10 Red Wolves Shot

red wolfTen red wolves have been shot on North Carolina’s northeastern coast in the past year, the Times News reports. The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission recently expanded coyote hunting in the region to include night hunting with spotlights. There is an open season on coyotes in the five counties where 100 or so red wolves are found.

Conservation groups said immediately that the expanded hunting of coyotes would harm the red wolves, which the US Fish and Wildlife Service has been working to restore in the area. The two species look very much alike.

The Commission recently defended the loosening of the coyote law, and said it would defend itself against a lawsuit brought by conservation organizations to stop the coyote hunting. That case will be heard in February.

Read the Times-News article, here.
Read a Charlotte Observer article on the lawsuit, here.

Photo: Red wolf by John Froschauer PDZA, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife

Did Bear Poachers Retaliate?

Black bearEarlier this month 11 defendants were sentenced as the result of a four-year undercover investigation of bear poaching in North Carolina and Georgia. The effort, known as Operation Something Bruin, involved two state and three federal agencies.

Of those defendants, only one was actually charged with poaching a black bear. Read the press release on the Operation Something Bruin website.

The Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times reports that authorities are investigating a bear that was killed, painted with the words “Whats Bruin” on its head and paws, and dumped in Buncombe County, NC. The authorities believe the phrase refers to the investigation, the paper says.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Forest Service are offering a $3,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction, the Citizen-Times reports, while the NC Wildlife Federation put up an additional $17,000.

Read the Asheville Citizen-Times article, here.
Read the Operation Something Bruin press release, here.

Photo: Just a random black bear. Courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

5 State Biologists Are USFWS Recovery Champions

Christine Kelly

Every year the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) singles out its employees and partners who have made a difference in the recovery of endangered and threatened species of plants and animals. Yesterday the service recognized 17 individuals and organizations as 2011 Recovery Champions. Among that group were five state biologists who either were recognized as individuals or as part of a team.

The state wildlife biologists who were recognized as Recovery Champions for 2011 are:

David Lincicome, Tennessee Dept. of Environment and Conservation

David Lincicome

Jeff Boechler, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, as part of the Clackamas River Basin Bull Trout Team, Oregon
David Lincicome,Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Nashville, Tennessee, for leading the Tennessee Natural Heritage and Natural Areas Programs in restoring endangered and threatened plants such as Eggert’s sunflower and the Tennessee purple coneflower
Christine Kelly, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, for aiding the endangered Carolina northern flying squirrel with launch poles to help the animals cross a road
Brian Kurzel, Colorado Natural Areas Program and Susan Spackman-Panjabi, Colorado Natural Heritage Program as part of the Colorado Rare Plant Conservation Initiative

Read more about their accomplishments in the USFWS press release announcing the awards, here.

Photo credits. The photo of Chris Kelly is by G Peeples. The photo of David Lincicome is by R. McCoy. Both used courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

More States Turning to Night Hunting for Problem Animals

North Carolina, Arizona and Tennessee are among the states that are allowing night hunting for problem species like feral swine, coyotes and mountain lions when existing hunting practices fail to reduce populations, says an article in USA Today.

Night hunting is allowed in 42 states, the article says, quoting data from the Indiana-based National Predator Hunters Association.

In the article, a coyote coexistence advocate is quoted as saying that hunting does little to reduce population levels of the fecund coyote. That’s a sentiment shared by many wildlife managers was well, regarding both coyotes and feral swine.

Read the USA Today article here.
PDF article on feral swine in New Hampshire Fish and Game’s magazine.

Photo: Feral swine piglet. If only they were all this cute. By Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

EHD in NC

Epizootic hemorrhagic disease popped up late in North Carolina this year, says an article in the Wilmington Star-News. So far the outbreak has been mild. (And considering how late in the season it is, the chances seem good for it to remain mild.)

The article says a dry summer probably contributed to the lateness and mildness of the disease this year. Drought plagued the region for most of the summer. Hurricane Irene brought the rain that allowed the midges to thrive. Officials from the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission say there have been about 30 cases of EHD confirmed in the eastern part of the state.

Read the whole article in the Wilmington Star-News.

EHD in NC

Epizootic hemorrhagic disease popped up late in North Carolina this year, says an article in the Wilmington Star-News. So far the outbreak has been mild. (And considering how late in the season it is, the chances seem good for it to remain mild.)

The article says a dry summer probably contributed to the lateness and mildness of the disease this year. Drought plagued the region for most of the summer. Hurricane Irene brought the rain that allowed the midges to thrive. Officials from the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission say there have been about 30 cases of EHD confirmed in the eastern part of the state.

Read the whole article in the Wilmington Star-News.

Road Salt and Vernal Pools

There have been plenty of studies on the effects of road salt on wetlands, and particularly on the amphibians that live in those wetlands. (Here’s a bibliography with seven pages of peer-reviewed papers on the subject, plus over a page of other information sources.)

