Dollars and Sense at NETWC

Posted on September 24, 2014 by MadelineBodin

deb markowitz VTANR “What we did to protect animals actually protected roads,” said Vermont Agency of Natural Resources secretary Deb Markowitz at a general session at the Northeastern Transportation and Wildlife Conference this week (Sept. 21 – 24) in Burlington, Vermont. In places where culverts had been resized to allow wildlife to walk along the banks during low flow periods, the culverts have held during floods like the one caused by Tropical Storm Irene in Vermont.

A documentary on the Highway Wilding project that built wildlife passages along the TransCanada Highway in Banff National Park said that the cost of hitting a moose with a vehicle averages $30,000. Hitting a deer averages over $1,000. It doesn’t take many wildlife collisions to cost-justify a wildlife crossing, the documentary said, and some highway locations are the scene of hundreds of collisions.

Photo: Camera fail. None of my photos of Markowitz speaking even made it onto my camera’s memory card. Here’s her official portrait off the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources website.

Snakes in a Drain at NETWC

Posted on September 23, 2014 by MadelineBodin

turtle crossing Black racer snakes are rare in Vermont, so when highway construction was going to introduce drains with holes big enough for the snakes to fall into, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife asked for a fix. Drain covers with smaller holes were not possible. So the Vermont Agency of Transportation fashioned snake-sized ladders and attached them to the drains. It turns out that black racers are excellent climbers, so it is expected that the snakes will rescue themselves if they fall into the drain. A poster on the unusual solution was presented at the Northeastern Transportation and Wildlife Conference, being held this week (Sept. 21 – 24) in Burlington, Vermont.

In other news from the conference: Now that fish and wildlife departments and transportation agencies are getting along so well together, what is the next step? Bringing urban and land-use planning into the fold. This will be trickier, because while transportation and wildlife function on the state level, planning happens at the local level. In Vermont, several speakers noted, just two percent of all development was subject to state review. (And Vermont has a strong state-level development law.)

Seeing Is Believing At NETWC

Posted on September 23, 2014 by MadelineBodin

The Northeastern Transportation and Wildlife Conference is taking place in Burlington, Vermont this week (Sept. 21 – 24). The technology of the hour is the game camera. It’s cheap, it’s non-invasive, and it’s cheap. One presenter confessed that there were probably better tools for his project — radio collaring, for example — but that it was better to have some data for his project now than waiting around for funding for better technology.

The next step is to become more adept at using game cameras. In that same presentation, there was a problem with smaller animals not being picked up by the cameras. At least one of the conversations after the session was about how to better place and aim the cameras to pick up all the species included in the study (which can be difficult if it includes both weasels and moose).

Another aspect touched on by a poster from the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, is processing all those photos. This poster suggested using software that lets analysts pick descriptions from a pull-down menus to standardize the interpretations for better data crunching.

Photo: You never know who you will meet at a conference. Harvard researcher Richard T.T. Forman, known as the “father of road ecology,” was one of the NETWC attendees. Here, he adds his thoughts on a documentary that he appeared in as an expert.

EHD in Deer in Oregon

Posted on September 18, 2014 by MadelineBodin

090914_EHD_confirmed_black-tailed_deer_300 Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) has been confirmed as the cause of death in over 100 deer in southwestern Oregon, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced last week. EHD had not been observed in this region of the state before. The finding was confirmed by Oregon State University’s Veterinary Diagnostic Lab.

EHD is transmitted by gnats and causes disease in both deer and livestock. In this case, the diseased deer were black-tailed deer.

There have also been reports of more than 200 dead deer in two counties that are south of the EHD site, the press release says, but those deer where shown to have Adenovirus Hemorrhagic Disease (AHD), which is common in the area and spread through nose to nose contact.

Read the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) release here.

Photo: This black-tailed deer, which appears fatigued, died just a few days after this photo was taken. It was one of the deer that later tested positive for EHD. -Photo by ODFW-

Citizen Science and Birds

Posted on September 17, 2014 by MadelineBodin

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA People love birds, and that makes it relatively easy to mobilize citizen scientists for bird research. Recently, the International Rusty Blackbird Working Group did just that to learn more about the spring migration of a bird that is in a mysterious decline. The insights are still to come, but the data collection has been deemed a success.

In a PLoS ONE paper, researchers from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the University of Wisconsin, Madison analyzed a review article of the impacts of climate change on bird migration and found that citizen scientists played an important role in gathering the data that the findings were based on.

“Our paper is a chance to say thank you to the many people who are citizen scientists,” said lead author Caren Cooper, a research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said in a lab press release announcing the paper. “These people are part of the process of creating new knowledge—and whether it’s counting birds or butterflies, gazelles or galaxies, they should know that their observations really make a difference in professional science.”

Read the PLoS ONE paper here. (It is open access.)
Read the Cornell Lab of O press release here.

Photo: Through projects like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s NestWatch, citizen scientists have provided the data to document regional differences in the breeding cycle of the Eastern Bluebird. Photo © Gary Mueller/Cornell Lab.

