National Wildlife articles from April 1997

National Wildlife archives from April 1997

That Gunk on Your Car: A Unique Guide to Insects of the United States.
April 1, 1997... For Mark Hostetler, the idea for a new field guide began with an encounter at a Florida gas station in 1992. A zoology graduate student at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Hostetler was pumping gas into his car when he noticed another...

Does anyone love the woodchuck?
April 1, 1997... What good is a woodchuck? You might have heard that kind of question asked about any wild animal in less ecologically enlightened times. But the reporter from a Michigan newspaper who phoned Purdue University ecologist Robert Swihart last summer...

Twilight of America's grasslands.
April 1, 1997... From Maine to Colorado, mounting evidence indicates that many grassland bird species, like this Henslow's sparrow, are disappearing as fast as the prairies that support them Henslow's sparrow, in birdwatcher lingo, is an LBJ or little brown...

The art of making hay. (winter food-storing behavior of the pika, a small mammal)
April 1, 1997... As scientists have learned from the pika, collecting and storing food for winter can be a surprisingly complicated chore One afternoon high in the Elk Mountains of Colorado 16 years ago, the late-summer stillness was broken by a shrill "eeek,"...

Secret life of the spectacled eider. (duck species' life during winter)
April 1, 1997... Study of a threatened duck takes the author and other scientists to the edges of our last frontier and beyond The temperature outside our twin-engine survey plane was 30 degrees below zero. The overcast sky had merged with an endless expanse of...

Rare garden in the realm of the gods. (protected rainforest on the mountain of Pu'u Kukui on Maui)
April 1, 1997... High on a mountain in Maui, one of Hawaii's most biologically rich areas is now protected forever under a landmark agreement Randy bartlett is a soft-spoken, mild-mannered man who hardly seems suited for waging war. Yet for several years now,...

On the track of the monarch butterfly. (tracking its migration)
April 1, 1997... What biologists are learning about this colorful insect's long migration may help to save the species' habitat One day in january 1976, Lincoln Brower, a University of Florida entomologist who has studied monarch butterflies since the...

Friends and anemones. (benevolent relationship with other sea creatures)
April 1, 1997... Why do sea anemones host and protect certain marine creatures but deliver poisonous stings to others? Ask a scientist about the relationship between sea anemones and anemonefish, and there's no way around it: The answer will involve mucus....

Government plugs biggest loophole in wetlands protection.
April 1, 1997... Faced with the threat of a lawsuit from NWF and with comments from thousands of NWF members and other concerned citizens, the U.S. government has agreed to abolish within two years a general permit that is responsible for the majority of...

A powerful voice for public lands. (activist Elsie Dupree)
April 1, 1997... Almost everywhere she goes these days, Elsie Dupree takes along two plastic pots filled with native grasses. She totes them to schools, county fairs and other meetings to give people one criterion by which to judge grazing conditions on public...