Campus News Briefs – Spring 2016

Snowden at CU (via video)

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor living in exile after disclosing U.S. government secrets in 2013, took questions at Macky Auditorium Feb. 16 via live video from Russia. The student-run Distinguished Speakers Board organized the event, which was moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind. Find a report about Snowden’s CU appearance on the Coloradan’s new website, colorado.edu/coloradan.

Heard Around Campus 

"Things don’t look good up there.”
— CU-Boulder Professor Mark Williams of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, on the steady loss of glacial ice on Niwot Ridge in the high mountains west of Boulder.

The Variable Bison Diet 

A CU-led study of about 300 bison in northern Kansas shows the iconic animal of the American West tweaks its diet during the year.

Bison, or buffalo, prefer eating fresh prairie grass. But the animals, herbivores, expand their diets to include woody shrubs and flowering plants in spring and fall, when grasses are less abundant, according to the research, published in the journal PLOS One.

“This work suggests that North American bison can continuously adjust their diet with a high reliance on non-grasses throughout the year,” the scientists wrote.

The new information could lead to innovations in grassland and bison management.

CU-Boulder doctoral candidate Gaddy Bergmann (EPOBio’96; PhD’16) led the study. It also involved researchers at Colorado State and Kansas State Universities.

More details about the research are available at colorado.edu/news. 

Photo © Shirley Jit/Demotix/Corbis