But because so much of that work was done by Nancy Karraker when she was at State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, James Petranka of the University of North Carolina – Asheville wanted to know how road salt effected amphibians in the southeastern United States — the site of enormous salamander diversity, says an article in the Charlotte Observer.

What he found was that road salt’s impact on the invertibrates in a vernal pool is crucial to the development of the amphibians there, and possibly, to public health. That’s because the salamander larvae eat water fleas, copepods and other invertebrates that don’t fare well in salty water. What’s more, mosquitoes didn’t seem to have any problem with the salty water, and one of the mosquito species that volunteered in the salty test pools carries West Nile Virus.

Read the excellent article in the Charlotte Observer.

A paper on Petranka’s research was published in the journal Aquatic Ecology in 2010. Read the abstract here. (Fee or subscription required for the full article.)

The Adirondack road salt journal article that the newspaper article refers to is most likely this comprehensive 2008 paper on the impact of road salt on wood frogs and spotted salamanders in New York. (Because this article is cited in Petranka’s 2010 paper.)

But Karraker also published a compelling 2011 paper showing how road salt shrivels the egg masses of spotted salamanders that does not appear in her 2007 bibliography.

Photo: Spotted salamander by Tom Tyning, courtesy of the US Department of Transportation

Gold: A New Threat to U.S. Streams

With gold at $1,600 an ounce, recreational gold panners are getting serious — serious enough to have an impact on stream environments. That’s the case in North Carolina, where a local land trust closed its property to gold prospectors recently, and the Uwharrie National Forest banned suction dredging several years ago.

Read the story in the Charlotte Observer, here. (Oh, and you’ll have to forgive the headline, which refers to “marine life.” Clearly, the article is referring to aquatic life in central North Carolina, far from the ocean.)

Think that no one is panning for gold in your state? Think again. Placer gold, the kind found in stream sediments, has been found in just about every state. Panning for gold is sometimes unregulated, and where it is regulated, misconceptions and plain old ignorance abound. The real damage comes from mechanized panning, such as suction dredging.

Is the critical habitat for your sensitive aquatic species safe from gold panning?

Why Did the Turtle Cross the Road?

bog turtle

Actually, “Where are the turtles crossing the road and getting hit by cars?” is the focus of a Massaschusetts citizen science research project, and it is one of several turtle research projects going on in this year of the turtle. For more info, read this article on the Massachusetts turtle road-crossing project in the Springfield Republican.

Here are seven other sources of information on turtles and turtle research:

Maryland Amphibian and Reptile Atlas (MARA), a five year project that began in 2010 and will end in December 2014.

The USA Turtle Mapping Project is being run by the US Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station. It is focusing on seven species of freshwater turtles and tortoises to find out their current ranges.

Not surprisingly, PARC, the creator of Year of the Turtle has a list on its Web site of turtle citizen science projects. It’s a PDF. Here are some of the US-based land- or freshwater turtle projects on the list that aren’t already mentioned:
Blanding’s Turtle Research – Great Meadows, Massachusetts
Gopher Tortoise Tracker – Volusia County, Florida
Lake George Turtle Monitoring Program – Lake George, New York
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Neighborhood Box Turtle Watch
Western Pond Turtle Presence, Absence Monitoring Project -Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, California
Texas Turtle Watch 

Another resource on the PARC Year of the Turtle site is an Excel spreadsheet of 87 relocation, reintroduction, translocation, and headstarting projects. Turtles make up more than half of these projects, the rest are for other reptiles and amphibians. The idea, the site says, is to allow scientists running similar projects to get inside information on what worked and what didn’t so future projects can build on the past.

When it comes to turtles, the news is pretty bad, but it’s not all bad news. In June so many diamondback terrapins headed upland from Jamaica Bay in New York City that a runway at Kennedy Airport was closed. Here’s a news story, and background information from the journal Science.

We don’t normally cover research outside the US, but since we gave wildfires in the West so much coverage earlier this year, and because it is the year of the turtle here’s an exception. A paper in the journal Biological Conservation says that a species of tortoise in Spain can withstand wildfires every 30 years or so and still maintain its population levels. Read an article about the study in Science Daily, or the whole paper in Biological Conservation (or rather, read a free abstract and pay for the whole paper).

Finally, don’t forget our mini round-up of box turtle data earlier this year. You can find that post here.

Photo: Box turtle Credit: Laura Perlick, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife

How did the flying squirrel cross the road?

Photo: NC Wildlife Commission

Endangered Carolina northern flying squirrels can now safely cross the Cherohala Skyway in western North Carolina thanks to telephone-pole-like crossing structures. Before the poles were installed, in 2008, the squirrels did not cross the Skyway because the distance between the trees on either side of the road exceeded their gliding ability. The northern flying squirrel populations on each side of the roadway did not interbreed.

The squirrels’ use of the poles has been documented with video cameras mounted on the pole tops.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission hopes to allow trees to grow closer to the Skyway, which will allow them to eventually remove the poles.

More details, and a video, are available from the Commission’s press release.