Articles

Editor’s note for issue 13 of Western Confluence magazine /// Communities across the West are racing to embrace outdoor recreation and tourism as an up-and-coming industry. This means figuring out how to reap economic and quality-of-life rewards while avoiding pitfalls…

What can Wyoming learn from studies of the “natural resource curse”? /// Sometimes it feels like Wyoming’s economy is cursed. For every boom, there is a bust, leaving statewide institutions and citizens hurting. The crashes trigger layoffs in both private businesses and…

Wyoming could lead the world toward a cleaner energy future /// In Gillette, international contestants compete for a $7.5 million Carbon XPRIZE—the team that finds the most profitable use for carbon captured from a coal-fired power plant’s exhaust will win.…

An open spaces protection tool worth reforming /// Conservation easements, under which a landowner gives up certain property development rights in exchange for payment or tax deductions, are one of the most widely used tools for permanently protecting open spaces…

Brucellosis spreads as Wyoming tries to protect livestock /// Brucellosis is spreading, even as Wyoming tries to protect wildlife from the disease. This story follows the convoluted path of an exotic infection that cripples and causes abortions in cattle, harbors…

Hydrologic modelers have relied on the rigorous but extremely complicated-to-solve Richards equation, or RE, since 1931. Now a UW researcher has published a new solution. This is really a press release and not an actual reported article. I wanted to…

An artist reckons with the blaze that consumed his family’s home /// “The trees are not just burnt trees,” Northern Cheyenne artist Bently Spang says. “They watched this whole thing happen with my generation and a lot of other generations,…

Elk responses to wolves in Yellowstone are not what we thought /// “The story of wolves in Yellowstone has been made true by repeated telling, not by good science. The trophic cascade story is stated as if it is undisputed…

SavEach spring a hardy band of nearly 400 pronghorn antelope set out from the Green River Basin in western Wyoming. Their destination is the summering grounds in Grand Teton National Park, more than 100 miles away. Why do animals migrate? What…

A biologist revered and ridiculed /// He lives alone in a handmade cabin in Atlantic City, Wyo., and has dedicated the last several years of his professional life to researching a large primate that he believes wanders the forests of…

A natural history /// A series of profiles of the four major Wyoming river basins, published by WyoHistory.org. The Green River Basin The Bighorn Basin The Powder River Basin The North Platte River Basin