Monthly Archives: May 2012

Trees and Levees

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The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) announced last week that it had sued the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps).

According to a press release:

DFG claimed in its lawsuit that the Corps failed to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and federal Administrative Procedure Act when it adopted a national policy requiring the removal of virtually all trees and shrubs on federal levees. The Corps developed its national levee vegetation removal policy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The department says that the levees provide the last available riparian habitat for several endangered species including Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Valley elderberry longhorn beetle, riparian brush rabbit, Western yellow-billed cuckoo and Swainson’s hawk.

Read the California Department of Fish and Game press release here.
Local media has not added anything to the story so far. Try this piece from Fox40 TV Sacremento.

Photo: Riparian brush rabbit, by Lee Eastman, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Trees and Levees

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The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) announced last week that it had sued the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps).

According to a press release:

DFG claimed in its lawsuit that the Corps failed to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and federal Administrative Procedure Act when it adopted a national policy requiring the removal of virtually all trees and shrubs on federal levees. The Corps developed its national levee vegetation removal policy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The department says that the levees provide the last available riparian habitat for several endangered species including Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Valley elderberry longhorn beetle, riparian brush rabbit, Western yellow-billed cuckoo and Swainson’s hawk.

Read the California Department of Fish and Game press release here.
Local media has not added anything to the story so far. Try this piece from Fox40 TV Sacremento.

Photo: Riparian brush rabbit, by Lee Eastman, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

WNS in Gray Bats

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced yesterday that, for the first time, white nose syndrome has been documented in the endangered gray bat.

The USFWS press release says:

“The documented spread of WNS on gray bats is devastating news. This species was well on the road to recovery, and confirmation of the disease is great cause for concern. Because gray bats hibernate together in colonies that number in the hundreds of thousands, WNS could expand exponentially across the range of the species,” said Paul McKenzie, Missouri Endangered Species Coordinator for the Service. “The confirmation of WNS in gray bats is also alarming because guano from the species is an important source of energy for many cave ecosystems and there are numerous cave-adapted species that could be adversely impacted by their loss.”

 

Also according to the release, the afflicted bats were found in Hawkins and Montgomery counties in Tennessee during two separate winter surveillance trips, conducted by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

Read the USFWS press release here.

Photo: Photos of gray bats with white-nose syndrome from Hawkings and Montgomery counties, Tennessee, courtesy USFWS

 

 

Missouri Lions Are From All Over

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A Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) press release says that DNA test results show that four of the 14 mountain lions seen in Missouri last year came from three Western states.

MDC was able to document 12 of the 14 sightings, and four of the documented sighting yielded enough hair or tissue samples to do DNA testing on. DNA tests tied two young male cougars, one from Ray County and the other from Texas County, to the Black Hills area of South Dakota. DNA showed that a Macon County mountain lion was from central Montana. A mountain lion spotted in Oregon County was related to mountain lions from Colorado.

What was going on with mountain lions in Missouri last year is anyone’s guess. Previously, the highest number of sightings in the state in a year was two. This year there have been two as well.

“Increased public awareness and the growing popularity of trail cameras might account for part of the increase in sightings,” says Missouri resource scientist Jeff Beringer in the press release, “but last year’s spike is hard to explain. What we now know for sure is that mountain lions are traveling a long way to get here.”

Photo: Courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

Proposed ESA Listing for 2 Washington Plants

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service would like to add the Umtanum desert buckwheat and White Bluffs bladderpod to the federal endangered species list, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

The two plants are found only in Washington State’s Hanford Reach National Monument, and were discovered during a survey of the area in 1995.

Read more in the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
Find the Federal Register listing, here. The comment period is open until July 16.

Proposed ESA Listing for 2 Washington Plants

Posted on by
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The US Fish and Wildlife Service would like to add the Umtanum desert buckwheat and White Bluffs bladderpod to the federal endangered species list, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

The two plants are found only in Washington State’s Hanford Reach National Monument, and were discovered during a survey of the area in 1995.

Read more in the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
Find the Federal Register listing, here. The comment period is open until July 16.

Counting Butterflies

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Maine and Minnesota both have citizen science butterfly projects.

Maine is hoping to attract 100 volunteers to survey the state for a butterfly atlas. Neighboring states and Canadian provinces (Vermont.Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Brunswick) have recently completed surveys, and a Maine butterfly atlas would round out the regional coverage.

Training will be in June.

Read this brief from New England Cable News.

In Minnesota, the state Department of Natural Resources is planning to do a population survey of the federally endangered Karner blue butterfly. Training for this survey will be held this week.

Read a short item in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, here.

Photo: Karner blue butterfly by J & K Hollingsworth, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

New Road-Kill Rules in Idaho

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Allowing citizens to salvage road kill has it’s dicey issues, ranging from human health, human safety and enforcement issues. Idaho is plunging in with expanded road-kill salvage rules in the hope that letting people stop and pick up dead animals from the side of the road will lead to better data about where and when animals are being struck by cars.

There are a lot of caveats. See the press release for details.

It’s on clear what kind of data will come from limited access highways, since, as the press release points out, those roads only allow emergency stopping, and salvaging road kill is not an emergency.

 

NY’s River Otter Project a Success

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From 1995 to 2001, New York State relocated river otters to the central and western parts of the state, where the species was believed to be extirpated. The recent retrieval of a car-killed river otter was not entirely bad news for the program. A microchip implanted at the time of release indicated it had been released in 2000, making it 12 years old. That’s four years older than the average wild river otter.

Other reports from the public indicate that the river otter has regained a foothold in these areas of the state thanks to the relocation project.

Read more about the relocation project here. (Scroll down to the middle of the newsletter.)

Photo: River otter release in New York State, courtesy of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.

NY’s River Otter Project a Success

Posted on by
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From 1995 to 2001, New York State relocated river otters to the central and western parts of the state, where the species was believed to be extirpated. The recent retrieval of a car-killed river otter was not entirely bad news for the program. A microchip implanted at the time of release indicated it had been released in 2000, making it 12 years old. That’s four years older than the average wild river otter.

Other reports from the public indicate that the river otter has regained a foothold in these areas of the state thanks to the relocation project.

Read more about the relocation project here. (Scroll down to the middle of the newsletter.)

Photo: River otter release in New York State, courtesy of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.