As we look toward the close of 2025, we’re still energized by the milestone we celebrated last year: the Telluride Institute’s 40th anniversary. Four decades of community science, watershed education, Indigenous partnerships, poetry, dialogue, and creative problem-solving is no small feat — and it’s a testament to everyone who has walked alongside us since 1984. Marking that anniversary invited us not only to honor our history, but to ask a bigger question: what does the next 40 years of the Telluride Institute look like?
Already, pieces of that future are taking shape. Telluride Mushroom Festival had an incredible year with Paul Stamets returning and a record number of attendees. Our Indigenous Programs continue to deepen relationships with Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute youth and tribal members. Watershed Education and TESEL are offering new ways for students and community members to understand the changing San Juan Mountains. Talking Gourds is flourishing with renewed energy. And our planning work for a future Environmental and Cultural Center has opened the door to long-term partnerships in research, public engagement, and hands-on stewardship.
End-of-year giving is one of the most powerful ways to help chart TI’s next chapter. Your support sustains the programs that have defined us for 40 years and fuels the new ideas, collaborations, and opportunities that will carry us into the decades ahead. Please consider donating to TI during your end of year giving and thank you for being part of this ongoing story.
Telluride Environmental and Cultural Center
By: Pam Lifton-Zoline
Our Watershed has its head in the clouds, feet in the desert!
Compromising about 1,000,000 acres, from 14,000 foot peaks at our East end to 5,000 feet above sea level in the red rock country where the San Miguel River meets the Dolores, it is home to only 8,000 human citizens, as well as many other plants, creatures and species. Those of us fortunate to live here among this beauty and biodiversity are de facto stewards. How to steer through these tumultuous times?
Consistent with our informal designation as ‘the world’s highest think and do tank’, Telluride Institute has been focusing on how we can meet, engage with, and sometime get ahead of the mighty challenges which fill our newsfeeds and our forests.
Our answer, a working project already enjoying some success, is the Distributed Campus. Across our watershed we are blessed with a significant number of non profits, schools, businesses, governments and individuals working to improve local life. The Campus proposes to ‘connect the dots’ in a voluntary association committed to the vital flourishing of our human and natural communities. We believe this will amplify our awareness, our strength, our ability to raise funds and to educate ourselves and our young.
Additionally the Campus will identify underused and available spaces, and also seek to find or construct facilities for a Field Station and a Center for Science, Culture and Indigenous Knowledge. We seek to increase our capabilities to act as a node in a world net, working with Universities, the Forest Service and other agencies etc., developing and exchanging ideas and solutions, a dedicated marketplace of ideas. The Campus will act as a catalyst in future-proofing our unique and beautiful home places.
“One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”
― Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water
Telluride Mushroom Festival
Oldest Wild Mushroom Festival in the World!
The Telluride Mushroom Festival celebrated its 45th festival in 2025. The festival organizers shifted hands and the new team put on one of the best festivals in our history!
- TMF offered 45 scholarships offering folks with financial need up to 50% off festival passes.
- Paul Stamets made his return to the main stage as our keynote for 2025.
- TMF launched VIP Passes to support our needs-based scholarship program and welcomed 25 VIP supporters!
- TMF was able to rent out a campground and secure space at the Bivvi Hostel to accommodate presenters, volunteers, and attendees at affordable lodging rates.
- TMF employed 2 full-time staff and 3 part-time staff throughout 2025 in addition to the TMF Faculty and Advisory team.
Telluride Mushroom Festival provides an incredible amount of free education, workshops, and wellness programs to the public in addition to paid programming for wristband holders. We hope to expand kids education programs, and continue to bring in the best-of-the-best keynote speakers and visionaries from around the world!
