Cocopah Tribe working to restore native plants, landscape on Colorado River
The Colorado River runs more than 1,400 miles starting as a trickle of snowmelt in northern Colorado. It becomes a roaring torrent as it cuts through canyons and five Western states. Now after more than a century of dam building and development along the river, it ends as a trickle again at the Arizona-Mexico border. The river was once the lifeblood of the Cocopah, or River People. The Cocopah Tribe has begun trying to return a sliver of that landscape to what it once was. On this day you hear the wind blowing and the traffic from Interstate 8 as cars and trucks cross the Arizona-California border less than a mile away. The Colorado River, or what’s left of it, meanders south to Mexico with hardly any sound.