Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 21, 2015
The Trout Creek Mountains are a Great Basin range in Oregon and Nevada in the United States. Oriented generally north–south, the mountains consist mostly of fault blocks of basalt, while the southern end has granitic outcrops. Overall, the faulted terrain is dominated by rolling hills cut by canyons. Most of the range is federal land, and there is little human development, apart from cattle ranching. The public land, dominated by big sagebrush and desert grasses, is open to recreation but is rarely visited. Sage grouse and mountain chickadee are two native bird species, and pronghorn and jackrabbit are common mammals. Despite a dry climate, rare Lahontan cutthroat trout persist in a few streams after declining for much of the 20th century. In the 1980s, the effects of grazing on riparian zones and fish led to land-use conflict. The Trout Creek Mountain Working Group was formed in 1988 to resolve disagreements among ranchers, environmentalists, government agencies, and other parties. Stakeholders agreed on changes to land-use practices, and since the early 1990s, riparian zones have begun to recover. (Full article...)