Category Archives: survey

Montana Surveys Bats

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gray batThe Montana Natural Heritage Program is collecting baseline information on the state’s bats that will be vital if the state is ever struck with white nose syndrome (WNS), an article in the Flathead Beacon reports.

The survey has lead to the discovery of three additional bat species in Glacier National Park, the article says. The project has been assisted by the North Rocky Mountain Grotto caving club and the Bigfork High School cave club.

According to information from the Montana Natural Heritage Program, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is a partner in the project.

Read the Flathead Beacon article here.
Read more information about the project, plus additional bat research being conducted by the Montana Natural Heritage Program here.

Photo: bat, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

More Details on Protecting Burrowing Owls

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Back in 1995, the California Department of Fish and Game released a report on burrowing owls that described how to survey for them and steps that could be taken to mitigate loss of habitat. Yet, the numbers of burrowing owls in California have continued to decline.

A new, 36-page report goes into more detail and incorporates research that has been done since the 1995 report. It includes suggested survey protocols, and buffers for various times of the year.

Read the California Fish and Game press release here.
Find the report itself (a PDF), here.

Photo by Lee Karney, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

More Details on Protecting Burrowing Owls

Posted on by
1

Back in 1995, the California Department of Fish and Game released a report on burrowing owls that described how to survey for them and steps that could be taken to mitigate loss of habitat. Yet, the numbers of burrowing owls in California have continued to decline.

A new, 36-page report goes into more detail and incorporates research that has been done since the 1995 report. It includes suggested survey protocols, and buffers for various times of the year.

Read the California Fish and Game press release here.
Find the report itself (a PDF), here.

Photo by Lee Karney, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

March Roundup of New Research

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Spring is here and a bunch of wildlife surveys are underway around the country.

In Delaware:
-It’s the fifth and final year of the Delaware Breeding Bird Atlas.
-A special effort is being made in 2012 to tally owls as part of the atlas.
–Horseshoe crabs are being tallied again, and volunteers are being trained.
-The annual osprey count is offering a volunteer training for the first time since 2007.

Maryland is two years in to four years of surveys for an amphibian and reptile atlas and is looking for volunteers.

In Kansas, they are searching for lesser prairie chicken breeding areas, or leks, from the air with helicopters. Field crews will train on March 29-31 and conduct official survey work across all of western Kansas until the middle of May. The Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism is also asking people to report leks. The survey is part of a five-state effort, and the survey technique will be evaluated.

In North Dakota, the Game and Fish Department has launched a two-year study of white-tailed deer in intensely farmed agricultural areas.

In Maine, biologists at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife have visited up to 100 dens each winter for 37 years, making the survey in the nation’s oldest radio-collar monitoring program for bears. This year the Maine Sunday Telegram wrote a story about it, with lots of pics. Read it here.

And in Washington, commuters have been reporting wildlife sightings for over a year on the I-90 corridor in anticipation of road improvements. The project’s first annual report was released recently, generating articles in the Everett Herald  and The Seattle Times, and coverage other media.

Photo of I-90 Wildlife Watch billboard by Paula MacKay/Western Transportation Institute, used by permission.

Need to Prove That Mist Nets Are Safe?

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Her pain is your gain. When Erica Spotswood of the University of California at Berkeley applied to use a mist net in French Polynesia, officials asked for proof that the technique is safe. Despite the fact that the technique has been the research standard in ornithology for decades, Spotswood couldn’t find much data. So, she collected her own.

She found that mist netting is indeed safe, with injuries or deaths occurring in only a fraction of a percent of the birds captured. Best of all, the paper, in Methods of in Ecology and Evolution is open access. You can’t ask for more than that.

Read the paper here.

Some background on the study from ScienceDaily.

Photo: Not a bird in exotic French Polynesia, but a yellow warbler in the good old US of A. Photo Credit: Kristine Sowle, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Need to Prove That Mist Nets Are Safe?

