Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after the winter.

Rachel Carson

 Early in my career, I clerked at the Environmental Defense Fund trying to help negotiate changes in California’s massive irrigation system, trying to stave off the extinction of the Sacramento River winter run of Chinook salmon. The irrigation system, known as the Central Valley Project, irrigates a good share of the fruits and nuts produced in our country. The pumps and dams were hell on salmon, and the winter run Chinook had fallen to a mere 42 individuals. 

As our negotiations failed, my task was to petition the federal government to list these fish as “endangered,” thereby forcing changes. With a species on the brink of extinction, and a billion-dollar farm economy pumping the river, that was a humdinger of a wildlife fight. In the high mountains of Colorado we are perhaps blessed that we have few species facing extinction. Yet biodiversity protection remains no less important.