UW Alum Teaches and Researches Global Biodiversity, Inspiring Curiosity and Conservation

For more than a decade, University of Wyoming botany Professor Ellen Currano has been collecting fossilized remnants of trees and plants that thrived about 56 million years ago in what is now Wyoming.
Now, Currano’s findings are part of a new scientific paper that reconstructs the forest canopy of 56 million years ago, during a massive and abrupt emission of carbon into the atmosphere during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).

At the edge of the University of Wyoming’s Prexy’s Pasture Thursday, July 30, people gathered around a rare sight in Wyoming for this time of year—a broad-winged hawk.

The uncommon bird of prey was found on campus in June with a fractured beak and a significant parasite load. A month later, the young hawk, healed and ready to resume its journey, flew from UW’s lawn to the trees between the S.H. Knight Geology Building and the Engineering Building before heading southeast.

The University of Wyoming Extension welcomes Lindsay Baker as a community vitality and health educator based in Sweetwater County.

The University of Wyoming Extension welcomes Chloe Willenborg as the new 4-H youth development educator serving Sweetwater County.

The University of Wyoming’s Institute for Managing Annual Grasses Invading Natural Ecosystems (IMAGINE) has released a short film highlighting a decade of collaborative efforts to manage invasive grasses in northeast Wyoming.

The film, titled “Northeast Wyoming Holds the Line Against Ventenata & Medusahead,” features the Northeast Wyoming Invasive Grass Working Group (NEWIGWG), one of the largest invasive grass working groups in the U.S.

Across the board, tree swallow populations have similar sensitivity to warming amid climate change, but different abilities to respond to change. Breeding dates have advanced about one day per degree of warming, but northern populations face tighter time constraints and greater exposure to warming, according to recent research that included University of Wyoming students and faculty in the Wyoming Bird Initiative for Resilience and Diversity (WYOBIRD).