Colorado
NIH's bat vivarium for virology studies in Colorado sparks concern from residents, academics
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is collaborating with Colorado State University (CSU) on a laboratory that will study the potential spread of coronaviruses and other infections from bats to humans.
Local residents and academic experts have expressed opposition to the construction of the lab, claiming it poses an unnecessary risk of leaks to the surrounding region. The NIH and CSU have dismissed the complaints, citing what they say was a transparent approval process with plenty of public notice.
Fox News Digital reached out to the NIH, CSU, protesters and the state governor for information about this contentious construction project.
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The National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. (Mark Wilson/Newsmakers)
The 1,022-square-meter Chiropteran Research Facility is being constructed on the Colorado State University campus in Fort Collins and is expected to begin operations in February 2025.
White Coat Waste (WCW), a taxpayer watchdog group that focuses heavily on animal experimentation, has opposed the project since it was announced last year.
“We oppose this new facility because it threatens national security, fiscal responsibility, animals and public health,” White Coat Waste Founder Anthony Bellotti told Fox News Digital. “WCW uncovered an alarming pattern of animal lab accidents at CSU via a Colorado Open Records Act request. We obtained recent records of bat bites, mouse bites, hamster bites, cat scratches and cat bites.”
WCW contributed to a report published earlier this year in the Daily Mail showing CSU staff members were exposed to Zika, rabies, tuberculosis and other dangerous pathogens due to dozens of lab accidents.
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WCW has urged Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to pull funding from the project, citing local opposition to the center and its perceived risks.
“We are encouraging Gov. Jared Polis to defund CSU’s ‘Wuhan West’ lab because Colorado residents and pet owners don’t want to pay $5 million in state taxes for a dangerous virus facility with a recent history of lab leaks,” WCW told Fox News Digital. “WCW’s members in Colorado have told us, repeatedly, that they don’t want to breed bats, abuse animals and play around with potential pandemic pathogens in their own backyard.”
Gov. Jared Polis delivers his state of the state address at Colorado’s Capitol. Polis’ office told Fox News Digital the governor is “aware” of the Chiropteran Research Facility construction project and has been briefed on its safety protocols. (Aaron Ontiveroz/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital contacted Polis’ office for comment regarding the lab’s construction. The governor’s office said in a brief statement he is “aware” of the center’s construction and has been informed of safety protocols for the lab.
“Governor Polis is proud of Colorado’s world-class universities and innovative labs that safely study and provide solutions to challenges facing our country, and the office is aware of this lab at Colorado State University and has been briefed regarding safety protocols,” Polis’ office told Fox News Digital.
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Virology research — especially research into the transmission of viruses from bats to humans — has become an unpalatable subject since American intelligence confirmed that such lab work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China was the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News last year.
The situation in Colorado is made even more tense by the fact CSU subcontracted the capture and transfer of bat specimens from Bangladesh through EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth Alliance was defunded by the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found it to have “facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant.”
CSU stands by the planned lab, saying its research into bat-to-human infection is “important to preventing future pandemics.”
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EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak speaks during a House Select Subcommittee hearing on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“CSU has redundant biosafety precautions to keep our researchers and our community safe,” a spokesperson for the university told Fox News Digital. “The building will be used to house bats, and scientists will conduct limited research on mild pathogens that do not pose a risk to the community.”
And while locals protest the construction, CSU assured Fox News Digital it followed the proper channels of alerting the public to the project.
“The project solicited public feedback through federal processes and has continued to share information with the community through a paper mailing and a website with the facts,” the CSU spokesperson said.
This was echoed by the NIH, which similarly told Fox News Digital it published proposals and notices beginning in October 2021 “as required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.”
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The NIH told Fox News Digital a draft environmental assessment was made available for review to the public “both online and at the Old Town Library in Fort Collins, Colorado, Dec. 18, 2023; it was also published on the CSU Bat Research website.”
The notice of availability for the assessment was also published in the local newspaper, the Coloradoan, Dec. 18, Dec. 20 and Dec. 22.
“At the end of the 30-day public comment period, no comments were received by either NIH or CSU,” the NIH told Fox News Digital.
Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. U.S. intelligence officials have pointed to a leak from the laboratory as the most plausible explanation of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
Speaking about the track record of CSU and the possibility of lab leaks, the NIH referenced the university’s “more than 15 years” of researching “bats and infectious diseases on its Foothills Campus.”
“The proposed Chiropoteran Resource Facility at CSU is intended to provide additional physical resources to study bats and how they transmit pathogens as a vital step in pandemic preparedness,” the NIH told Fox News Digital. “Both CSU and the National Institutes of Health, which are jointly funding construction of the building, conducted, separately, required environmental assessments of the project to evaluate and verify that established biosafety controls mitigated all environmental, health and safety concerns.”
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The NIH is spending $8.4 million on the virology lab, while CSU is contributing $5.1 million.
Construction remains ongoing, and the lab is scheduled to be completed in February 2025.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife will consider a potential ban on the commercial sale of furbearers at its July commission meeting.
