’s Center for Public Deliberation are jointly hosting this event. Trained student facilitators from the center will lead the audience conversations, which will introduce strategies for respectful yet substantive exploration of differences and for considering how to overcome our echo chambers.
The evening will close with a reflection on the process and a question-and-answer session with the panelists. The panel discussion and the question-and-answer session but not the roundtable audience discussions will be live-streamed, and a link to the recording will be posted to the Ethics Colloquium site after the event.
Atifete Jahjaga, the first female president of Kosovo and founder of the Jahjaga Foundation, will speak at Colorado State University on Wednesday, Nov. 6, at 5 p.m. in the Lory Student Center Ballroom A. The talk is free and open to the public, but tickets are required and available online at csutix.com
This event is part of the Global Engagement Distinguished Speaker Series, sponsored by the Office of International Programs, and the CSU Sesquicentennial Colloquium.
Jahjaga was the Deputy General Director of the Police of Kosovo between 2009 and 2011 before she was elected president in 2011, the youngest elected female president in the world. She served the Republic of Kosovo in that office until 2016.
While president, Jahjaga sought to make the democratic institutions of the country stronger and strengthen relationships with neighboring countries. She also focused her presidency on empowering women and increasing tolerance of Kosovo’s various ethnic groups. With her citizens still reeling from a tumultuous, violent period of unrest, Jahjaga’s presidency had much to overcome and resolve for her young nation.
“I knew I had to prove skeptics wrong and, in the meantime, lift up marginalized and underrepresented citizens by giving them a voice and by fighting for their rights,” she said during a talk at Oxford Union in 2018.
The work of the Jahjaga Foundation focuses four main areas: empowerment of women; the welfare of youth; national security; and regional cooperation. These areas often overlap as work in one will affect the others.
As Jahjaga noted in a 2015 speech to the World Leaders Forum, “There is so much hope for societies that embrace everyone. And without embracing women, especially those who are most forgotten, no society has embraced everyone.”
U.S. national parks are full of natural sounds. In Rocky Mountain National Park, visitors might hear the bugle of elks. At Yellowstone National Park, wolves howl in the distance. Iconic sounds like these are often associated with specific parks, creating unique soundscapes and enriching visitor experiences.
However, when you add human-made noise, these natural sounds are at risk.
“Anthropogenic” noise – sound caused by human activity – has the unintended impact of masking natural sounds important to both visitors and wildlife. Noise is increasingly prevalent in natural spaces. Not only does this take away from visitors’ experiences, but it also has significant ecological consequences. Many animals’ survival depends on listening for approaching predators, and successful breeding for some species hinges on listening for the song of a potential mate.
With these ecological consequences in mind, a team of scientists from Colorado State University and the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) characterized the predominant human noise sources in 66 U.S. national parks in an effort to help parks better manage the noise problem. The study, “Anthropogenic noise in U.S. national parks – sources and spatial extent,” was published Oct. 2 in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
Human-made noise loud but localized in large parks
The researchers found that national park lands are largely bastions of natural sounds. While the team found anthropogenic noise causes a 10-fold or greater increase in natural background sound levels in over a third of parks in the study, the acreage impacted by such levels represents less than two percent of the total NPS lands.
The team found that even though trains and recreational watercraft are by far the loudest sources of noise, the greatest noise-causing culprits are vehicles and aircraft.
National Park Service lands quietest U.S. areas
Rachel Buxton, lead author of the study, said the team was encouraged by how quiet, for the most part, national parks areas are. Wilderness areas and natural resource parks were found to have fewer noise events and are quieter than other park types across North America, such as cultural parks or recreation areas.
While NPS lands remain among the quietest protected areas in the U.S., noise made by people or machines is increasingly common and is heard in 37% of recordings collected from NPS lands across the country.
“When we visit a park to experience nature, hearing cars and planes can be annoying,” said Buxton, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology in CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources. “What many people don’t realize is that these noises disrupt the calming effect of being in nature, with significant effects on our wellbeing and the wellbeing of wildlife.”
