Diane Hope

The Colorado Plateau is a place often thirsty for rain. But some of the soils in the region are water-phobic.

In recent decades northern leopard frogs have become refugees in their own land.

Millions of birds are killed every year by electrical power lines—especially in the wide-open country of the Colorado Plateau where power lines and poles are often all that’s available for birds to nest and roost on.

Northern Arizona University biologist Jason Wilder made a grisly discovery recently: a plant that ensnares and kills birds.

Mohave rattlesnakes are armed with a powerful weapon—venom that can immobilize or kill their prey. People have believed the Mohave’s venom held a neurotoxin, a cocktail of enzymes and peptides that paralyze the nervous system—making a bite from this snake especially deadly.