Water has always been the great attractor. Where there is water, there is life. To those passing Nebraska along I-80, it can be easy to think there is not much out there in terms of water. They can be forgiven for thinking that not much lies beyond the sea of grass and corn.  I can […]

My stomach still shivers when a flame is set to dry grass. Maybe it’s the culture I was brought up in, a few personal experiences, or instinct programmed into my DNA. Whatever the reason, after all these years of successfully using fire on our rangelands I still feel my nerves rise in tandem with the […]

Time-lapse produced by Carlee Koehler  The first time I saw a trumpeter swan in the wild, up close, I was so cold I couldn’t feel my face. It was early January along Blue Creek in the western Nebraska Sandhills, and most of the high plains lakes, rivers and streams were locked in ice after a […]

While driving down a two-track road, deep in the Nebraska Sandhills, one may be so lucky to witness a heavenly white bird gliding across one of the many spring-fed lakes. The trumpeter swan is the largest waterfowl species in the world. Almost hunted to extinction, these birds have since been reintroduced to the Nebraska Sandhills […]

You can stand there and you can see the whole northern part of the ranch, and way south, too. And I think just to stand up on that hill and be able to see all that… that’s never really changed in all of our generations here. That’s probably my favorite spot. My great grandfather homesteaded […]

A line of fire blazes in an ocean of grass. The smell of burning bluestem wisps through the air. A man dressed in leather boots carefully tips a drip torch to spark a flame onto the landscape–a familiar sight by those who live on working landscapes in the Great Plains. In early spring, I photographed […]

I am currently a wildlife biology major at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, working on various undergraduate research projects. I first learned about Platte Basin Timelapse (PBT) last spring and was thrilled to see how imagery was being used to convey important stories. After that meeting, I knew I wanted to contribute to this […]

University of Nebraska-Kearney graduate student, Heather Johnson partnered with the Platte Basin Timelapse (PBT) team to place time-lapse cameras on trumpeter swan (Cygnus buccinator) nests. The cameras allowed her to monitor nesting behavior of swans in the Sandhills of Nebraska. In summer 2016, Michael Forsberg and Heather set up cameras on two nests. The first […]