Caroline Llanes
Rural Climate ReporterCaroline Llanes is the rural climate reporter for Rocky Mountain Community Radio. She covers climate change in the rural Mountain West, energy development, outdoor recreation, public lands, and so much more. Her work has been featured on NPR and APM's Marketplace.
She was previously a general assignment reporter at Aspen Public Radio, covering everything from local governments to public lands, and before that, she worked on WBUR's Morning Edition in Boston. She got her start in public radio at Michigan Public in Ann Arbor, where she also got a B.A. in history from the University of Michigan.
When she's not working, she's probably watching football, women's basketball, or a British murder mystery. She lives in Glenwood Springs with her partner and their little dog (Poppy) and cat (Pepper), where they spend a lot of time hiking and skiing of both the downhill and cross-country varieties.
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Federal auditors say that Congress could use an obscure law called the Congressional Review Act to throw out the Utah monument’s resource management plan, which sets which activities are or aren’t allowed on the 1.9 million acres. -
Experts say the federal government does not want to be the decision maker, and is pushing states to come to an agreement on future water use that will inform the river’s post-2026 operating guidelines. CU Boulder’s Chris Winter weighs in on the Interior’s draft environmental impact statement. -
Warm temperatures and a lack of snow have made for an anomalous winter in the Upper Colorado River Basin. While it’s not “the new normal,” winters are certainly warming up due to climate change. -
Scott Fitzwilliams took early retirement in 2025 after more than three decades with the U.S. Forest Service. He says the Trump administration’s public lands policies amount to a deliberate dismantling of the system. -
The Trump administration spent much of the year rolling back environmental regulations, stripping protections for public lands, and working to limit the development of green energy while bolstering fossil fuels. -
Water forecasters, researchers, and politicians are all watching with bated breath as closed-door negotiations continue over allocating water in the Colorado River after 2026. Many are getting frustrated with what they see as a lack of action in the face of a mounting crisis. -
Keystone Resort in Colorado was the first resort in the country to open in 2025, in part due to their emphasis on early-season snowmaking. As climate change amplifies drought in the Mountain West, ski areas across the region are considering how best to use increasingly scarce water resources. -
The latest in a series of climate lawsuits, ten Utah youth are suing the state over its issuance of fossil fuels permitting, which they say violates their rights to life, safety, and health. -
The nonpartisan Center for American Progress found that 31 national monuments are at risk of having protections reduced or revoked under the Trump administration. But that would jeopardize some of the water on those landscapes, which provide drinking water for millions of people. -
A 2023 Supreme Court ruling, along with new interpretations from the Trump administration, have limited protections for rivers and wetlands. Colorado is looking to fill in that gap with its own regulatory program.
