“Where can I take my boys to go and shoot some prairie dogs?” a woman recently asked Chuck at the visitor center where we were working. The question took Chuck by surprise. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked. The woman was obviously serious. “They just want to shoot some little critters.” Annoyances …
“Hey! There’s a moose and her calf over there!” a visitor to Grand Teton National Park shouted at us as we started a hike on a trail we’d taken many times before. As the visitor and his wife hurried across the sagebrush in the direction of the mother and young, we continued on the trail. …
The rugged 660,000 acres of Kofa National Wildlife Refuge is perfect habitat for reptiles. But it’s also home to mountain lions, bighorn sheep, mule deer, and now (as of December) Sonoran pronghorn. Sonoran pronghorn (sometimes called antelope) are an endangered subspecies that inhabit the Sonoran Desert in southwest U.S. and into Mexico. A captive breeding …
Ever been bitten by a dog? A cat? A snake? An alligator?
Should bison be reintroduced to as many areas of the Great Plains as possible, perhaps replacing cattle? Denver Zoo keeper and researcher Bryon Shipley is working with other researchers and volunteers seeking answers to how bison affect biodiversity of the Southern Great Plains in Colorado.
Locating snakes, we find, is more difficult than spotting lizards. Over a period of a couple weeks, we’ve seen three rattlesnakes, two patchnose snakes, a coachwhip, and a gopher snake. On just one two-hour hike, however, we observed seven different species of lizards.
Earlier this year while driving through Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, we encountered a tarantula crossing the road. Instead of moving it to safety, we collected the spider and placed him on display in the visitor center.