Natural History: Articles

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Open Access
Bristolian shoots rapids on America's wildest river
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1967) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Bristol Herald Courier, publisher
Rolston's account of a river run through the Grand Canyon, Lee's Ferry to Lake Mead, July 27-August 5, 1967.
Open Access
Call of the wild: African safari a mix of intrigue, adventure and survival
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1999) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Report on trip to Botswana, environmental conservation and biodiversity, May-June 1999. Encountering a leopard in the night and wild dogs on the hunt gives experience of the ancient struggle to eat and not be eaten. Life persists in the midst of its perpetual perishing. The Dark Continent is exuberant with life. These rare carnivores struggle to survive, endangered species that ought to be conserved.
Open Access
Exploring the great migration of the Serengeti
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2007) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Report on trip to see the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti, Tanzania. In the vast wildebeest migration, a million and a half ungainly antelope migrate a thousand miles showing an endurance that belies their clumsy appearance. The American West once had a more vast migration: over 30 million bison, and we lost that greater wonder. Tanzanians, among the poorer nations, are quite resolved to keep the wildebeest free on their landscape. Older than human history, today this is the greatest wildlife show on Earth.
Open Access
Galapagos: following in Darwin's footsteps
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2008) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Report on trip to the Galapagos Islands. Rolston recalls Darwin's experience encountering hundreds of "most disgusting, clumsy lizards," three-foot marine iguanas. Not "pretty," but then again not "disgusting." He is not surprised that the weird wildlife had set the young Darwin thinking. Strangely, Darwin's genius at recognizing these remote islands as an evolutionary hotspot led to a revolution in the human view of who we are, where we are, and even of life itself.
Open Access
Great Dismal Swamp is not a dismal place at all
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013-09-29) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Rolston account of paddling the Great Dismal Swamp along a "ditch" (canal) dug by the slaves of George Washington, in southeastern Virginia. Lake Drummond, natural and cultural history, folklore, biodiversity in the swamp, first settlers.
Open Access
Hewn and cleft from this rock: meditation at the PreCambrian contact
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1971) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, publisher
Encounter with the Precambrian contact exposed at Pardee Point in Doe River Gorge, East Tennessee, brings reflections about human origins, evolving and cleft from ancient rocks. Geochemistry has its sequel in biochemistry. The hiker crosses that fossil sequence recorded in the strata. A discontinuity is crossed with the coming of humans: A sheriff crossing the contact in search of moonshiners. The rocks are a sacrament that overlie a Presence.
Open Access
Komodo dragons highlight Indonesian adventure
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Rolston account of a September 2011 trip to see Komodo dragons in the wild, on Komodo and Rinca Islands, Indonesia. Also Orange-footed Scrubfowl, or Megapodes.
Open Access
Learning how to think like a mountain
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012-08-12) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Holmes Rolston reports on a search to find the site where Aldo Leopold shot a wolf and watched the green fire in her dying eyes, learning to think like a mountain, Apache National Forest, Arizona. Thinking big in the big outdoors.
Open Access
Madagascar offers rare experience
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010-11-28) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Rolston's account of a trip to Madagascar in October 2010. Lemurs, endemic fauna and flora, flying foxes, conservation in Madagascar, loss of biodiversity, forests, eroded landscape, poverty of Malagasy people.
Open Access
Mystery and majesty in Washington County
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1968-11) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries, publisher
Rolston's accounts exploring fauna, flora, and natural history in Washington County, Southwestern Virginia, during a decade of residence there, 1960s. A tribute to the Southern Appalachian hills that once were home.
Open Access
Nature of the beast: in Uganda, people and primates face unique struggles
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2003) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Report on trip to Uganda: gorilla and chimpanzee conservation and development. Uganda primate encounters leave a more lasting searching both for human origins and future hopes. Here the human species, exemplified in these Ugandans overcoming tragedy and hardship, is seeking to conserve these nearest of our primate kin. Paradoxically, in that very caring, we reveal the still quite stupendous divide that separates us from them.
