A big-game hunting season is underway for the first time at Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, which surrounds a former nuclear weapons plant.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge on the outskirts of Denver, opened a pilot elk hunt in September as part of a Trump administration push to expand hunting and fishing on public lands.
The agency says elk numbers have more than doubled since 2019, exceeding the capacity of the landscape, threatening rare plants and risking the spread of disease among the clustered animals…