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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The Grizzly Creek Fire was one of many fires Colorado experienced during the 2020 season, and it had huge impacts on the delicate ecosystem of Glenwood Canyon. Five years later, land managers are positive on the regrowth and recovery they’re seeing. -
The Public Lands Rule allowed conservation to be managed as part of BLM’s multiple-use mandate, along with other uses like mining and grazing. The Trump administration now says that rule doesn’t pass muster. -
The Lee Fire burned over 137,000 acres in Rio Blanco County. The fire burned mostly on federal lands, impacting private landowners that lease it. Local officials are considering how the burned area may impact the local economy and environment. -
Will Toor, the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, says consumers have until the end of September to take advantage of federal tax credits for electric vehicles, and until the end of the year for certain home energy efficiency upgrades. -
Yale’s Climate Opinion Maps now include questions asking Americans about specific extreme weather events like wildfires and floods and how they relate to climate change. More than other Mountain West states, Colorado residents link climate change to these severe weather events. -
Public lands advocates are hoping to draw attention to proposed cuts to the National Parks Service and other land management agencies by visiting gateway towns in the West. One stop was in Grand Junction, Colorado, which has its own national park. -
A new report from the Bureau of Reclamation shows water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the Colorado River’s two largest reservoirs, remain low. It predicts those conditions could continue or worsen over the next two years. CU Boulder’s Chris Winter says this should spur the seven states in the basin to come to an agreement on new operating guidelines for the future. -
A University of Utah study used data from wildfires in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California to look at how private forests for industrial timber harvest were impacted by severe fire weather, brought about by climate change. -
Historically dry fuels and long stretches of fire weather have led to the conditions driving one of Colorado’s biggest wildfires. Some experts are saying that climate change, which creates these conditions, could make these kinds of fire the new normal. -
Wildfires throughout the Mountain West have caused significant air quality problems this summer, even for communities miles away from the fires. CU Boulder’s Joost de Gouw says that’s because of how particles in the smoke interact with the atmosphere.