Open Access
Nepal: sublime surrounds simple life
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1998) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Report on trip to Nepal, environmental conservation, and human development, 1998. A trek in the Himalayas proves a stimulating mix of the sublime majesty of nature and the simple life of the Nepalis. They eke out a living, terracing steep slopes with manual labor. They seem backward; there is personal integrity in their weathered faces. Everest is an icon of this dialectic of majesty and poverty.
Open Access
Save Poudre as signature of eternity
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1979-1989) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Advocating saving the Poudre River as wild and scenic, against development and dams for irrigation and residential water. The Poudre River canyon is an age-old gorge with a river still flowing free, an impressive signature of time and eternity. Having it near a growing metropolitan area, Fort Collins, is especially important for keeping a sense of perspective in the Rocky Mountain West. Saving the Poudre preserves wildness and simultaneously keeps those who visit it better proportioned persons.
Open Access
Searching for tigers in India
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Rolston spots two tigers in the wild, one in Ranthambore National Park, one in Kanha National Park in India. Other wildlife seen: leopard, cheetal, sambar, barasinga, nilgai, gaur, wild pigs, jackals, Sarus cranes, bar headed geese. Conservation of tigers in India.
Open Access
September hawking on Clinch Mountain
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1964-09) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries, publisher
Fall raptor migrations observed from Clinch Mountain, Washington County, Virginia, late 1950s, early 1960s.
Open Access
Siberia: beautiful, bleak, full of uncertainty
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1997) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Report on a trip to Siberia and Lake Baikal, with a focus on conservation biology, led by Russian scientists, and sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Riding the Trans-Siberian railway across its wildest stretches and exploring the oldest and deepest lake on Earth, with 1,500 endemic species. What should Siberia be? Forever wild? Developed? Certainly, not further exploited and impoverished.
Open Access
The coldest place on earth: forbidding, foreboding Antarctica shrouded in ice and mystery
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2000) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
Report on trip to Antarctica, environmental conservation, January-February, 2000. Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, loneliest place on Earth--nature in her wildest and most relentless moods. This is the uninhabited continent, not just by humans, but quite forbidding for land animals. The penguins and seals are only marginally on land. Just this extreme wildness proved Antarctica's deepest attraction.
Open Access
The Pasqueflower
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1979) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; American Museum of Natural History, publisher
The Pasqueflower surviving through winter, blooming at the Pasque, Easter, offers a glimpse of the precocious exuberance of life, a token of the covenant of life to continue in beauty despite the wintry storms. To pause at first encountering it in spring is to find a moment of truth, a moment of memory and promise. Let winters come, life will flower on as long as Earth shall last.
Open Access
The spring bear hunt isn't fair: end it
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1990) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; The Denver Post, publisher
Article arguing against spring bear hunting in the state of Colorado. In the spring bear hunt, especially with dogs, cubs are separated from their nursing mothers. If the sow is killed, the cubs starve. Bear hunting is seldom for meat, largely trophy and recreational hunting. Does Colorado wish to be a state where macho men shoot nursing mothers for fun?
Open Access
The Yangtze's peril, promise: exploring above and below China's Three Gorges Dam
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015-08-20) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, author; Fort Collins Coloradoan, publisher
The Three Gorges Dam is, by most counts, the largest dam in the world, 1.3 miles wide, and impounds more water than any other dam, creating a lake 400 miles long, about the length of Lake Superior. Three scenic wild gorges were drowned. The Yangtze River flood in 1931 killed 3.7 million. The dam is built to withstand a scale 7 earthquake, and there is uncertainty about the likelihood of an earthquake. The Communists envision what they call an "ecological civilization," although there is an omnipresent grey haze from pollution resulting from development. Three Gorges is a perfect model for Communist glory in heroic labor. This masterpiece of human construction has replaced and tamed three gorges, masterpieces of nature.