For decades, Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Durango office has protected wildlife and served the communities of Southwest Colorado. This weekend the agency is looking to celebrate that legacy.
CPW’s Durango office will mark the agency’s 125th anniversary Sunday with the reopening of the Durango Wildlife Museum and festivities at its office at 151 E. 16th Street. In true CPW fashion, the agency will host a day of educational activities to give the public insight into its work, recognize CPW’s historic efforts and look ahead in the agency’s mission.
“As far as Durango goes, this will be our biggest public celebration for the 125th anniversary,” said John Livingston, spokesman for CPW’s Southwest region.
From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Durango field office staff members along with Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4031 and CPW volunteers will lead a youth fishing derby in Huck Finn Pond behind the Durango Fish Hatchery with free fishing poles provided to those 17 and younger.
An array of wildlife education stations will cover topics such as wildlife conservation, fish and wildlife management, wildlife careers and the Durango Fish Hatchery. Activities will include casting practice for kids, a wildlife hides and skulls display, and a dart gun station where the public can shoot the dart gun the agency uses to tranquilize animals.
CPW will also offer 125th anniversary giveaways, live music and free cupcakes. Food for purchase will round out the celebration.
The event will also serve as the grand reopening of the Durango Wildlife Museum, which has been closed for two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a great opportunity to learn all the different things that CPW does,” Livingston said. “Even myself, I’m constantly at awe of the breadth and the scope of how many different things employees at CPW do.”
CPW’s history traces all the way back to 1897 when the Colorado Legislature, just 21 years old at the time, created the Department of Forestry, Game and Fish. The agency has grown and its name has changed, but its mission to protect the state’s wildlife resources has remained the same.
Over the years, CPW has had a number of conservation success stories across Colorado, including the reintroduction of river otters on the Western Slope; groundbreaking work on chronic wasting disease in moose, deer and elk; and the strengthening of Colorado’s bighorn sheep herds.
CPW established its Durango field office more recently in 1978, but the agency’s local conservation efforts stretch back more than a century with the creation of the Durango State Fish Hatchery, the oldest state-owned hatchery in Colorado, in 1903.
Among its most critical work in Southwest Colorado, CPW’s aquatic biologists and the Durango Fish Hatchery rediscovered the San Juan cutthroat trout and saved one of the species’ last remaining populations as the 416 Fire threatened the fish.
CPW reintroduced lynx in Colorado in 1999 with the first two animals released in the Weminuche Wilderness. At the time, no other state or Canadian province had successfully reintroduced the species.
“We were pretty instrumental with the lynx reintroduction. That’s one that a lot of folks take a lot of pride in here in the Southwest region,” Livingston said.
CPW’s Durango office is also a leader in bear conservation and in wildlife research, Livingston said, and it operates the agency’s only wildlife museum in the state.
Before it closed during the pandemic, the Durango Wildlife Museum had a record 16,923 visitors in 2019 from all 50 states and several countries, according to a CPW news release.
Sunday’s event marks the biggest celebration of CPW’s legacy in Durango, but the public wildlife agency is also commemorating its 125th anniversary with a number of other partnerships and events.
CPW has also collaborated with 18 Colorado-owned beverage companies to produce drinks that highlight the agency’s work. Each state park is also offering their own activities for the occasion, Livingston said.
Though CPW’s 125th anniversary offers a chance to look back on the strides the agency has made in wildlife conservation in the state, it is also an opportunity to look forward. With the 125th anniversary festivities and wildlife museum reopening this weekend, CPW plans to engage with the public as it weighs the future of wildlife conservation in Southwest Colorado.
“You can kind of look at the anniversary as a good way to celebrate what we’ve accomplished, but also look forward to where we’re going,” Livingston said. “These kinds of events let everybody celebrate a lot of the conservation success stories that we’ve had, but also get together and talk about the future.”
ahannon@durangoherald.com
