On Land

This week on the On Land Podcast I welcome veteran water reporter Luke Runyon. Luke covers the Colorado River Basin for public radio station KUNC. His podcast, Thirst Gap, digs into stories that show how water issues can both unite and divide communities throughout the Western U.S. Before covering water at KUNC, Luke covered the agriculture and food beat for five years as KUNC's Harvest Public Media reporter.

I spoke with Luke about the big news in Colorado River politics: the announcement of a grand water savings bargain between California, Arizona and Nevada that now waits for Bureau of Reclamation review: what does the deal mean for landowners, what are the implications for the Upper Basin water savings programs now that the lower basin has made a deal, and what does all this really mean in terms of who is saving water and how? Enjoy the show!

Complete show notes, including links, a timecoded list of topics, and a full transcript, are available at onland.westernlandowners.org/podcast.

Today on the show, Western Landowners Alliance's Programs Director Hallie Mahowald had the pleasure of talking to a good friend, Aaron Derwingson. Derwingson is the water projects director for the Nature Conservancy's Colorado River program. He and Hallie both live in Salida, Colorado.

Derwingson has piloted water banking and other tools for flexible water management, conducted field research on the impacts of reduced irrigation, evaluated alternative low water use crops, and upgraded irrigation systems to help improve river flows. Before joining The Nature Conservancy, Aaron served as the Stewardship Director for the Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust. They discussed the current situation on the Colorado River, some of the many ways that landowners, in partnership with organizations like TNC, are making their water go farther and do more, and the role of water markets in creating the flexibility in the river system that is needed.

You can find links to references from the conversation, as well as a complete transcript of this episode, at onland.westernlandowners.org.

Topics discussed

[00:01:30] Shortage challenges in the Colorado River Basin

[00:02:19] Doing more with less water

[00:04:50] Examples of solutions for making our water go farther

[00:05:56] Maybell irrigation District diversion improvements

[00:08:31] Minute 323 water for the environment

[00:09:59] Role of water markets

[00:11:38] All water is local

[00:12:20] Power, rural communities and water

[00:13:30] Federal funding and the big opportunity right now

[00:14:56] Role of the states in water funding

[00:16:38] Are our institutions nimble enough for the water crisis

[00:18:09] How water rights holders can be involved in solutions

[00:19:00] Auto Tarp and appropriate technology

[00:20:11] Low-tech restoration

[00:20:57] Compensation for leaving water instream

[00:21:46] Markets for flexibility and public benefit

[00:22:58] Creative water sharing agreements

[00:24:41] Integrate the social with the technical

[00:27:07] The urgency of the Colorado River crisis keeps him up at night

[00:28:25] Elinor Ostrom and the tragedy of the commons

[00:29:37] We need landowners to solve this crisis

On today's episode, Western Landowners Alliance Programs Director Hallie Mahowald was joined by Dr. Caroline Nash, a hydrologist and geomorphologist with the consulting group CK Blueshift LLC.

Dr. Nash got her PhD at Oregon State University and has done field work throughout the American West. She has extensive experience in rangeland conservation and stream restoration. She brought knowledge about the science and regulatory systems relevant to watershed scale conservation efforts to the conversation. At CK Blueshift, Dr. Nash leads the company's current projects and consulting work related to hydrologic analysis, restoration design, and monitoring strategy.

Find links and references from this episode, as well as a full episode transcript, at onland.westernlandowners.org/podcast

Topics discussed

[00:01:09] What is CK Blueshift?

[00:03:02] The new abnormal?

[00:06:13] Long Term Solutions

[00:10:24] About the Blue Commons Fund

[00:13:38] Matching finance and funding to right levels of risk

[00:15:50] The once-in-a-lifetime influx of federal investment in water

[00:17:10] About the ReBeaver program

[00:20:31] What is Process-Based Restoration, actually?

[00:24:30] Why we can't just move beavers and be done?

[00:26:38] Zuni water management in the Southwest

[00:28:13] Beaver persistence as inspiration and information

00:32:02] How do landowners get involved? Highlighting the existing innovation on the land.

[00:35:31] Making sure landowners have the risk management tools needed to participate in experimentation

[00:36:12] Why you should communicate with your neighbors about your experiments

[00:38:20] What keeps you up at night, and what gives you hope?

[00:40:05] Aging rural population, waning land-based expertise

[00:42:02] Young people getting excited about land stewardship

[00:43:20] Seven generation perspective

Wade Crowfoot was appointed California Secretary for Natural Resources in 2019. As Secretary, Crowfoot oversees an agency of 19,000 employees charged with protecting and managing California's diverse resources, including its fish and wildlife and rivers and waterways. Before becoming Secretary, Crowfoot served as CEO of the Water Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropy based in California that supports shared water solutions for communities, the economy, and the environment across the American West.