Ways to support TMF:
- Financial Donations
- Lodging in Telluride, connections to folks with available lodging, donated lodging, land for free or affordable campers
- Connections to brands, companies and individuals who would like to Sponsor, Donate or become VIP’s
- Attending the festival
TESEL
Telluride Environmental Science and Engineering Laboratory
In 2025, the Telluride Environmental Science and Engineering Laboratory (TESEL) continued its vital work to understand, protect, and celebrate our region’s most sensitive ecosystems. Much of this work centered on the unique subalpine fens of Prospect Basin, where TESEL’s Sensitive Wetlands Assessment and Monitoring Program (SWAMP) advanced a portfolio of long-term research projects. These included monitoring vegetation phenology with custom-built sensor systems to detect early signs of ecological stress, expanding biodiversity inventories using both traditional specimen collection and emerging environmental DNA tools, and deepening paleoecology research by extracting and identifying microfossils from ancient peat cores.
The fens, which have been accumulating for over 10,000 years, offer an extraordinary archive of climatic history that helps scientists understand how high-alpine environments have responded to change over millennia. High-resolution aerial vegetation mapping also progressed, generating detailed imagery that will support long-term monitoring of wetland health and the surrounding landscape.
TESEL also continued its commitment to climate education and community resilience. Partnering with EcoAction Partners at the Sneffels Regional Youth Climate Summit, which was attended by more than 50 high-school students from across southwestern Colorado. Dr. Iverson led an interactive workshop that introduced students to environmental sensor networks and demonstrated how data-driven tools can support climate adaptation, community science, and local decision-making.
In 2026 TESEL plans on expanding its research, environmental stewardship and project-based programming as part of TI’s larger efforts to support climate resilience. TESEL relies on regional grants and the generous in kind donations of Dr. Iverson. Any support is greatly appreciated.
Indigenous Programs
Indigenous Ski Day, Recreation and Reciprocity
2025 has been a very good year for the Telluride Institute’s Indigenous Program. Regina Lopez Whiteskunk continues to serve on our Board of Trustees, and we are delighted that Ernest House Jr. has now joined the board as well, deepening the Indigenous leadership guiding this work. TI’s Indigenous Programs play an essential role in strengthening relationships, uplifting cultural knowledge, and creating meaningful experiences for Ute youth in their ancestral homelands.
Ute youth recreation events continue to grow in popularity. In March, 20 Ute kids and several parents joined us for the annual Ute Youth Ski Day. After a full day on the mountain, we gathered with the Telluride Foundation, Sheep Mountain Alliance, and Wilkinson Public Library for an Indigenous speakers panel that invited the youth into a conversation about belonging and connecting to the land.
In October, 12 kids and three parent chaperones from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe headed up to High Camp for the Recreation and Reciprocity Retreat. We explored the forest and wetlands in shifting weather, painted with watercolors, planted trees, and talked about being at the headwaters of the Dolores Watershed. Sunday morning brought two inches of fresh snow. Everyone then hiked to Bilk Creek for rock climbing, macroinvertebrate hunting with Mollie Theis, and plenty of pizza.
In November, highschoolers from Towaoc joined the Youth Climate Action Summit and hiked to the original inhabitants panel in Bear Creek.
We are grateful to all who support this work.
Talking Gourds
Talking Gourds is a vibrant literary initiative rooted in the deep-ecology vision of Dolores LaChapelle and animated by the creative leadership of Art Goodtimes. Founded as a poetry festival in 1989 and relaunched in 2013 under the institute’s aegis, it now features national contests, local laureates programs, multiple free performance series, and partnerships across western Colorado.
2025 Highlights
- Announced winners for the 8th Annual Cantor Prize and 29th Annual Fischer Prize, bringing national‐level recognition to the program.
- Continued monthly online gatherings with the Bardic Trails Zoom series, and live “Stories & Poems” events in Norwood and Naturita libraries.
- Introduced a new summer live series during Telluride’s Artwalk (June–October) featuring guest poets in Telluride’s arts district.
- Maintained its free, community-open model, emphasizing access, collaboration, and connection to place.
