Teal Lehto

Teal Lehto is a water rights activist located in Durango, Colorado. She attended Fort Lewis College and graduated in 2020 with a degree in environmental studies and political science. While in college, Lehto founded a club dedicated to water resource issues in the southwest. She also became a certified raft guide and founded a raft racing team, which won the 2017 U.S. Rafting Championships and attended the World Rafting Championships in 2017 and 2018, in Japan and Argentina respectively. More recently Lehto was featured in the REI CO-OP Studios film Spirit of the Peaks (Mountainfilm 2022), which focused on indigenous presence in the San Juan Mountains, traditional ecological knowledge and the concept of reciprocity. Lehto currently runs a TikTok account (@westernwatergirl) dedicated to river conservation issues with over 50,000 followers.