Wade spoke with Lesli Allison, executive director of the Western Landowners Alliance, about Western water, and in particular the Colorado River Basin. California has rights to the largest share Colorado River Water, and half of all Americans who use Colorado River water live in the Golden State. So the view from Sacramento on the future of Water in the West is particularly critical.

Find the full show notes and transcription here.

On Land is a production of Western Landowners Alliance, a non-profit that advances policies and practices that sustain working lands, connected landscapes and native species. Learn more about WLA here.

Produced by Louis Wertz.

Like this episode? Share it with a friend, leave a review wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to subscribe to On Land Magazine. Your support helps us amplify the voices of stewardship in the American West.

Today we're bringing you a new feature of the On Land podcast: Landowners' Eye on the Capital. In these conversations, we'll be talking with Zach Bodhane, policy director at Western Landowners Alliance. From his vantage in Washington D.C., Zach will share the latest on the most important issues bills and regulations that WLA is working on for landowners across the West.

Find the show notes here.

In this bonus episode, we take you live to the International Wolf Symposium, on October 11th, for a talk by Matthew Collins, Western Landowners Alliance's Working Wild Challenge program associate. Before Matt joined WLA, he conducted research into how local groups, called place-based collaboratives, helped improve adoption of practices that reduce conflict between livestock and large carnivores while pursuing a masters degree at Colorado State University.

At the International Wolf Symposium, Matt had 15 minutes to present his entire masters thesis project to a packed room. We think he knocked it out of the park. And fortunately, On Land editor-in-chief Louis Wertz was there to record it.

You can find Matt's powerpoint presentation and other supporting info in the show notes on our website, onland.westernlandowners.org/podcast/

Many thanks to Zach Altman, Louis Wertz, Matt Collins and the team at the International Wolf Symposium for making this episode possible.

The big news in the West these days is drought, and specifically drought in the Colorado River Basin. In upcoming episodes, we're going to bring you some really interesting conversations with land stewards who are trying really cool things to deal with the drought, save water, and restore watersheds. But today, we wanted to provide listeners with some of the big picture context and some background to better understand this issue.

To do that, we turned to Andy Mueller. Andy Mueller is the General Manager of the Colorado River District. The Colorado River District is a public body that serves as the principal water policy and planning agency for the Colorado River Basin within the state of Colorado. They provide legal, technical and political representation regarding Colorado River issues for the communities of 15 counties in Northwest Colorado which includes the headwaters of the mighty river itself.

Andy is a veteran water attorney, and a graduate of the University of Colorado Law School's esteemed program in water law. Before becoming the General Manager at CRD, he spent 22 years in private practice representing agricultural water users on the western slope of Colorado, learning about the issues directly from landowners and producers. Andy recently spoke with Lesli Allison, the executive director at Western Landowners Alliance. Lesli spent 16 years managing a private ranch in the headwaters of the Rio Grande before helping to found WLA in 2012. So she's is no stranger to these issues.

Enjoy!

More about the Colorado River District: https://www.coloradoriverdistrict.org/

On Land is a production of Western Landowners Alliance, a non-profit that advances policies and practices that sustain working lands, connected landscapes and native species. Learn more about WLA here.

Produced by Zach Altman

Like this episode? Share it with a friend, leave a review wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to subscribe to On Land Magazine. Your support helps us amplify the voices of stewardship in the American West.

We thought you might enjoy this short interview that aired on Raymond Toney's Colorado Howl radio show, produced by KDUR Durango. It features WLA's programs director, Hallie Mahowald, who is on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife stakeholder advisory group (SAG) for the reintroduction and management of wolves in Colorado.

In 2020, Coloradans voted to reintroduce wolves to the western half of the state. As you'll hear in this short segment, Hallie is working to ensure that landowners, producers, and land managers have a seat at the table in this critical process, and making sure that they have the tools and resources available to share the landscape with wolves, which are already dispersing into North Park from Wyoming.

Show Notes: https://onland.link/pod

Well listeners, that's a wrap on Season 01 of the On Land Podcast! Amber got to talk with some amazing women from all walks of life about their relationships with the West, having a place-based ethic, the importance of storytelling, and much more. Keep sharing, keep listening, and stay tuned for more. In our upcoming Season 02, we'll be featuring interviews that dive deeper, go a little bit longer, and we'll be including a mix of experienced producers, researchers, and all kinds of people working in stewardship in the American West. Take our quick listener survey: https://onland.link/podcastsurvey

Today we're pleased to share our conversation with Louise Johns. Louise is a documentary photographer and National Geographic Explorer based in Montana. Her work examines the relationships between people, place and animals, with a particular focus on rural, agricultural and indigenous communities. She began documenting the landscapes and people of the American West while working as a horse wrangler in Montana's Centennial Valley. Johns has a master's degree in Environmental Science Journalism from the University of Montana. She works with a variety of outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, The Nature Conservancy, and Patagonia, to name a few. Louise's imagery captures those quiet intimate moments that take place at the intersection of people and place. Show Notes: https://onland.link/podcast