She is now a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University in Ontario.
Analysis of nearly 47,000 hours of audio clips
The study relied on unprecedented audio data collection and analysis, the result of over a decade of collaboration between CSU and the NPS. Dozens of CSU students, trained to identify and measure different types of sounds, processed 46,789 hours of audio clips from 251 sites in 66 parks.
The research team then identified how frequent noise events were, what type of noise is most commonly heard, and their respective noise levels, or the loudness of the noises. The sounds were compared with measured noise levels across the continent, giving a more complete picture of where noise was highest and the most common sources.
Scientists found that it is more than just our vehicles making noise; another common source is simply human voices. In the context of visitor conversation, and speaking with and learning from park rangers, voices are intrinsic to park values and visitor experience. Yet, even when appropriate to the setting, these sounds affect wildlife. The designation of “quiet zones” can markedly improve noise levels, as successfully demonstrated in Muir Woods National Monument’s Cathedral Grove.
Insights on better managing noise for park service leaders, staff
The U.S. National Park Service was established over a century ago to conserve natural and cultural resources for future generations, which includes the iconic sounds found in nature.
“The Grand Canyon is grand because of its striking vistas, but also because of the sound of the river flowing through the canyon, wind rustling the leaves, and birds singing,” Buxton said. “Managing noise is essential for protecting our experiences in national parks, which are the country’s treasures.”
To fulfill this mission, NPS actively pursues innovations that will improve park sound environments and will showcase and improve sensory environments for people and ecosystems.
Researchers said the study findings can help parks understand the range of options available for managing noise from the most frequent noise culprits: cars and planes. To mitigate vehicle noise, parks can incorporate shuttle systems, establish speed limits, allow for electric vehicles, and use quiet pavement materials on roads. Aircraft noise, which can be heard from great distances at quiet sites, can be reduced by routing or scheduling flights to avoid sensitive areas.
“Numerous noise mitigation strategies have been successfully developed and implemented, so we already have the knowledge needed to address many of these issues,” said George Wittemyer, an associate professor at CSU and senior author of the study. “Our work provides information to facilitate such efforts in respect to protected areas where natural sounds are integral.”
The researchers said they are hopeful that as more noise research becomes public, people will consider sound as a valuable component of the natural environment, one that is currently at risk of being overwhelmed. “Protecting these important natural acoustic resources as development and land conversion progresses is critical if we want to preserve the character of parks,” Buxton added.
On October 11, 2019, Colorado’s county clerks began mailing ballots to Colorado’s registered voters for the November 5, 2019 Coordinated Election. The Colorado Secretary of State is reminding registered voters and eligible voters of the resources available and key upcoming dates.
Resources for voters:
Coloradans can update and verify voter registration or register to vote online at GoVoteColorado.com.
Coloradans can view a sample ballot online by clicking on “Find my registration” at GoVoteColorado.com. Once there, enter First Name, Last Name, Zip Code, and Birthday to see your registration. To view your sample ballot, click on “Ballot Information” and then “view my sample ballot.”
To find a ballot drop-off location or Voter Service Polling Center visit GoVoteColorado.com and enter your address into the box labeled “Where do I vote or drop off my ballot?”
Coloradans can access the 2019 Blue Book online in English and Spanish here. The Blue Book includes the text and title of each initiated or referred constitutional amendment, law, or question on the ballot as well as a summary of the measure, the major arguments for and against the measure, and a brief fiscal assessment of the measure.
Information for voters with disabilities is available here.
Key Dates:
October 11-18: Ballots are mailed out to voters, and many drop boxes begin to open.
October 28:
Voter Service and Polling centers open.
Last day to register to vote and receive a mail ballot for the Coordinated Election. However, eligible voters can register to vote and vote in person at any county vote center through Election Day.
Last recommended day to return your ballot by mail. After October 28, voters should return ballots by hand to a ballot drop box or vote center.
November 5: Election Day
Vote in-person at a vote center.
Register to vote in-person at a vote center.
Update your existing registration at a vote center.
