Dear RMBL community, 

This has been an ecologically weird year, and RMBL scientists are documenting it. After an extraordinarily low-snow winter, wildflowers bloomed weeks early, Blue Mesa Reservoir fell to historic lows, and drought, insects, and disease continued to challenge our aspens and conifers and reshape our forests.

And then there are the marmots. About two-thirds of the marmots in our long-term study population didn’t survive last winter, bringing national attention to a study RMBL has run since 1962. In the wake of that die-off, the RMBL Marmot Project launched Fat Marmot Week, which drew people from all walks of life, across the country and the globe, into a conversation about both the value of long-term science and the challenge of funding it. The weekend of Aug. 29-30, Dawn, a doting marmot father, swept the weight-gain and popular-vote categories to become the “chunky champion.”

Behind all the fun, and some very chunky marmots, is a serious point: long-term science matters. Only decades of observation let scientists tell a strange year apart from a lasting change, understand resilience, and ask what today’s shifts might mean for the future.

Maintaining that continuity is an act of stewardship.

Stewardship Across Generations

I’ve been thinking about the word “stewardship” a lot lately.

At RMBL, stewardship takes many forms. We steward nearly a century of scientific discovery and decades-long datasets that can’t be recreated once they’re gone. We steward a field station approaching its 100th year, along with the infrastructure scientists need to do their work. And we steward relationships, with scientists, students, donors, partners, and the communities around us, along with a responsibility to honor the generosity of the people who believe in RMBL.

Doug La Follette, PhD, one of the organizers of the first Earth Day, understood this particularly well.

Doug has given consistently to RMBL because he believes in supporting the Laboratory itself: ensuring scientists always have a place to ask important questions. Not every gift needs to fund a specific discovery. Sometimes the greatest gift is the stability that lets discovery happen at all: maintaining a field station, supporting scientists and students, caring for long-term datasets, providing housing and labs, keeping the lights on, making sure someone can return to the same meadow, stream, forest, or marmot colony, year after year.

Today, scientists’ fees cover only about half of the true cost of conducting research at RMBL. Donor support and our endowment subsidize the remaining costs, helping keep research and education accessible even as operating expenses continue to rise.

Doug’s generosity is long-term stewardship in service of long-term science, and that same responsibility to think beyond today is at the heart of RMBL 365.

Stewarding RMBL’s Next Century

I often describe RMBL 365 as the front porch of Gothic.

Gothic will always be the heart of RMBL, the place where scientists have gathered for nearly a century to study the natural world. RMBL 365 extends that mission year-round. Located in Crested Butte, it’s where science, education, and community come together, giving us a place to share the work happening in Gothic, educate students, welcome partners, convene scientists, and engage our community all year.

When RMBL purchased RMBL 365 for $4.4 million in October 2025, we took an important step toward stewarding the organization’s future, and our community responded in an extraordinary way. 2025 was an incredible year for philanthropy at RMBL, with donors stepping forward to help make the purchase possible. Since then, we’ve worked to be good stewards of that investment by putting the building to work: science talks, educational programs, workshops, conferences, community gatherings, networking events, board and lab meetings, a monthly book club, visiting scientists and students, and much more. And all the while, our adjacent laundromat has provided a service to our community while offsetting our expenses. 

After watching the building come alive this summer, one thing is clear to me: RMBL 365 was the right investment. Good stewardship also means making sure it’s sustainable, and RMBL 365 was designed with that in mind: its two apartments and laundromat alone generate roughly $130,000 in gross annual revenue, helping support the facility and RMBL’s broader mission.

Now we have one more responsibility: finish what we started.

The Home Stretch

Together, our community has already raised millions toward this $4.4 million investment, something we can all celebrate. Over the next several weeks, we’re asking you to help us close out the RMBL 365 Home Stretch Campaign and position this resource for RMBL’s next century.

Paying off RMBL 365 isn’t just about eliminating a mortgage. It’s about being responsible with what our donors have entrusted to us, strengthening RMBL’s financial foundation, and freeing up resources currently spent on debt so more of them can go toward science, students, and education. Ultimately, it’s about making decisions today that will benefit people we may never meet. That is what long-term science asks of us, and this unusual year has reminded us why.

The marmots, wildflowers, forests, and water around us are telling us stories. Some systems are showing remarkable resilience. Others are changing in ways that raise new, urgent questions. We don’t yet know what those changes mean, and that’s precisely why RMBL exists: our responsibility is to make sure scientists are here long enough to find out.

For nearly 100 years, generations of scientists, students, donors, families, and friends have stewarded this institution, each inheriting something from those who came before and strengthening it for those who’ll come next. Today, we carry that forward.

As we approach RMBL’s centennial, I hope you’ll join us in bringing RMBL 365 home and helping steward RMBL — and the long-term science that makes this place so extraordinary — into its next 100 years.

With gratitude,

Jeni Blacklock, PhD
Executive Director
Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory

Top: A rainbow over Mt. Crested Butte, as viewed from Gothic. Photo by Jeni Blacklock