Pelican Swimming Utah's Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

Paving Paradise to Put Up Parking Lots

Can Western cities grow without displacing their neighboring natural wonders?

By Aubin Douglas

My first visit to the Great Salt Lake was a graduate course field trip to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. 

Professor Pete Stahl, Ecosystem Science and Management and Director of the Wyoming Reclamation and Restoration Center.

After the Road

How to restore sagebrush habitat on decommissioned roads

By Tessa Wittman

In the natural gas fields of western Wyoming, innumerable dirt roads cut through the sagebrush steppe, connecting gas wells and carrying heavy equipment.

Driving Through Medicine Bow Forest at the beginning of a snow storm

Road Wager

Agencies bet that hundreds of miles of temporary new roads can help a forest

By Nathan C. Martin

The Medicine Bow National Forest is the most densely roaded forest in Wyoming. Interstate 80 borders it to the north, and winding byways bisect its major mountain ranges—the Sierra Madre and the Snowy Range.

Pronghorn walking through grass with mountains in background.

Hikers and Wildlife Cross Paths

Researchers investigate non-motorized recreation’s ecological impacts

By Meghan Kent

Following his GPS, University of Wyoming field technician Michael Gjellum descends into a canyon between the folded foothills of Pilot Hill, keeping a careful eye out for mountain lion activity.

Rocky Mountain Elk in the prairie, with a dirt road in the background

Intersecting Roads

The need to value and safeguard wildlife movements

Perspective From Corinna Riginos

Roads may well be humankind’s greatest source of metaphors, inspiration for a plethora of phrases about journeys and all the bumps, bends, twists, and turns along them.

Cheatgrass field

Cheatgrass on Fire

The race to save an ecosystem

Locals speculate that Nevada’s largest fire may have started with a Fourth of July firework launched in a canyon. But no one really knows. The 2018 Martin Fire seemed small and innocuous, until a weather cell moved into northern Nevada.

Mussels

Cancer to the Rescue?

A potential solution to invasive mussels

One hundred thousand quagga mussels can live in a single square meter, and 450 trillion of them infest Lake Michigan alone.

Christy Bell holding a bee

Unsung Pollinators

Native bees are forgotten in the clamor to save exotic pollinators

Christy Bell rifled through a series of shallow drawers lining the walls of a dark, windowless lab.

A mountain goat peers down from a cliff

To Kill or Not to Kill?

Managing charismatic ungulates in the Tetons

The first time Michael Whitfield saw bighorn sheep in the high country he stood on a ridgeline in the shadow of the Teton Range and watched a group grazing along a plateau.

Painting of deer crossing road

A Different Kind of Map

Social science reveals the contours of wildlife migration’s human dimensions

On an early June morning, I found Jessi Johnson and her hunting partner loading up a bright red pickup, deep in discussion about the best spot to scout for bedded-down deer.

Courtney Duchardt and David Augustine in field

Sharing Fences

Local knowledge guides research across public and private lands

“I’ve learned to tune out the incessant alarm calls of prairie dogs when I work,” says recent University of Wyoming graduate Lauren Connell. “It’s that or go crazy.”

Wild horse running in grassy field. Photo by Eric Krszjzaniek.

Bullies on the Range

Wild horses are winning out over wildlife in the struggle for water

On a summer day in 2011, biologist Neil Perry was checking on prairie dogs he had translocated to a remote canyon in Mesa Verde, National Park, not far from the Four Corners region.

Horse with tracking device

Tracking Wild Horses

Technology addresses a rangeland challenge

As the sun sets over the stark Skull Creek Rim, I sit in the sand and take a swig from my water bottle. I am lucky to have portable water in this barren landscape.

Volunteers planting sage brush

One Steppe

New tools to improve management of Wyoming’s sagebrush ecosystem

In November 2014 the Douglas Core Area Restoration Team was all set to plant 16,000 sagebrush seedlings in a wildfire burn area east of Douglas, Wyoming.

Watercolor illustration of Earth

Avoiding Extinction on a Warming Planet

Can the Endangered Species Act protect wildlife in a changing climate?

On a summer day in 2011, a group of US Geological Survey researchers hiked through the wildflowers high above Glacier National Park’s tree line