Monthly Archives: January 2013

2013: Year of the Snake

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YearoftheSnakeLogo_final_transpSo, the Chinese zodiac sign for the year that roughly corresponds to 2013 (starts on February 10), is indeed the snake. And aptly, Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, the conservation partnership, has designated 2013 to be a year of focusing on snake conservation issues.

The state partners with PARC for the year of the snake are Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Wildlife Division (CT DEEP), Maryland Department of Natural Resources and The Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW).

Much like the previously mentioned Year of the Turtle, the PARC program provides resources to promote snake conservation during the year, including a newsletter, a calendar of related events and a poster.

You can find that resource page here.

Mass. Plans Spring Eagle Survey

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Bald_EagleMassachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife is changing the timing of its annual survey of eagles from mid-winter to spring, according to a division press release (which I could not find on-line). The change is to better track the state’s growing breeding eagle population, rather than its over-wintering population.

“This is a good time to shift our focus to our growing population of resident, nesting birds,” said Tom French, Assistant Director of Natural Heritage and Endangered Species in the release. “For several years, we have been aware of resident eagles in areas where no nest has ever been found. By shifting annual surveys from midwinter to early spring, we hope to have cooperators and MassWildlife staff locate active nests for all known pairs and visit other bodies of water across the state to look for additional breeding eagles.”

Massachusetts began participating in the national midwinter count in 1979 when only eight bald eagles were reported in Massachusetts, the release says. The new Breeding Eagle Count will be similar to the Midwinter Eagle Survey.

More information on the survey will be available in a future issue of the Division’s MassWildlife News.

Photo by Dave Menke, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

Foxes and Big Game from the Air

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palenkitfox_sarah1What do you do when your collared foxes are missing? The California Department of Fish and Wildlife Investigations Lab has been tracking desert kit foxes to study an outbreak of canine distemper. Deana Clifford, the Wildlife Investigation Lab’s (WIL) wildlife veterinarian for non-game threatened and endangered species is running the project.

Over the summer, however, some of the collared foxes’ radio signals disappeared after flash flooding in the study area. After several attempts on foot, the researchers took to the air and found the missing foxes with an airplane equipped with a tracking antenna.

Lots of information on this project from CDFW WIL:
Here’s the blog post on the air search
Here’s the background on canine distemper in desert foxes.
And here’s an post about the first kit fox pup of the year.

Idaho Fish and Game is taking to the air, too. But this is just a routine big game survey, which they do in key hunt units every three years.
Read the press release here.

Photo: A remote camera photographs a radio collared fox in California’s Chuckwalla Valley – part of the Colorado Desert. Photo courtesy of David Elms from California’s Region 6 DFW office.

Cancer Virus in Raccoons

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More raccoons survive rabies with shotsIt’s just 10 raccoons. Let me make that clear up front. There were 9 in California (north of San Francisco) and one in Oregon. But a paper in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases has generated a bit of publicity.

The paper describes a virus that has caused brain cancer in these raccoons. It’s notable because brain cancer, or any cancer, is rare in raccoons.

Nothing is known about where the virus came from (another animal host species, or humans) or if it infects other animals, there are some scientists, though, who are willing to speculate. (See the blogs at the bottom of this post for the speculation.)

I put this out there simply as a new thing that is killing raccoons, which is very different from the other things that generally kill raccoons — even different from other raccoon diseases.

Read the Wired blog story here.
Read the Discover blog story here.
Read the Huffington Post story here.
See the paper here. (It’s open access.)

Photo: a healthy raccoon, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Minnesota Launches New Moose Study

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Minn moose collaringA Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) study will fit 100 moose with GPS collars and implant a second device that can record temperature and heartbeat in 27 of the collared moose, a Minnesota DNR press release reports.

The goal of the study is to shed light on the mysterious decline of moose in the northern part of the state. From the press release:

“The decline in the northeast Minnesota moose population is exhibiting the same pattern of decline that we observed in the northwest,” said Lou Cornicelli, DNR wildlife research manager. “We’re losing about 20 percent of adult moose annually and know from previous studies that predation and hunting are not the primary causes of adult moose mortality. The decline is particularly troubling because more often than not, we can’t determine the primary cause of death.”

The study will collar 75 cows and 25 bull moose. When a collar stops moving for more than six hours (that twice the length of the average moose nap, notes an article in the Duluth News Tribune) the collar will send a text to DNR researchers so that the moose can be necropsied within 24 hours. The collared moose will be tracked for six years.

Read the detailed Minnesota DNR press release here.
Read the Duluth News Tribune article, which has some additional details and punchy quotes, here.
Watch Ericka Butler, DNR wildlife veterinarian, discuss the project on the Northlands NewsCenter website, here.
See more info on Minnesota’s moose research here, including a link to a five-page list of additional moose research projects.

