Word: cloudcroft
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sacramento mountains checkerspot butterfly is unique, found in all the world only on 2,000 acres of high meadow in the village of Cloudcroft, N.M. (pop. 768, altitude 8,640 ft.), and the adjoining Lincoln National Forest. The 2-in. checkerspot colorfully floods Burro Street, Cloudcroft's main drag, every summer, and it takes its scientific name--Euphydryas anicia cloudcrofti--from the town that shares its habitat...
...when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in December that it would begin an investigation into whether the butterfly, with an estimated population of 5,000, deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act, Cloudcroft residents did anything but rejoice. In fact, they rebelled against the idea that the Federal Government, egged on by "bug huggers," was telling them how to manage their neighborhood. "I like butterflies, especially when you catch them while they are still caterpillars. Deep fried and dipped in a little honey mustard sauce, they are delicious," quipped a columnist for the Daily News in nearby Alamogordo...
...Cloudcroft, Otero County, the U.S. Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service came up with a broad local conservation plan--one of the first in the nation--designed to safeguard the butterfly on both public and private land. But with logging virtually gone, Cloudcroft relies on tourism, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to hike, camp, fish and hunt. Restrictions on human activity in the checkerspot's habitat would bode ill for a local economy already suffering in the recession. "Anybody who is young and trying to make a living in Cloudcroft works in the tourist...
Meanwhile, the checkerspot slumbers beneath the snowy alpine meadows of Otero County. Cloudcroft cautiously prepares for what it hopes will be the usual summer tourist invasion. And environmentalists intensify their campaign to add what would be the 21st butterfly to the list of protected species in the U.S. "Diverse native insects should be cause for celebration," says Rosmarino. "I would like to see Cloudcroft honor and promote its endemic checkerspot, perhaps with a butterfly festival." Cloudcroft is less enthusiastic. "Their agenda," warns Michael Nivison, the village administrator, "is to get everybody out of the forest...
...July 23, 1995, Alan Hale, who has a Ph.D. in astronomy and makes his living running a research and educational company, was scanning the skies above his home in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. He was waiting for an already discovered comet to rise over his house when he trained his telescope on M70, a well-known cluster of stars in the constellation Sagittarius. "As soon as I looked," he says, "I saw a fuzzy object nearby. It was strange, because I'd looked at M70 a couple of weeks earlier and the object hadn't been there...
| 1 |