Monthly Archives: July 2011

Squirrels, snails captive bred in Arizona

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File under “food for thought”: according to an article in the New York Times, four Mount Graham red squirrels and hundreds of Three Forks springsnails are being raised in captivity at the Arizona Zoo. For the squirrels, the reason is a worse than average fire season has increased the threat to the rare squirrel.

The Mount Graham red squirrel was once thought to be extinct. It was placed on the federal Endangered Species list in 1987. It has been controversial because it once held up the construction of the Mount Graham International Observatory in one of those somewhat rare and always fascinating big science vs. wildlife conservation showdowns.

The Times article includes a link to further species info on the squirrel.

Photo: Mount Graham red squirrel, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Ct. Lion Came from Midwest

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As reported in the New York Times yesterday, DNA from the mountain lion struck by an SUV in Connecticut last month matched the general profile of mountain lions from South Dakota and more specifically, DNA collected from fur, blood and scat collected in Minnesota and Wisconsin. A necropsy did not find the usual signs of a captive animal, such as an implanted microchip or clipped claws.

Read the whole story in the New York Times, here.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection press release also notes that the animal spotted in Greenwich appears to be the same animal that was killed in Milford. Read the release here. 

And yes, you read that correctly: Connecticut combined its departments of energy regulation and environmental protection on July 1. Read that press release here.

Photo: Ironically, this is the same photo that illustrated the news that the US Fish and Wildlife Service had declared the Eastern mountain lion extinct. Clearly, it is not the Connecticut mountain lion.

Ct. Lion Came from Midwest

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As reported in the New York Times yesterday, DNA from the mountain lion struck by an SUV in Connecticut last month matched the general profile of mountain lions from South Dakota and more specifically, DNA collected from fur, blood and scat collected in Minnesota and Wisconsin. A necropsy did not find the usual signs of a captive animal, such as an implanted microchip or clipped claws.

Read the whole story in the New York Times, here.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection press release also notes that the animal spotted in Greenwich appears to be the same animal that was killed in Milford. Read the release here. 

And yes, you read that correctly: Connecticut combined its departments of energy regulation and environmental protection on July 1. Read that press release here.

Photo: Ironically, this is the same photo that illustrated the news that the US Fish and Wildlife Service had declared the Eastern mountain lion extinct. Clearly, it is not the Connecticut mountain lion.

Citizen Science: There’s an app for that

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The iPhone may have been invented in the USA, but it’s the British who are on the cutting edge of using smartphone technology in citizen science. Most recently, the Zoological Society of London and the Bat Conservation Trust introduced iBats, a smartphone app. The app is a tool for bat surveys, which when used with an ultrasonic microphone, replaces the bat detector + recorder + GPS car-top set up covered here at State Wildlife Research News a few months ago.

There is a blissfully clear explanation of the technology, the $249 ultrasonic microphone and the program in John Platt’s post on the Scientific American Extinction Countdown blog.

You can find the Indicator Bats Program (aka iBat) Web site here.

But the bat survey app is not the only game in town. The UK’s Mammals in Roads project, conducted by the Peoples Trust for Endangered Species has also gotten “smart,” with its own iPhone app that lets citizen scientists snap a photo of road kill and automatically record its location using the device’s internal GPS.

Read more about the project from our friends at Wildlife News. (Not related. Remember, they are in the UK.)

There are also many apps out there that serve as electronic field guides. Some of them include an information-collection aspect, which where things get a little complicated. Is it a field guide? Is it a citizen science tool? Take Networked Organisms and Habitats (NOAH) for example. It lets you identify plants and animals, and upload the location into a database. Read more about NOAH on its Web site. (This link goes to the news coverage page so you can read what the press has had to say.) We’ll have more on this project later.

Then there is LeafView, and LeafSnap, which appear to be the same project under different names. It IDs plants using face recognition technology. Early articles on the project, including this article on planetgreen.com  mentioned a citizen science component, including an on-line herbarium. This New York Times article also mentions an app for identifying dolphins in Florida. In its LeafSnap incarnation, it is available to download now for iPhone and iPad. Think of the possibilities. The journal Science covered the story.

Find the contact info for botanists, ecologists and tree experts who want to volunteer with the program on LeafSnap’s About page.

Where does this leave wildlife biologists that would like to empower citizen scientists with smartphone technology? This BBC article tries to sum it all up, but it zigs and zags and I’ve got to wonder if the article just tries to cover too much territory.

The answer seems to be this: the technology is available. What is needed is funding, time, and the willingness to go large with an app that requires a $250 microphone.

Belly Up to the Cobble Bar

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Cobblestone tiger beetles are found in 11 states, plus New Brunswick, Canada. A study in New York State published in American Midland Naturalist found that while one beetle moved 322 meters from its original capture point, the rest were recaptured at points ranging from zero to 123 meters away. One male that was captured three times over 21 days was found at distances from six to 68 meters from his original point of capture.

