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OST ag specialist extends his services to county residents
Drew Walters collects soil samples for lab analysis.
Something’s eating your asparagus, and it isn’t you. Invisible forces are destroying an elderberry bush, while everything around it flourishes. Half of an evenly irrigated pasture is dotted with desiccated grass. The other half is fine. What’s going on?
A tiny squirrel helps shape the forest
A pine squirrel on alert. OST photo
Fresh snow muffles my footsteps on the less-traveled paths of Smuggler Mountain Open Space. It’s a place of quiet winter reverie. That is, until the silence is shattered by a burst of staccato chatter that could, as they say, wake the dead.
All in a day’s work for open space rangers
Ranger Megan Ballard (right) chats with a familiar dog walker on the Rio Grande Trail. The dog owner said she has leashed her dogs on the trail ever since a conversation about it with Ballard two years ago.
Educator. Ambassador. Enforcement officer. Rescuer. Trash collector. Pitkin County’s Open Space and Trails rangers wear many hats, usually simultaneously. And they’ve got the stats to prove it.