Talking Gourds remains a dynamic literary program with its emphasis on free events open to all ages as well as some paying events. It prizes the involvement of a wide range of diverse folks – including Indigenous, Latine and LGBTQ voices — in the local, regional, national and even international poetry communities.
Watershed Education Program
This fall marked an exciting relaunch for the Watershed Education Program (WEP), thanks to the leadership of Mollie Theis and the support of EcoAction Partners (EAP). After a brief restructuring pause in 2024–25, Telluride Institute and EAP rejoined forces to bring hands-on watershed learning back to local youth. Together, we piloted a series of fall programs that reconnected students with the rivers, ecosystems, and climate systems that shape our region. These experiences have laid a strong foundation as we prepare to return WEP to even more classrooms in 2026.
This season’s programming took students from creekside explorations to climate conversations. In October, learners investigated late-season macroinvertebrates and the flora and fauna along Bilk Creek. Pinhead Institute’s after-school “Nature Detectives” program invited students to explore signs of a healthy watershed while keeping nature journals. In November, Nucla 4th graders examined energy use along the watershed, followed by a Watersheds & Recycling workshop at the Wilkinson Public Library where students made their own paper to compare water usage with mill processes. December closed with a deliciously hands-on lesson, Pinhead’s “What Is a Watershed and How Does It Taste?”where students built edible watershed models. And at the Youth Climate Summit, high schoolers from across the region gathered to discuss climate, careers, art, and action.
With your support, WEP is poised to grow again reaching more youth, more schools, and more communities throughout the watershed in the year ahead.
Clute Sci Fi Library
The Clute Science Fiction Library at the Telluride Institute in Telluride, Colorado, in partnership with Arizona State University, aims to preserve and enhance a unique archive of 14,000 first-edition science fiction books. This project will significantly increase its visibility and accessibility for researchers, students, and communities while safeguarding the collection’s integrity, ensuring its longevity for future generations. By elevating this rare collection’s profile, the grant will support scholarly engagement, foster community participation, and underscore the enduring importance of physical archives in shaping the future of literary and cultural research.
We are recently received the Humanities Institute-Herberger seed grant from Arizona State University.
For further information about John Clute’s work with the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, click here.
For further information about the Library project, click here.
SCAPE
SCAPE, a curriculum for high school students studying water quality, has partnered with Green Map in Brooklyn, NY to extend its reach to watersheds around the world. Recent uploads included contributions from Dar Salam in Africa! A free Water Quality app developed by a team headed up by Dan Collins is available for download HERE.
TWIN
Telluride Wetlands Inventory
This project introduces a pioneering approach for the study and management of high-altitude fens that integrates Artificial Intelligence (AI), Unmanned Airborne Systems (UAS), satellite data, and high-speed computer clusters (supercomputers).
Currently, fens are primarily studied via labor-intensive field surveys and limited data analysis capabilities that do not efficiently scale. Our approach will enable near real-time monitoring and analysis of wide areas of sensitive ecosystems, providing a dynamic picture of ecological changes.
Key challenges include integrating diverse data types and managing environmental variability. We will overcome these by using robust data fusion techniques and developing adaptive AI models, alongside continuous technology refinement in collaboration with our partners in geospatial data visualization and computer science.
This collaborative research project is funded by a seed grant from Arizona State University.
For more info: https://sites.google.com/
End of Year Giving
Each Year Telluride Institute evolves, adapts, anticipates change and does our best to meet the moment. If you made it this far you can see that we are doing a lot and across a wide spectrum of programs. These efforts are made possible by our sponsors listed below, grants, donors and especially via the in kind donations of our partners and board members. Each year the Telluride Institute receives in kind donations of approximately $200k towards program management, goods and professional services.
If any of these programs or TI in general perked your interest and inspired you to take action please either contact us or donate today. We are a small but mighty organization who would love to connect with you, share our stories and create change, one step at a time.