Photo: A moose being collared, but not necessarily for this project. Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

Crayfish Can Spread Chytrid Fungus

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crayfishA study by University of South Florida scientists, published online ahead of publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that crayfish are capable of being infected by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a chytrid fungus implicated in a worldwide amphibian die-off. Further, the study found a positive correlation between the presence of crayfish in Colorado wetlands and chytrid infections in amphibians.

Read the PNAS abstract here, in PubMed. (Reading the paper itself requires a subscription or fee.)

There is a summary of the finding on Smithsonian.com. Read it here. It was that article that attracted the attention of ProMED, which also published a fairly interesting comment. (Read that here.)

Photo: A crayfish in the family Astacidae, which does not include the crayfish species mentioned in the paper, but come on, it’s a crayfish. By Eric Engbretson, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Back in September we mentioned a paper in The Southwestern Naturalist that found a correlation between chytrid infection in amphibians and the presence of bullfrogs and crayfish in wetlands in Mexico. (Personally, I would have bet on the bullfrogs, which have been found to be resistant to chytrid, but both are invasive in the area studied.)

 

Razorbills Take A Florida Vacation

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razorbill

Razorbills are typically birds of the northern Atlantic Ocean. Some winters they’ll show up in New Jersey or as far south as Virginia, giving bird-watchers a thrill. This black-and-white auk is not quite like anything else seen on the East Coast.

So imagine the surprise when razorbills started showing up in Florida. Not just one or two, but well over a hundred of them.

eBird had the story on their blog two weeks ago. The photo of razorbills flying over palm trees is worth a look.

The Florida media is catching on as well. Florida Today ran a story the day after Christmas. It says the birds are “penguin-like.” Well, the razorbills are black and white, and are bowling-pin shaped, but they fly. (And are from a different hemisphere, but that’s a mere detail.)

EBird says that the razorbills probably did not head south for warmth, mojitos or a vacation, but in search of food. That’s not good news.

Read the eBird blog, here.
Read the Florida Today story, here.

Photo: Razorbill, somewhere in the north Atlantic, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Bad Year for Bear-Human Conflicts in Colorado

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Black bearIt started off with a late spring frost that killed off the bears’ seasonal food. It continued with a regional drought. It all added up to the worst year for bear and human conflicts in Colorado since the state started keeping records a few years ago, says an article in the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

The article quotes Perry Will, a 38-year veteran of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), a division of the Department of Natural Resources, who manages an area of western Colorado, as saying that he’s never seen a year as bad as this one for conflicts between humans and bears.

Development has set the stage. Colorado’s 5.2 million residents are more likely to hunt or hike or live in bear country, says another article on the topic in The Durango Herald. The state’s surging bear population is another factor the Post Independent article says. Add the frost and the drought, and it’s a recipe for disaster. The number of bears killed this year because of conflicts with humans was nearly triple last year’s total and almost twice as much as the last drought year.

In the article Will says that a year with normal rain could set things right. The state has seen the conflict level drop sharply in the past.

Glenwood Springs Post Independent article, here.
Durango Herald article, here.

Photo: bear, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

2012 Year in Review

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besskin_ferret3What were the biggest North American wildlife stories in 2012? The ten stories with the most views by State Wildlife Research News readers — in order of popularity — were:

Resident Mountain Lions in Michigan?
(Michigan Confirms U.P. Mountain Lion Photos was a top story too)
Coyote/Wolf Hybrids in the East
Deer (as a whole category)
NY State Seeks Rabbit Heads
New Black-footed Ferret Colony Found in S.D.
Lynx and Bobcat in Northeast
Wild Cat News (Florida panthers, bobcats and Kansas mountain lion)
Tool: Infrared Monitoring (which appeared before the finding of using infrared cameras to detect rabies in bats)
Wolverine Wanders from Wyoming to Colorado

But were these the most important stories? Yes, our focus here at State Wildlife Research News is non-game terrestrial species, but some of the biggest news of the year was about game species or hunting.

Wolves, endangered or not, hunted or not, had a saga of their own. (Also see these stories.)
The efforts to keep sage grouse off the endangered species list were also big news.
And of course, those efforts are closely related to the impact of energy extraction and collection on wildlife. Whether it was tortoises and solar power, birds and wind power, gas and grouse or oil spills, it was significant in 2012.Wildlife disease was big news too, including a bad year for epizootic hemorrhagic disease in deer, particularly in the Midwest and white nose syndrome in bats.

The white nose syndrome news wasn’t all bad. It included a faster test for the disease and other rays of hope. But there were other wildlife bright spots, too.
Evidence is starting to pile up on the success of wildlife overpasses and underpasses.
There was that new population of black-footed ferrets.
Bears are making a comeback in many states (and creating problems in urban areas, which is not-so-good news).

The technology of the year? As far as I’m concerned, it’s stable isotope analysis. The Journal of Mammalogy devoted an entire issue to it.

Here’s to more good news and more good research in 2013.

Photo: Black-Footed Ferret photo by Charlene Bessken, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service