Startling, one-of-a-kind fossils are unearthed in Montana – and shunned by scientists.
Scientific research
Posted inArticles
Researchers go to Utah to experience another planet: Mars
In March, photographer and science enthusiast Jim Urquhart ventured into the Utah desert to join a team of researchers at the Mars Desert Research Station. He came back with a collection of surreal images both extra-terrestrial and intriguing.
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
As it goes high-tech, wildlife biology loses its soul
In 1978, I was researching one of my first wildlife stories, working along the North Fork of the Flathead River in northwestern Montana, one of the wildest places in the Lower 48. A wolf was believed to be prowling into Montana from British Columbia –– an important discovery if true, because wolves had been absent […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like
Mark Williams and Bill Baker stand amid ponderosa pines in the mountains west of Fort Collins, Colo., holding a copy of a 19th century land survey. They’re looking for a small pile of rocks with three notches on the east side, indicating that a General Land Office surveyor stopped here to describe the forest. Surveyors […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Great Basin scientists unleash new weapons to fight invasive cheatgrass
This guy is lovely!” ecologist Beth Leger exclaims, falling to her knees. A tiny, energetic woman in her mid-30s, Leger hovers, bee-like, over a teensy grass with blue-green blades. It is, she tells me, a “cute” native called Poa secunda. It’s early May, and Leger, graduate student Owen Baughman and I are crouched on Peavine […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Cultural blight
Plant disease threatens traditions of California tribes.
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
The Chaparralian
California’s raging fires fuel one man’s fight for the much-maligned “elfin forest”
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Dust and Snow
High in the snowy San Juan Mountains, tiny particles have big implications
Posted inFebruary 11, 1991: Idaho savors its waters as region seeks more hydropower
On grizzlies, babies and a shrinking land
I got married last fall and was immediately inundated with questions concerning when my husband and I were planning on having kids. Someone even sent me a card wishing me lots and lots of little ones. The sentiment behind that wish is really what brought ISO folks and me together in mid-January to hear a […]