Monthly Archives: May 2011

Adventurers for Science

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Gregg Treinish

Let’s say you need to keep tabs on pikas, those high elevation relatives of rabbits and hares that are under threat from global warming. The average citizen scientist can’t climb the scree fields of some of the continent’s highest peaks to report back on pika populations. What is a wildlife biologist to do?

Adventurers & Scientists for Conservation is a non-profit organization that seeks to match top-level adventurers with particularly difficult scientific research that requires the adventurers’ special skills.

For example, Adventurers & Scientists for Conservation has not just one, but 22 parties that are traversing the Pacific Crest Trail (a high-elevation scenic trail in the American West) collecting data on pika straw piles, urine stains, and sightings of the pikas themselves. While the projects that get media coverage run to the truly exotic, such as Himalayan mountaineers reporting on flights of bar-headed geese over the Roof of the World, the organization does plenty in the U.S., including projects involving wolverines, glacier worms, and whitepine and grizzly bears.

Organization founder Gregg Treinish is both a world-class adventurer and a scientist himself. He was named National Geographic Adventurer of the Year in 2008 for being the first person to trek the entire 7,800-mile Andes Mountain Range. He’s been a field technician for the USGS Montana Cooperative and Montana State University, and a field biologist with the University of Minnesota and Wild Things Unlimited, an independent research organization.

Read more about some of the organization’s adventurous successes in the Toronto Globe and Mail and the journal Science. Or, visit the organization’s Web site for details, including how to get your project on the list.

More Wildlife in Floods

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by Ken Lund

According to the Los Angeles Times, when flooding hit the Atchafalaya River Basin, wildlife headed for high ground — the levees. It says that even a turtle has been spotted escaping the flood waters on drier ground. The problem, says the article, is that when people head down the levee to get a look at the flooding, they scare the animals back into the water.

Read the article here.

The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion Ledger says that while wildlife in the region continues to be stressed by the floods, a recent check-in by biologists showed that the black bears are doing just fine. Read the rest here. 

Finally, not a single state wildlife biologist is mentioned in this article in The New York Times, about wildlife rehabilitators in Louisiana rescuing baby ospreys from alligators in the flood. The article suggests that denying the gators their raptor snacks is all good. Read the article here.

Photo: Atchafalaya River, in drier times.

White nose syndrome in Maine

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Bat survey in Maine cave.

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has received laboratory results confirming that white nose syndrome, a disease of bats, has been found in two sites in Oxford County. While the nearby states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire were among the first to report white nose syndrome in bats, until this winter, Maine bats had not tested positive for the syndrome.

The sites were white nose syndrome was found are two of only a few bat hibernation sites in the state.

For more information, read the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife press release. Also, this story from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

Photo credit: Jonathan Mays, Wildlife Biologist, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife

Urban Bear Studies

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Let’s make it a two-fer on black bears.

This spring, the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources began a two-year study of urban bears in three cities. The West Virginia Gazette-Mail has the details. The West Virginia effort began last year and is part of a region-wide effort. Urban bears are also being studied in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

More details about the Pennsylvania study are available here:
ABC27
Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader
Some results of last year’s study in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (second half of article)
The Game Commission brochure about the study (downloads a 2-page PDF).
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I couldn’t find anything specifically about the New Jersey portion of this study. As previously reported here, New York State will be doing work on black bears in developing areas.

There have been many urban/nuisance black bear stories in the news this week. Mostly, it’s been “black bear spotted…” on golf course, in neighborhood, etc. This attack in New Hampshire was the most serious. (From the North Andover Eagle-Tribune). Read the NH Fish and Game press release.

Black Bear Safety

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This paper in the Journal of Wildlife Management is timely. Black bears are awake, looking for food, and, not finding much in nature, are looking to garbage cans and bird feeders (or, as at my house yesterday, a compost bin), when they can get at them.

Canadian scientists, with help from a scientist at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and a Brigham Young University researcher, investigated over a century of fatal black bear attacks on humans, and got a big surprise. The conventional wisdom about bear attacks — that they are mostly mothers defending their young — did not hold up to analysis.

The study found that male bears were involved in 92 percent of fatal black bear attacks. The people’s food or garbage likely played a role in the attack 38 percent of the time. Ninety-one percent of the time, the person who was killed was alone or with one other person.

The number of fatalities was a surprise as well, at least to me. The scientists studied 63 deaths. The rate of fatal attacks seems to be increasing, with 86 percent of the attacks occurring between 1960 and 2009. And while I had imagined the mid-Atlantic US to the southern Appalachians as offering a dangerous mix of big black bears and lots of people, it turns out that Canada is home to most black bear fatalities, with 44 of the 63 fatal attacks. (With another five in Alaska, leaving the contiguous U.S. states with just 14.)

Read more about the study in the Toronto Globe and Mail, complete with a nice map.

