As Colorado heads into what experts worry could be a busy wildfire season, specialized paramedics are preparing to deploy alongside firefighters. They will provide medical care in some of the most remote and dangerous environments in the state. 

Wildland paramedics with Eagle County Paramedic Services said it takes pride being qualified to respond to our state’s dangerous natural disasters alongside firefighters to keep them in the fight. 

“It’s pretty important that we have an understanding, even if we’re not doing the same job that they are of exactly what’s going on kind of top to bottom of the entire incident,” paramedic Beckett Lilien told CBS Colorado. 

To work on a wildfire assignment, paramedics and EMTs must earn what’s known as a “red card,” completing specialized training in wildfire behavior, safety protocols and fire operations. The goal is to make sure firefighters can focus on fighting fire without worrying about providing medical care if something goes wrong.

Lilien said the job ranges from treating common issues such as dehydration, illness and blisters to handling serious emergencies. 

“If a tree falls on somebody or somebody drives a blade through their foot or the chainsaw slips or something like that, being able to respond and give point-of-injury care,” Lilien said.

Wildland firefighters said having medical professionals embedded with crews is a major advantage, especially when fires are burning in remote terrain where help can be hours away.

“If someone does get hurt, they’ll take control of that situation, and I can continue to focus on putting the fire out. And that’s really important,” said Hugh Fairfield-Smith, division chief of wildland fire operations for the Eagle River Fire Protection District.

The partnership comes as fire agencies across Colorado prepare for elevated wildfire risk following a dry winter and below-average snowpack. Lilien said conditions are developing earlier than normal this year, raising concerns about what the rest of the summer could bring. Still, firefighters said having trained medical personnel on standby provides peace of mind.

“It’s a safety blanket there we hope we never have to use,” Fairfield-Smith said. “But they’re there.”

DENVER — Nobody has lived on the edge of the risk-reward nature of sports more than Deion Sanders over the years.

One place the Colorado coach won’t go — gambling on the college game, the likes of which has generated a scandal inside the very conference his team resides. Wagering has jumped to the forefront of college football as Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby won a court order early last week that restored his eligibility and set aside a ban by the NCAA for betting on pro and college sports. Colorado plays Big 12 rival Texas Tech on Oct. 3 as part of homecoming festivities.

“Somebody’s gambling on a sport they’re playing? You don’t think something’s wrong with that?” Sanders said in a recent interview with The Associated Press and before the latest court ruling with Sorsby. “Just say that to yourself: This guy on my team is gambling on the sport, in the competition, that we’re about to go out there and have. Something’s wrong that.”

Sanders has plenty of thoughts on refining the game in this day and age of the volatile transfer portal and lucrative name, image and likeness deals. His takes include a salary cap in an effort to even the NIL playing field, hiring a retired coach as commissioner (a Nick Saban type ), instituting some sort of an age limit, expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams and, of course, a hard pass when it comes to betting (he’s talked to his squad about this topic).

“The game is still the game,” Sanders said. “The game is just positioned differently. Money’s involved, and any time money’s involved people tend to migrate to what they think they can get out of it, instead of what they could put into it — and that’s unfortunate.”

Bladder cancer diagnosis

A year ago, Sanders was going through treatment for bladder cancer, which included having a section of his intestine reconstructed to function as a bladder. This being Men’s Health Month, he’s working with Depend underwear to encourage regular checkups (and launching a program titled “Depend Wake Up Calls” that allows consumers to receive video messages from Sanders through June).

Earlier this spring, Sanders stepped away from the team for a few days as he dealt with blood clots. But he said he’s “feeling great. I’ve got my old swagger back.”

Along with it, a new outlook, which includes actually taking vacation time. Sanders recently partnered on a beachfront property in St. Croix with his son, Shedeur, who’s entering his second season as a quarterback with the Cleveland Browns.

“I never would’ve done that, because I don’t go anywhere,” the 58-year-old Sanders said. “I’m stepping out, just living life.”

Sanders missed football camps last summer in Boulder as he went through cancer treatments. The Buffaloes finished with a 3-9 mark a year after making a bowl game behind Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter.

This offseason, a more hands-on version of Deion Sanders.

“I have everybody in that locker room because we said we want them,” he said. “Because I sat there and watched tape on them and said, ‘That’s who I want, that’s what I want. Let’s go get them.’”

The new landscape of college football

Sanders found it funny that his heavy reliance on the transfer portal once drew so many raised eyebrows.

“Now, everybody’s doing the same thing that I did,” he said. “But it was crazy back then, right?”

He’s seen and heard the plans from conferences — and the legislation proposals from lawmakers — on how to adapt college football in this new landscape. It’s a lot to untangle, which is why he advocates for an authoritative figure to help oversee the sport.

“A guy like Coach Saban and some of the other coaches that have walked away from the game not because they can’t coach anymore but because they were fed up with how things are operating,” he said.

