Monthly Archives: November 2011

ESA Listings Stick

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Last week a federal judge upheld the federal Endangered Species Act listing of Alaska’s Cook Inlet beluga whale population. The state of Alaska had protested the listing, saying that it will hurt economic development in the region. (The Cook Inlet provides ocean access to Anchorage.)

This Associated Press article has the whole story, including the history of the lawsuit and of the beluga whale listing.

It just doesn’t seem to be a good time for states to argue with Endangered Species Act listings. Earlier this month, the Goat Blog from High Country News noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to hear another challenge to an Endangered Species Act listing, the sixth time it has refused to hear cases challenging the law. This time the case was an appeal of the listing of the threatened California Delta smelt.

Read the High Country News blog here.

Photo: Beluga whale, courtesy Marine Mammal Commission (NOAA)

“Profound Setback” in Whooping Crane Recovery

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A pair of teenagers shot two of the 10 whooping cranes released in Louisiana, hampering an attempt to establish a third population of the endangered bird, says an article in the Montreal Gazette.

The article gives the details of the whooping crane recovery program, which spans the United States and Canada, with an emphasis on Canadian contributions. It includes the fact that there were just 22 whooping cranes in 1941. The population has now rebounded to about 400 of the cranes in the wild.

The article says that state wildlife officials had created an education campaign before this fall’s goose and duck hunting season in an attempt to prevent hunters accidentally shooting the whooping cranes. The article doesn’t mention what the teenagers’ motives were.

Read the article in the Gazette here. 

Whopping cranes had a happier visit to Missouri last week. A hunter, believing he heard someone in distress, investigated and found instead a pair of migrating whooping cranes. The cranes stayed in the agricultural field long enough for a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) staffer to arrive on the scene and confirm the sighting. Local bird-watchers were able to get a glimpse of the radio-tagged adult-and-juvenile pair too.

Read the MDC press release here.

Photo: Whooping cranes. Courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

“Profound Setback” in Whooping Crane Recovery

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A pair of teenagers shot two of the 10 whooping cranes released in Louisiana, hampering an attempt to establish a third population of the endangered bird, says an article in the Montreal Gazette.

The article gives the details of the whooping crane recovery program, which spans the United States and Canada, with an emphasis on Canadian contributions. It includes the fact that there were just 22 whooping cranes in 1941. The population has now rebounded to about 400 of the cranes in the wild.

The article says that state wildlife officials had created an education campaign before this fall’s goose and duck hunting season in an attempt to prevent hunters accidentally shooting the whooping cranes. The article doesn’t mention what the teenagers’ motives were.

Read the article in the Gazette here. 

Whopping cranes had a happier visit to Missouri last week. A hunter, believing he heard someone in distress, investigated and found instead a pair of migrating whooping cranes. The cranes stayed in the agricultural field long enough for a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) staffer to arrive on the scene and confirm the sighting. Local bird-watchers were able to get a glimpse of the radio-tagged adult-and-juvenile pair too.

Read the MDC press release here.

Photo: Whooping cranes. Courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

EHD in NC

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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

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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.

Calif. County to Ban Bullfrogs

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Bullfrogs are invasive outside of their native habitat in the northeastern U.S. They are also bred for food in China, and, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, the conditions of commercial food production are ripe for the growth and spread of chytrid fungus, which has been plaguing amphibians worldwide.

What can a state do? California is being asked to ban the import of bullfrogs, which is a tough sell because of the state’s high percentage of Asian-Americans, for whom eating frogs (as well as turtles and shark fins) is as culturally significant as steak-and-kidney pie, kielbasa and manicotti are to other ethnic groups.

Nationally, Defenders of Wildlife has proposed that only frogs proven to be disease-free be allowed in the country. But more locally, one California county, Santa Cruz, plans to take the big leap and ban bullfrogs to protect its imperiled amphibians, which include the California tiger salamander and the California red-legged frog.

Read all the ins and outs of this complex topic in the Los Angeles Times.

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, this will be the last State Wildlife Research News post this week. We’ll be back on Monday, Nov. 28th with more wildlife research news.

Year of the Bat continues

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In 2010 the United Nations declared 2011 and 2012 to be the Year of the Bat. (And yes, the UN almost always declares a special “year” that lasts two years.) The first year of the bat is almost over, but there is another whole year to come.

See the United Nations’ press release here.

Visit the Year of the Bat Web site here.

Get the news from Bat Conservation International here. 

One of the more surprising name checks of the international effort was in a piece on removing bats from your attic in Consumer Reports.

Virus Hurts NJ Deer Hunt

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In the North, the virulance of epizootic hemorrhagic disease in white-tailed deer varies greatly. The outbreak may be mild and kill only a few deer, or it may have population-level impact. This year in New Jersey, or at least parts of that state, EHD appeared to have an impact on the state’s exceptionally dense deer population levels.

(Read more from:
NJ.com, the on-line arm of the Newark Star-Ledger
NBC New York)

Now that it’s hunting season, the impact of the virus is being seen in a reduced harvest. During the muzzleloader season in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, less than half of the typical number of deer were taken, which may be a harbinger of rifle season numbers.

Read the story in MyCentralJersey.com. (And yes, the story goes on to other game topics before the end of the first page.)

Photo: License check in 2008, Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, NJ. Credit: John and Karen Hollingsworth, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Cougars on the Move

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Cougars, also known as mountain lions, pumas and by several other names, have been in the news in Kansas and Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin and young mountain has been photographed by trail cameras three times in recent weeks. A press release from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reminds deer hunters that they can only shoot the animal in self-defense or in the defense of another human.

A TMJ 4 news report couches the news as a warning: hunters should stay in groups if a cougar has been spotted, and be aware that they have been known to steal deer carcasses. That may be because it was couched as a warning in an earlier Associated Press report.

In Kansas, a mountain lion was photographed on a game camera. Footprints confirmed that it was indeed a mountain lion, the sixth confirmed in the state since 2007. Read the Kansas Department of Parks, Wildlife and Tourism press release here.

Photo: Mountain lion in Wisconsin, courtesy of the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources

Road Salt and Vernal Pools

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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