Mountain Island Ranch is nestled in the red rock canyons and soaring mesas of the Dolores Triangle. It is one of the most inspiring examples of conservation on private land in western Colorado. However, despite decades of careful land management and large-scale restoration, the ranch faces an existential water crisis due to the ongoing mega-drought and aridification in the Colorado River basin.

Join WLA at Mountain Island Ranch to discuss the work Mary Conover and Kenyon Fields have done to improve the hydrologic function of the land by slowing water through nature-based projects that utilize natural processes. We will discuss the benefits of these projects, as well as their limitations, especially when the precipitation does not appear. In the worst year of drought in living memory, these projects are up against their limitations to be effective, and landowners, water managers, and policy makers are struggling to find solutions to these intractable problems. We will focus on how landowners such as Conover and Fields deal with these problems, what policy supports are needed for them to weather these historically difficult years, and what landowners across the Colorado River Basin are going to have to do to prepare for unforeseeable consequences of drought.