Sanders also would be in favor of implementing a salary cap (see: NFL).

“So you can really have a consistency with the game,” Sanders said. “The thing about the pro game, everybody gets to spend the same amount of money. It’s who is crafty in regard to business. College football isn’t like that. You may have a team that’s spent $40 million playing against a team who spent $10 million. You darn well know the outcome in that game.”

That leads him to his next point — a potential age cap.

“You can’t have a 30-year-old man playing against a 21-year old man and think it’s fair,” he said. “Should be a transfer rule as well. You’re teaching kids not to fight through adversity when you’re having kids able to transfer two or three or four times.”

Colorado Parks and Wildlife killed an uncollared wolf on Friday in Routt County. The wolf — which was born to the Copper Creek Pack in spring 2024, but separated from the pack that fall — has been tied to 10 confirmed depredation events involving 22 sheep in both Rio Blanco and Routt counties since 2025. 

Parks and Wildlife has made multiple unsuccessful attempts to kill this wolf after it has repeatedly attacked livestock, including an attempt last August where the wolf was shot. 

In a Saturday news release, the state wildlife agency announced that it killed the wolf and obtained evidence from the scene that it’s the same wolf that was attacking and killing sheep in Rio Blanco County starting in 2025. 

Parks and Wildlife said the wolf was most recently tied to two confirmed attacks on livestock in Routt County on Wednesday and Thursday, each involving one lamb. 

The news release confirmed that both events had “clear and convincing evidence” that a wolf was involved in the attacks and occurred despite “the producer pursuing substantial non-lethal conflict minimization efforts,” including site assessments, deployment of range riders, use of livestock guardian dogs and scare devices, active human presence from sheep herders, and permits to deploy injurious nonlethal hazing techniques.

“The decision to pursue lethal actions is never an easy one, but the circumstances around this wolf’s repeated depredation history made this a difficult but necessary decision,” said Laura Clellan, director of Parks and Wildlife, in a statement. “The producers impacted by these depredations have worked diligently with CPW to identify and deploy all viable and reasonable non-lethal tools and techniques identified through their site assessment and consultation with our field staff.”

Parks and Wildlife consulted with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the decision to kill the wolf. 

Colorado’s wildlife agency is authorized to kill wolves under certain circumstances, including chronic depredation, under its special 10(j) rule from Fish and Wildlife. Under this rule, the agency has 30 days to remove the animal if warranted. In addition to meeting the definition of chronic depredation, the agency will only seek to euthanize a wolf if a variety of nonlethal tools have been used to mitigate conflict, the wolf was not lured or baited and if it is likely attacks will continue unless action is taken. 

The uncollared wolf was first tied to four livestock attacks in the summer of 2025, involving five lambs and one ewe, on July 20, July 22, Aug. 2 and Aug. 16.

As the situation met Parks and Wildlife’s definition of chronic depredation — and there were efforts by the affected producer to deploy nonlethal tools — the agency sought to kill the wolf. In the August search, the wolf was shot, but the body was never located.

In the fall, an uncollared wolf was tied to confirmed depredations on Oct. 9, Oct. 12 and Nov. 4 — each involving one sheep. While the agency never publicly announced it was undergoing a lethal removal effort following these attacks, the Coloradoan obtained records from the agency and reported that Parks and Wildlife attempted an operation to kill the responsible wolf in November, but that the effort was suspended by early December. 

In March, it announced that it was suspending another failed attempt to locate and kill the uncollared wolf killing livestock in Rio Blanco County. 

This is the second wolf that Parks and Wildlife has lethally removed due to conflict with livestock since Colorado’s reintroduction of gray wolves began in December 2023. The agency killed a yearling from the same Copper Creek Pack litter in May 2025 in Pitkin County after the pack was connected to a series of livestock attacks. 

The uncollared wolf killed this Friday has been separated from the Copper Creek Pack since September 2024, when the pack’s breeding adults and four other wolf pups were captured and sent to a wildlife sanctuary, but it remained in the wild uncaptured. The pack was rounded up in Grand County after being tied to repeated livestock attacks near their den site. While the patriarch died in captivity from injuries caused by a gunshot wound before its capture, the surviving matriarch and pups were released back into the wild in January 2025. 

In addition to the two lethal removals, 13 of the 25 wolves reintroduced in Colorado have died. 

Parks and Wildlife’s Saturday news release included a statement from Gov. Jared Polis — the first time the governor has made a statement following a wolf death. 

“This elusive wolf had a number of chances but sadly chose to continue to depredate, which necessitated this challenging management decision,” he said. “Colorado remains committed to recovering and maintaining a viable, self-sustaining wolf population in Colorado, while concurrently working to minimize wolf-related conflicts with domestic animals, with non-lethal means as our priority.”

Parks and Wildlife said it will release a final report on the lethal removal operation once it is complete.