The idea for a ban on the commercial sale, barter or trade of furs from furbearer species — a classification that includes 17 wildlife species like foxes, beavers, coyotes, bobcats and other mesocarnivores — came from a citizen petition brought to Parks and Wildlife last year by a Colorado representative of the Center of Biological Diversity.
The commission approved the petition in March, against the recommendation of Parks and Wildlife staff, initiating a formal rulemaking process on the proposed ban.
Now, Parks and Wildlife is seeking public input on the proposal to inform staff’s development of an issue paper that will be presented to the commission during its July 16-17 meetings. The agency will be accepting input from the public through May 3 on EngageCPW.org.
The proposed ban — and agency’s overall management of these 17 species — has been a topic of much debate at commission meetings for many months.
In Colorado, furbearers can be hunted with the purchase of a $10 permit available to individuals who purchase a small game license. In its 2024-25 fiscal year, the agency sold 19,620 furbearer permits. While there are currently no limits on the number that a furbearer permit-holder can kill of these species, the agency has had initial discussions about potentially imposing a daily limit.
Samantha Miller, a Grand Lake resident and the senior carnivore campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity who submitted the petition, has referred to the ban of commercial sale for furbearer furs as a “common sense change” and “low bar” that aligns furbearers with how Colorado manages other wildlife species. Miller and other supporters of the ban argue that allowing the commercial sale of furs incentivizes overharvesting of the animals and threatens overall biodiversity.
In her recommendation to the commission, Laura Clellan, the newly appointed Parks and Wildlife director, wrote that the agency’s main rationale for denying the ban on commercial fur sales is that the petition “lacks solid evidence that commercial fur sales drive harvest levels in Colorado.”
Opponents of the petition supported the agency’s stance and have argued that the state’s current furbearer management works and is backed by science. Many claim that the proposed commercial ban represents a greater attack on hunting and trapping, which represents an important tradition in Colorado and supports conservation.
Fire crews are extinguishing hot spots on a wildfire in northern Colorado that prompted evacuations early Wednesday for people living near Carter Lake in Larimer County.
The Cougar Run fire was estimated at about 3 1/2 acres at about 8:30 a.m., down from an earlier estimate of 10 acres, according to the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office. The cause for the fire, which is burning on state land, remains unknown.
The mandatory evacuation remained in effect as crews continue to work but were lifted at about 10:30 a.m., the sheriff’s office said.
Voluntary evacuations were also being urged for residents in the area of Blue Mountain and Spring Valley, west of Carter Lake, the agency said.
Crews from the sheriff’s office, the state’s fire division and Berthoud and Loveland fire departments are on scene, the sheriff’s office said. A helicopter was ordered.
Fire restrictions are in effect for areas below 9,000 feet in unincorporated parts of Larimer County, barring uncontained open fires and smoking in open areas, such as trails and open spaces.
“Elevated to critical fire weather” is expected across the lower Front Range foothills and Interstate 25 corridor Wednesday due to warm, dry and breezy conditions, according to the National Weather Service. Moisture is expected to lower fire risk starting Thursday and through the weekend, with daily chances of showers and thunderstorms, the service said.
A separate fire that sparked northwest of Boulder grew to about 2 acres before crews stopped its progress earlier Wednesday. An evacuation warning was issued for the Goat Trail fire just before 4 a.m.
Denver Film is hosting its Silent Film Festival beginning Friday, including eight feature films and 11 shorts with live musical accompaniment.
Howie Movshovitz, Programmer for the Denver Silent Film Festival, joined CBS Colorado in the studio on Tuesday to highlight the film “Queen Kelly” and share what festivalgoers have to look forward to.
In the film “Queen Kelly”, produced in 1928-1929, a convent girl is abducted and seduced by a prince betrothed to a mad queen, an event that drastically changes the course of her life.
“People talk about ‘Queen Kelly’ as a restoration, but it isn’t because it was never finished. In 1928, Gloria Swanson got together with her producer/lover Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, and they got together with Eric von Stroheim, a celebrity director, and they went to make Queen Kelly. And about halfway into it, Gloria Swanson fired him,” Movshovitz said.
He said that it’s unlikely the three of them would have been able to get along. Although the film was incomplete, he says there have been many attempts to restore it.
“A man named Dennis Doros and his partner/wife, Amy Heller, at Milestone Films did a reconstruction of it, and then a reconstruction of it. It’s been done a number of times, and this is the most recent,” Movshovitz explained. “They work from script. They work from outtakes, the visual quality of what von Stroheim shot, he was a genius, is fabulous. But it’s, of course, an imaginative response to a 1929 movie.”
Movshovitz says the love of silent films is not just about nostalgia.
“There are many films that are utterly brilliant, utterly fabulous, and still work perfectly well today,” he said. “So, it’s a kind of film that people don’t look at very much, but it doesn’t need sympathy, it doesn’t need nostalgia. It needs people to understand that, just as we read old books and don’t think of them as old books, silent film has its own majesty.”
Watching silent films with musical accompaniment makes the experience unique, said Movshovitz, adding that the festival has a skilled group of musicians performing.
The Denver Silent Film Festival runs from April 10-12 at the Sie Film Center in Denver. Click here to learn more about the featured films and to purchase tickets.
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