The American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana) is one of those birds that doesn’t sneak into a wetland; it arrives with grace and purpose — stilt-legged, black-and-white wings flashing, its elegant upturned bill slicing through the shallows. It’s a bird built for margins where land surrenders to water. When avocets thrive, wetlands are healthy. When they vanish, the system is failing.

The modern recovery of wolves in North America began with a bold experiment. In 1995 and 1996, biologists captured and relocated 31 gray wolves (Canis lupus) from Canada to Yellowstone National Park, holding them briefly in acclimation pens before setting them free. Fourteen wolves were released the first winter and seventeen the next. It wasn’t just the return of an absent animal — it was the return of a missing force of nature: predation, restored on a landscape grand enough for the entire nation to witness.

The American bison — from the edge of extinction to their powerful return across North America. Once reduced to just a few hundred animals, bison now roam public lands, Tribal nations, and private ranches thanks to decades of conservation and rewilding efforts. This in-depth feature explores their history, near-eradication, genetic legacy after early cattle crossbreeding, and the modern movement to restore wild, free-ranging herds while balancing ecology, culture, and ranching.

We think of Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) as solitary — one bird standing still and alone on a sandbar. But when it’s time to raise young, they gather. These gatherings are called rookeries, and on Colorado’s Front Range they form wherever water, fish, and old cottonwoods still exist. What I stumbled upon that day wasn’t an accident; it was the result of generations of birds returning to a site that works.

Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis) are the West’s cliff-country specialists: shock-absorbing hooves, binocular-grade eyes, and rib-rattling rams that can turn a granite ledge into a boxing ring.

The first time I hiked the trail that skirts Devil’s Backbone, just west of Loveland, Colorado, my camera felt almost too small for the scene. The rock stretched for miles — a jagged, tilted wall that looked like some ancient beast’s spine rising from the foothills. Since then, I’ve returned again and again, chasing early light, dramatic clouds, and that quiet satisfaction that comes when a landscape slowly reveals its story.

For more than a century, sugar beets have helped define the agricultural backbone of western Nebraska and northern Colorado. Generations of farm families have relied on the crop to pay mortgages and put kids through college. The sprawling factories in towns like Scottsbluff, Gering, and Fort Morgan have long been symbols of rural industry — steam stacks billowing, trucks lined up with harvest loads, the air tinged with the earthy scent of beets.

The American mink is not a rare animal across its native North American range. It is still considered secure overall, though local declines can and do occur when wetlands are drained, river corridors are simplified, or water quality is compromised. “Common” can fool us; these animals are elusive by nature. You can walk a stream for years and never see one.

No one cares about squirrels, right? I mean, how many people do you know who enjoy squirrels in a park, in the woods on a hike, or just in general? The answer is everyone — unless they’re suffering from sciurophobia (from Sciurus, the squirrel genus, + phobia, meaning “fear”) — and let’s be honest, you’ve probably never even heard of that because it’s basically a made-up word… a funny one at that. But everyone should care about squirrels, and here’s why.

On the broad, rolling plains of eastern Wyoming, where the Laramie River joins the North Platte, a historic military post endures—Fort Laramie. It is not just a relic of frontier days; it was a laboratory of innovation in military construction, particularly in the use of concrete in Army buildings

Nestled along Oregon’s northern coast, Nehalem Bay is where the Nehalem River meets the Pacific Ocean, forming an estuarine bay that blends fresh and salt water, marshes, and tidal flats. It sits in Tillamook County, framed by the small coastal towns of Nehalem, Manzanita, and Wheeler and one of our favorite places on planet Earth.

Moose are not ancient residents of Colorado. Unlike elk or mule deer, they weren’t here when settlers pushed west, and they weren’t part of the Rocky Mountain landscape that Indigenous peoples hunted and managed for centuries. Colorado Parks and Wildlife released the first moose into North Park in 1978. More followed in the 1980s and early 1990s, with transplants from Wyoming and Utah.