Scott Franz
Water and Environment ReporterEmail: scott.franz@kunc.org
Scott Franz is the water and environment reporter from Steamboat Springs. He spent the last seven years covering politics and government for the Steamboat Pilot & Today, a daily newspaper in northwest Colorado.
His reporting in Steamboat stopped a police station from being built in a city park, saved a historic barn from being destroyed and helped a small town pastor quickly find a kidney donor. His favorite workday in Steamboat was Tuesday, when he could spend many of his mornings skiing untracked powder and his evenings covering city council meetings.
Scott received his journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is an outdoorsman who spends at least 20 nights a year in a tent. He spoke his first word, 'outside', as a toddler in Edmonds, Washington. Scott visits the Great Sand Dunes, his favorite Colorado backpacking destination, twice a year.
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The personhood designation for the river is part of a broader "rights of nature" movement that aims to bestow new legal protections on threatened natural resources around the globe. -
The plan is a $99 million bid from water users on Colorado’s West Slope to ensure some of the state’s most valuable water rights, which are currently used to power a hydroelectric power plant, continue to keep a huge volume of water in the river. -
Colorado’s program to restore gray wolves hit some snags recently. One of the biggest concerns is that state wildlife officials don’t know where the next set of wolves to be released here will come from. It’s a serious challenge at a moment when survival rates for the wolves are lower than Colorado officials had hoped. -
Washington officials cited a recent decline of their own wolf population as a reason to oppose the request. -
The office that regulates Colorado funeral homes last week denied KUNC’s open records request for the inspection report from the Davis Mortuary in Pueblo, where inspectors say they found more than 20 hidden bodies on Aug. 20. -
Steamboat Springs is again considering asking voters to approve a tax on lift tickets after city officials say the Steamboat Ski Area “abruptly reneged” on a 20-year pledge to invest in regional bus service in the Yampa Valley. -
Pano AI, a San Francisco company installing dozens of the cameras, has been busy this summer working to expand coverage from the Front Range to Routt County. -
Some cottontail rabbits in Fort Collins, have been drawing attention because they have wart-like growths on their faces that look like horns. The rabbits are infected with the relatively common Shope papillomavirus. The virus likely inspired the centuries-old jackalope myth. -
In the last two years, the state has shifted most of its grant funding in its Persons Who Wander Program to a new technology that’s bringing more buzz, along with some concerns about privacy rights and the reactive nature of the devices. -
They are the One Ear Pack in Jackson County, the King Mountain Pack in Routt County and the Three Creeks Pack in Rio Blanco County.