Posted on by
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Her pain is your gain. When Erica Spotswood of the University of California at Berkeley applied to use a mist net in French Polynesia, officials asked for proof that the technique is safe. Despite the fact that the technique has been the research standard in ornithology for decades, Spotswood couldn’t find much data. So, she collected her own.

She found that mist netting is indeed safe, with injuries or deaths occurring in only a fraction of a percent of the birds captured. Best of all, the paper, in Methods of in Ecology and Evolution is open access. You can’t ask for more than that.

Read the paper here.

Some background on the study from ScienceDaily.

Photo: Not a bird in exotic French Polynesia, but a yellow warbler in the good old US of A. Photo Credit: Kristine Sowle, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

State Wildlife Biologists Wanted for Bat Survey

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Mobile bat detector
A coalition of federal and state agencies is looking for wildlife biologists to lead and organize acoustic surveys of bats in all 50 states. (Actually, the program has at least some data from 24 states, but only New York is thoroughly covered, so more leaders are needed just about everywhere else.)

The coalition hopes to gather general population data on bats, particularly as these animals face two threats: white nose syndrome, and wind power development. Surveys specific to the sites of those threats don’t give needed information about bat population trends in general.

The survey protocol uses your real-time recording bat detector (such as those from Anabat or Binary Acoustic Technology) mounted to the roof of a car (with materials available cheaply from home improvement stores). The trickiest part may be planning the transect, which should be 20 to 30 miles long, and driven at very close to 20 mph. If it is a loop, it should be wide enough so that you are unlikely to encounter the same bat twice. The surveys should take place at sunset, on evenings that are over 50 degrees F, with low wind, and no rain.

Organizing a statewide survey is easy, say the organizers. New York covers the entire state with 80 volunteers and one coordinator. They cover 50 transects, two or three times a year.

Finding the citizen volunteers has been easy, but finding qualified wildlife biologists to lead state programs has been more difficult. Susi von Oettingen, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said in her presentation on the survey project at the Northeastern Fish and Wildlife Conference last month that state wildlife biologists are the ideal leaders.

Free training materials are available to leaders. For more information on the project, and how to get involved as a leader, visit the project’s Web site, which includes a video of a presentation of the project, plus a PowerPoint presentation.

Photo: Courtesy New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the bat survey coalition

State Wildlife Biologists Wanted for Bat Survey

Posted on by
2
Mobile bat detector
A coalition of federal and state agencies is looking for wildlife biologists to lead and organize acoustic surveys of bats in all 50 states. (Actually, the program has at least some data from 24 states, but only New York is thoroughly covered, so more leaders are needed just about everywhere else.)

The coalition hopes to gather general population data on bats, particularly as these animals face two threats: white nose syndrome, and wind power development. Surveys specific to the sites of those threats don’t give needed information about bat population trends in general.

The survey protocol uses your real-time recording bat detector (such as those from Anabat or Binary Acoustic Technology) mounted to the roof of a car (with materials available cheaply from home improvement stores). The trickiest part may be planning the transect, which should be 20 to 30 miles long, and driven at very close to 20 mph. If it is a loop, it should be wide enough so that you are unlikely to encounter the same bat twice. The surveys should take place at sunset, on evenings that are over 50 degrees F, with low wind, and no rain.

Organizing a statewide survey is easy, say the organizers. New York covers the entire state with 80 volunteers and one coordinator. They cover 50 transects, two or three times a year.

Finding the citizen volunteers has been easy, but finding qualified wildlife biologists to lead state programs has been more difficult. Susi von Oettingen, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said in her presentation on the survey project at the Northeastern Fish and Wildlife Conference last month that state wildlife biologists are the ideal leaders.

Free training materials are available to leaders. For more information on the project, and how to get involved as a leader, visit the project’s Web site, which includes a video of a presentation of the project, plus a PowerPoint presentation.

Photo: Courtesy New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the bat survey coalition