On the high desert plain of Eight Mile Flat near Castle Peak, Utah, oil wells dot the landscape where years ago a handful of mountain plovers nested. The birds have not flown in from California to nest here, perhaps continuing on to Montana or Colorado. White and his students are still hopeful that the birds will return.

Since 1995 two BYU students have ventured out each spring to look for mountain plovers—a shorebird that lives in the short grass near prairie dog colonies—or, in their absence, to study whether conditions in the area would sustain the elusive birds should they return.

“Because these birds once qualified as a candidate or threatened species, the Bureau of Land Management wanted to know if oil production bothered the plovers,” says White.

“The most we ever found were four nests, and they were hard to find. When they are in low numbers, they’re even harder to find. The plover is such a secretive bird, sometimes called the ‘ghost of the prairie.’ You’ll be looking at one of them and blink, and it practically disappears right before your eyes.”

White doesn’t think that oil production displaced the missing plovers, suggesting instead that years of drought or other factors might have led to their decline.

For White and his students, this section of the Uinta Basin has become a proving ground, where biology students decide whether or not they want to be scientists.

“I ask in class for two students to come and do some really boring work in the summer,” White says. “I explain to them how boring it gets, how hot it gets, and try to discourage them—and those who persist are people who want to do biology.”

Four times each month in the spring of 2004, undergraduate married couple Jeremy B. Hutson (’06) and Katie Gibbon Hutson (’05) contacted White to report on insects, birds, prairie dog pups, pronghorn calves, and vegetation at the site.

“He keeps us excited about the work because he always has so much enthusiasm in his voice. It just makes work more enjoyable,” Jeremy says. “The average person after two weeks of this would probably get really discouraged and frustrated, but Dr. White doesn’t just want to know about plovers. He wants to know if we’ve seen golden eagle chicks or a peregrine nest—or he tells us to go check out a different location.”

“He’s probably heard the same information year after year,” says Katie, “but he still sounds excited.”

If the ghosts of the prairie don’t return to their old haunt, White has an alternative. “I guess we can always take a trip over to the Pawnee grasslands in Colorado and see some plovers,” he says with a wink. His lack of concern reveals that his work here is not counting plovers, but helping students earn their scientific wings.