A total of five beetles moved between cobble bars during the study. Sometimes the beetles traveled a distance farther than the next cobble bar. The study found cobblestone tiger beetles in cobble bars with greater interior areas and higher shrub covers than other cobble bars. The paper includes a habitat model.

The idea was to collect data for a management plan, and it could contribute to your own.

Read the paper (with subscription or pay) here. Or get a free PDF here.

Urban Bird Funds Awarded

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Urban Bird Treaty cities

The US Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced the ten cities that will be awarded up to $70,000 in a challenge grant for bird conservation projects. (That means the cities need to match the funds somehow.) In addition, cities previously selected for the program will receive an additional $10,000 grant.

This year’s cities range from the large (San Francisco; Washington, DC) to the small (Opelika, Ala. and Lewiston, Mont.).

Read the US Fish and Wildlife Service press release announcing the awards here. Or read more info about the Urban Bird Treaty from the USFWS Migratory Bird program, here. The next round of grants will be announced on Grants.gov.

Read the reaction of local media to the grants:
Ogden, Utah
Lewiston, Montana
Minneapolis, Minnesota

A general news article about the awards and program.

Map from US Fish and Wildlife Service

Urban Bird Funds Awarded

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Urban Bird Treaty cities

The US Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced the ten cities that will be awarded up to $70,000 in a challenge grant for bird conservation projects. (That means the cities need to match the funds somehow.) In addition, cities previously selected for the program will receive an additional $10,000 grant.

This year’s cities range from the large (San Francisco; Washington, DC) to the small (Opelika, Ala. and Lewiston, Mont.).

Read the US Fish and Wildlife Service press release announcing the awards here. Or read more info about the Urban Bird Treaty from the USFWS Migratory Bird program, here. The next round of grants will be announced on Grants.gov.

Read the reaction of local media to the grants:
Ogden, Utah
Lewiston, Montana
Minneapolis, Minnesota

A general news article about the awards and program.

Map from US Fish and Wildlife Service

The Ecology of Sound

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Once upon a time, scientists studied individual plants and animals. Their mania for collecting specimens shows what they thought was important. More recently, the mania has been for studying the interaction in an ecosystem. But while sounds of individual species have been collected, the idea of studying the ecology of sound is relatively new.

In his research into what he calls “soundscape ecology,” Bryan C. Pijanowski of Purdue University has discovered, for example, that animals divide up the soundscape, each creating sound in one part of the spectrum. Find a pile of information about soundscape ecology on the Purdue Human-Environment Modeling and Analysis Laboratory, here.


There are lots of links on the site, including one to a BioScience article and coverage of the research on National Public Radio.

You may already be using or collecting sounds in your research, and checking out these resources might help you discover a new dimension to studying wildlife sounds.

The Ecology of Sound

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Once upon a time, scientists studied individual plants and animals. Their mania for collecting specimens shows what they thought was important. More recently, the mania has been for studying the interaction in an ecosystem. But while sounds of individual species have been collected, the idea of studying the ecology of sound is relatively new.

In his research into what he calls “soundscape ecology,” Bryan C. Pijanowski of Purdue University has discovered, for example, that animals divide up the soundscape, each creating sound in one part of the spectrum. Find a pile of information about soundscape ecology on the Purdue Human-Environment Modeling and Analysis Laboratory, here.


There are lots of links on the site, including one to a BioScience article and coverage of the research on National Public Radio.

You may already be using or collecting sounds in your research, and checking out these resources might help you discover a new dimension to studying wildlife sounds.

Mites Hammer Western Gray Squirrels

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Western gray squirrel populations have been declining throughout their range. Recently the California Department of Fish and Game confirmed that the gray squirrel decline in the San Bernardino mountains is being caused by a mange mite, thought to be Notoedres centrifera.

The good news for local residents is that the mite effects only rodents, so dogs and other pets should be safe. The bad news is that the free lunch for squirrels at backyard bird feeders is contributing to the problem, allowing the mite to spread when squirrels gather for a backyard buffet.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise has the news story.

The press release from California Fish and Game has more detail, plus a discussion of other possible causes of the squirrel’s decline.

In other squirrel news, and yes, there is other squirrel news, the squirrel pox that has been killing off native red squirrels in Britain has arrived in Northern Ireland. Squirrel pox was introduced to the region along with North American gray squirrels. The gray squirrels are carriers, and don’t show symptoms. Find the BBC story here.

Photo: Western gray squirrel with no apparent mange symptoms. Click on either of the mange story links for a photo of a symptomatic squirrel. Photo courtesy of California Fish & Game.