Life Among the Turbines
Researcher explores how grassland birds respond to wind farms
On the eastern Wyoming plains, the wind whips hard across tough little bunch grasses
The Tiniest Engineer
Ants shape the sagebrush ecosystem
“Can you show me some ant mounds on Google Earth?”
The Forgotten Grassland Bird
Hunting for a Sprague’s pipit in a changing landscape
Sagebrush scraped the doors of the beat up red truck as it bumped down the faint two-track.
Bird v. Bird
The complicated relationship between sage grouse and their avian predators
Rancher Truman Julian says he has “a place in his heart” for greater sage grouse.
Sage grouse shape development patterns in Wyoming
This fall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether the greater sage grouse merits endangered species protection, and Wyoming is holding its breath.
Constructing Sage Grouse Habitat
Does mowing, burning, or spraying sagebrush actually help?
Kurt Smith plucks the fifth secondary feather from the five-week-old sage grouse’s wing
Sagebrush Treatments
Dr. Jeffrey Beck and his colleagues and students have quantified canopy cover, measured native and invasive plants, counted insects including ants
A Tale of Two Migrations
The splash of one fish ripples through an ecosystem
In 2007, biologist Arthur Middleton was studying the Clark’s Fork elk herd
The Trout Effect
Cutthroat trout once linked aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in Yellowstone National Park. As their numbers decline, the link is weakening.
Grizzlies and Whitebarks
Where do bears turn when an important food source starts to vanish?
Golden and red-hued leaves and crisp evenings mark the coming of fall in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Essay: Wyoming Wins with Wildlife
The cow and yearling moose that inhabited my densely populated west Jackson neighborhood all winter finally
Beaver Dreams
The Rancher Who Wished for a Beaver
“They’re really beneficial, to get the shrubs in, get the water up.”
Wyoming Conservation Exchange
New Marketplace Will Reward Wyoming Ranchers for Conserving Sage Grouse Habitat
The Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, at the headwaters of the Colorado River, is laced with clear running streams and fosters abundant habitat and some of the most robust greater sage grouse, mule deer, and pronghorn populations in the world.
Greater sage grouse: The bird that brought the West together
The greater sage grouse lives in the extensive sagebrush steppe that spans parts of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, the Dakotas, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
A timeline of sage grouse conservation
May 1999 FWS was petitioned to list the Washington population of greater sage grouse as endangered under the Endangered Species Act July 2000 Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies…
Economics of engineering with livestock: Incentives for establishing biological diversity
Recognizing the importance of agricultural lands for wildlife, a number of programs in the western United States encourage ranchers to manage rangelands in ways that benefit both landowners and wildlife. Financial incentive for improving biodiversity per se is yet to come.
The ecology of fear: Elk responses to wolves in Yellowstone are not what we thought
Wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 triggered an endlessly fascinating stream of ecosystem responses. More than a decade and a half later, ecologists are still trying to determine
Elk and wolves in Yellowstone
The Northern Yellowstone Cooperative Wildlife Working Group, an interagency collaboration between Yellowstone National Park and Montana Fish and Wildlife, began counting elk on Yellowstone’s Northern Range in 1961. Counts are taken from the air one day a year.
Cicadas: Wyoming’s summer songsters
Walk through the sagebrush or a forest in the west this summer and you are likely to hear the raucous clicking or buzzing of cicadas.