Read the abstract, or the whole article with subscription or for a fee, in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

Photo credit: Waverley Traylor, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Black Bear Safety

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This paper in the Journal of Wildlife Management is timely. Black bears are awake, looking for food, and, not finding much in nature, are looking to garbage cans and bird feeders (or, as at my house yesterday, a compost bin), when they can get at them.

Canadian scientists, with help from a scientist at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and a Brigham Young University researcher, investigated over a century of fatal black bear attacks on humans, and got a big surprise. The conventional wisdom about bear attacks — that they are mostly mothers defending their young — did not hold up to analysis.

The study found that male bears were involved in 92 percent of fatal black bear attacks. The people’s food or garbage likely played a role in the attack 38 percent of the time. Ninety-one percent of the time, the person who was killed was alone or with one other person.

The number of fatalities was a surprise as well, at least to me. The scientists studied 63 deaths. The rate of fatal attacks seems to be increasing, with 86 percent of the attacks occurring between 1960 and 2009. And while I had imagined the mid-Atlantic US to the southern Appalachians as offering a dangerous mix of big black bears and lots of people, it turns out that Canada is home to most black bear fatalities, with 44 of the 63 fatal attacks. (With another five in Alaska, leaving the contiguous U.S. states with just 14.)

Read more about the study in the Toronto Globe and Mail, complete with a nice map.

Read the abstract, or the whole article with subscription or for a fee, in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

Photo credit: Waverley Traylor, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

More Cervid Contraception: GonaCon and Elk

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Rocky Mountain National Park was the site of a study of the effectiveness of GonaCon, a wildlife contraceptive in elk. The park has quite an elk problem. With no predators to worry about, the elk eat, wander through nearby Estes Park, stroll the golf course, eat some more, and make lots of baby elk. They have altered the park’s ecosystem by not allowing willows and aspens to grow.

Culling is the foundation of the park’s plan to reduce the herd, but of course, that bothers some people. A lot. This excellent story in New West has all the details on the elk in the park and the GonaCon study.

If you are unaware or need a refresher of why wildlife managers would welcome an effective and inexpensive wildlife contraceptive, here are a few articles.  New Jersey Hills/The Progress. (Utah) Standard-Examiner. The New York Times.  (And yes, that’s a little heavy on the New Jersey deer, but no place does suburban deer quite like NJ.)

Read more in New West.

Photo: A bull elk, I don’t know where. Probably not in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Credit: Gary Zahm, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

Of Cats and Disease

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Researchers at the University of Illinois found the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii even in the far reaches of a 1,500 acre park in central Illinois. Toxoplasma reproduces only in cats, but it can cause illness and death in other mammals, including humans.

The researchers found plenty of feral housecats on the site, but no bobcats. There were more cats near human structures in the park than elsewhere. About a third of the cats found in the park were infected with Toxoplasma. As for the infection rates of the other animals, animals with large home ranges, such as opossums, had a higher rate of infection than those with small home ranges, such as mice. The small-home range animals that lived at the edges of the park or near structures had a higher rate of infection than those in the remote areas of the park. But even animals with small home ranges living in those remote areas were sometimes infected.

Read the paper, or at least the abstract, in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases, here.

Find the press release from the University of Illinois on EurekAlert, here. And a slide show of the research, here.

Photo: White-footed mouse, a disease sentinel in the study. Credit: Illinois Natural History Survey

Deer Contraception in Maryland

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Maryland has approved the use of the contraceptive GonaCon for white-tailed deer. It is the first state to do so. The deer must be sedated so they can be injected with the drug, and EPA regulations require the treated deer to be tagged. (Hunters are warned not to eat the meat of the treated deer.) The estimated cost of treating each deer is $1,000. Because of the expense, the treatment is not expected to be used often, and then only in suburban and urban areas under special circumstances.

The Cumberland (Md.) Times-News reported the story. NBC News in Washington has a news brief based on the story.

The USDA has a fact sheet on GonaCon. It is listed as the producer of the drug in the EPA’s fact sheet. The USDA fact sheet notes: “In 2006, the regulatory authority for contraceptives for wildlife and feral animals was moved from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).” The USDA fact sheet has links to further information on GonaCon.

GonaCon can be used in other mammals, and has been tested in ground squirrels in California.

Photo: Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife

Wildlife Flees Floods

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Today’s NOAA flood warnings

Wildlife is fleeing the major flooding along the Mississippi River. (There is also major flooding today on the James River in South Dakota and Lake Champlain in Vermont.)

–ABC News focuses on the danger of snake bites to residents in the flood zone.

-Articles in the The Desoto Times Tribune (Miss.) and the Natchez Democrat focus on deer fleeing the floodwaters, and quote state wildlife officials saying that all hunting regs still apply.

-One Louisiana parish is asking the state Department of Fisheries and Wildlife to double hunting fines during the flood emergency.

-A Vermont story focuses on flooding’s impacts on plant habitat, the threat to a rare tern, and the bumper crop of mosquitoes to come.

Map: NOAA. Purple means major flooding.