• CPW offering free entry to all Colorado state parks today
• Black-footed ferrets declared extinct twice before now reintroduced at 7 sites in Colorado
• New digital mapping tool The Climate Atlas launches this week
• Kate Redmond gets update from Grand Junction Mutual Aid Partners 
• Over 3 decades, artist James Niehues has painted 300 resort trail maps, now he's retiring

In his 1925 poem “The Hollow Men,” English poet T. S. Eliot wrote “this is the way the world ends / not with a bang but a whimper,” referring to the irony of modernity. But Eliot could have easily been speaking about the cosmic condition-- how everything may end. Cosmologists generally agree on the Universe’s beginning, as an instantaneous, seething quantum inflation of space, time, and energy— the Big Bang. But its swan song is open to debate, with several theoretical scenarios in play.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland delivers an address at Alcatraz Island off the coast of San Francisco, California, on the 52nd anniversary of its occupation by Indigenous activists in pursuit of Tribal self-determination. Secretary Haaland remarks on the progress that has been made in Indian Country in the intervening years, as well as the work ahead.

Colorado Inside Out, produced for television by PBS12 in Denver and now airing Monday nights at 6 on KVNF, is off this week because of the holiday. Instead news director Gavin Dahl interviews host Dominic Dezzutti, PBS12 station manager, and regular panelist Patricia Calhoun, editor of Westword, to learn more about the Emmy-winning show.

• Denver Health CEO: System 'on the brink of collapse'
• Public health leaders send letter to Governor requesting new mask mandate
• Western Slope Food Bank of the Rockies sees 600% rise in visitors 
• Top of the Pines near Ridgway gains Dark Skies certification
• Ski areas open: Crested Butte, Aspen, Snowmass, Powderhorn & Steamboat
• MCSD school board will seat Eric Kelley as recount gets underway
• Montrose County issues most home building permits since 2008
• KSJD's Lucas Brady Woods: residents buy mobile home park, create co-op   

• Front Range counties enact new indoor mask mandates
• Delta County reports 95 percent of COVID dead were unvaccinated
• Colorado Tourism Office helping 10 western slope communities promote stargazing
• Kate Redmond reports bus driver shortage is impacting Delta County School District
• KZMU's Justin Higginbottom shares story of organization in Moab that builds affordable housing while educating builders and providing more space for future homeowners

• Ridgway town council gives Uncompahgre River symbolic legal rights
• Colorado Center for the Blind accused of covering up sexual misconduct
• Biden names KC Becker regional administrator for EPA
• Republican state rep Ron Hanks suing Secretary of State Jena Griswold
• After-school nutrition key to kids overcoming health obstacles
• SBA has loaned over $1B to Colorado small businesses during the pandemic