Monthly Archives: July 2012

Red Foxes and Lyme Disease

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When it comes to Lyme disease, we tend to blame the deer. The ticks that carry Lyme disease are called deer ticks, aren’t they? But a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that its more productive to look at red foxes — the lack of red foxes — when looking for causes for the increase in Lyme disease.

While white-tailed deer are host to the adult ticks, young ticks favor small mammals such as mice. When coyotes move in, red fox numbers are reduced. And the foxes are more effective at catching mice than coyotes are. With coyotes in the neighborhood there are more mice, more hosts for the young deer ticks, and more Lyme disease all around.

Read the paper in PNAS, here. (Subscription or fee required. The abstract is free.)
Or read the University of California at Santa Cruz press release, here.
Finally, there is a Science News report on the paper, here.

Photo: Jim Thiele, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

 

Fire and Wildlife, 2012

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Many ecosystems depend on fire. While wildfires devastate the human landscape, usually wildlife doesn’t fare too badly. If a species is rare because of habitat loss, it may suffer when a wildfire changes that habitat, but mostly, on the population level and in the long term, wildlife does OK.

That’s more or less the point of this Denver Post article on the impact of the Colorado wildfires on wildlife. It mentions that wildfires are bad for fish, but earlier this year we we posted about a study that says that long term, fisheries also benefit from wildfires.

You just have to love this quote, though, from Randy Hampton, spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife on the impact of fire-snuffing slurry:

“Iced tea is perfectly safe, but if I drop 40,000 gallons of it in the creek, it’s going to kill fish.”

It should be standard issue for all stuff-in-the-water incidents.

Read the entire Denver Post article, here.

Possibly because the loss of life and houses, wildfires are getting a lot of media coverage this summer. However, the NOAA wildfire report for May says that the wildfire activity was below average. Read it here. The June report should be out soon.

Photo: prescribed fire at an unknown location, courtesy US Forest Service

Fire and Wildlife, 2012

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Many ecosystems depend on fire. While wildfires devastate the human landscape, usually wildlife doesn’t fare too badly. If a species is rare because of habitat loss, it may suffer when a wildfire changes that habitat, but mostly, on the population level and in the long term, wildlife does OK.

That’s more or less the point of this Denver Post article on the impact of the Colorado wildfires on wildlife. It mentions that wildfires are bad for fish, but earlier this year we we posted about a study that says that long term, fisheries also benefit from wildfires.

You just have to love this quote, though, from Randy Hampton, spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife on the impact of fire-snuffing slurry:

“Iced tea is perfectly safe, but if I drop 40,000 gallons of it in the creek, it’s going to kill fish.”

It should be standard issue for all stuff-in-the-water incidents.

Read the entire Denver Post article, here.

Possibly because the loss of life and houses, wildfires are getting a lot of media coverage this summer. However, the NOAA wildfire report for May says that the wildfire activity was below average. Read it here. The June report should be out soon.

Photo: prescribed fire at an unknown location, courtesy US Forest Service

Building in the “Fire Plain”

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Rivers have floodplains. We are starting to learn that the floodplain needs to do its thing — flood — for the surrounding natural systems to work. With all the attention that this year’s wildfires are getting, there is a little more attention being paid to not building where fire needs to do its thing.

Here’s an very brief opinion piece in the Helena Independent Record calling for blocking development in the “fire plain.”

Given that there are entire ecosystems that are fire-dependent, is it possible to designate a “fire plain”? Three years ago, Texas Forest Service GIS Specialist Karen Ridenour won a Firewise Leadership Award for investigating just that question. Here’s the press release on her award, with links to follow for more info.

Photo of prescribed burn in the Black Hills of South Dakota by Terry Tompkins, courtesy of US Forest Service

Dry in the Midwest

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Things have been dry in the Midwest this year. So far the biggest impact seems to be fish kills in bodies of water that are drying out. However, according to an Associated Press article that ran in the Indiana Post-Tribune, the impact may not be felt for years:

Rusty Gonser, professor of ecology and biology at Indiana State University, said the drought’s impact could extend well into the future where fish and wildlife are concerned.

 

“There are short-term and long-term effects with a drought like this,” he said.

 

“You might not see the effect on the population for two to five years,” he said, noting that shifts in reproductive cycles occur at all levels of the ecosystem. “And in three years, it might be raining a lot and people won’t realize a drought caused the issues seen then.” (Read the whole article, here.)

 

In fact, just last year the Midwest saw high rainfalls and flooding, so it may be difficult to sort out the impacts on area wildlife in the years to come.

Another take on the drought comes from a columnist for the Aurora (IL) Beacon-News. Her take-away? It’s the survival of the fittest. (Read it, here.)

The drought also means a quieter Fourth of July. Fireworks have been banned in some locations, for fear of starting wildfires. (Missouri Department of Conservation press release, here.)

Meanwhile, the US Drought Monitor shows that, while the Midwest drought is still relatively new (and parts of the Midwest are merely suffering from an “abnormally dry” spell) long-term drought continues in the South and West.

Photo by Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service