The Secret Life of Birds

Posted on September 17, 2014 by MadelineBodin

Birds are full of surprises. While transmission line corridors can be a blight in many landscapes, in the Northeastern United States they are providing valuable grassland and shrubland habitat for vulnerable bird species.

Read the US Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast’s blog for more information how utility company rights of way are benefiting birds in Vermont, here.

And how do birds find their way along their migration routes? A study by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and University of Nebraska researchers focused on birds that do a “loop migration,” that is, taking a slightly different route south than north. They found that on the way north, the birds were following the greening of vegetation.

Read the Cornell Lab of O press release announcing the paper here.
Read the abstract in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B here. (Subscription or fee required to read the whole thing.)

Birds and Environmental Health

Posted on September 16, 2014 by MadelineBodin

It has bird week here at State Wildlife Research News, but Environmental Health News is dedicating months to articles reflecting on birds and environmental health. The publication’s Winged Warnings series will contain 16 articles when it concludes in October.

Right now you can read many informative articles about the impacts of heavy metals, toxics, climate change, night lighting and other environmental problems that harm not just birds, but humans as well.

Find the home page for the Winged Warnings series here.

Bird Journal Round-up

Posted on September 16, 2014 by MadelineBodin

Condor cover Aug 14 In honor of two major reports on bird conservation released last week, it is going to be bird week here at State Wildlife Research News. First, the science journals. If the State of the Birds has you wondering what and where your state can be doing bird conservation better, the latest issue of The Condor has some answers for you.

Some highlights:
Development, such as farms and the building of transmission lines, in the sagebrush ecosystem favors raven populations over sagebrush specialists, such as ferruginous hawks. Landscape alterations influence differential habitat use of nesting buteos and ravens within sagebrush ecosystem: Implications for transmission line development

Radar analysis has revealed several important fall migratory stop-over sites for birds in the northeastern United States, including coastlines of Long Island Sound, throughout the Delmarva Peninsula, in areas surrounding Baltimore and Washington, along the western edge of the Adirondack Mountains, and within the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia and West Virginia. Radar analysis of fall bird migration stopover sites in the northeastern U.S.

In grasslands, getting rid of trees helps populations of savannah sparrows and sedge wrens much more than improving the quality of the grasslands does. A multiscale assessment of tree avoidance by prairie birds

This issue of the Condor is particularly rich in papers relevant to bird conservation in North America. Check out the table of contents here.

In the Wilson Journal of Ornithology:
Analysis of thousands of eared grebes that died on the Great Salt Lake in December 2011 found that the downed birds had elevated levels of mercury and selenium compared to the eared grebes that migrated through the area without incident. Factors Influencing Mortality of Eared Grebes (Podiceps nigricollis) during a Mass Downing

And No Sex Bias in Wood Thrushes (Hylocichla mustelina) Captured by Using Audio Playback during the Non-breeding Season

State of the Birds

Posted on September 15, 2014 by MadelineBodin

2014SOTB_Cover_300px According to a National Audubon Society press release issued last week, more than half of the common bird species in North America are at risk from climate change. The release announced a comprehensive study of North American bird populations based on Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count and other sources.

“The study identifies 126 species that will lose more than 50 percent of their current ranges – in some cases up to 100 percent – by 2050, with no possibility of moving elsewhere if global warming continues on its current trajectory. A further 188 species face more than 50 percent range loss by 2080 but may be able to make up some of this loss if they are able to colonize new areas. These 314 species include many not previously considered at risk,” the release says.

Read the Audubon press release here.
Read Audubon articles and access the report itself, here.
Read The New York Times article on the report here.
Read the USA Today article on the report here.

The very next day the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, a 23-member private/public partnership released its annual State of the Birds report. There, the message was much the same, with a slightly more optimistic frame. The New York Times reports that the State of the Birds says that “nearly one-third of America’s birds are in trouble.”

Federal agencies play a big role in the State of the Birds report, and this report emphasizes the importance of habitat to bird populations, pointing to specific regions as trouble spots.

“After examining the population trends of birds in desert, sagebrush and chaparral habitats of the West, the report’s authors identify aridlands as the habitat with the steepest population declines in the nation. There has been a 46 percent loss of these birds since 1968 in states such as Utah, Arizona and New Mexico,” the Initiative press release states.

The State of the Birds also emphasizes success stories, such as the impact of wetland restoration on waterfowl populations.

The 2014 State of the Birds landing page is here. It includes links to the press release, the full report, a watch list and a list of common birds in decline.
Read the very brief New York Times article here.
Read the National Public Radio report here.

The State of the Birds report has been issued since 2009. Audubon played a lead role in putting together the report and publicizing it in 2009, 2010 and 2011. It does not appear that there was a State of the Birds report in 2012. In 2013 the Audubon’s CEO issued a statement saying that Congress’s inaction on the Farm Bill was harming birds. This year, Audubon issued its own report emphasizing climate change as a threat. Audubon is still a member of the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative and its name still appears on the State of the Birds report.

Snake Disease Confirmed in Georgia

Posted on September 9, 2014 by MadelineBodin

mudsnake-scwds_crop Snake Fungal Disease was identified in a mud snake found on the edge of a blackwater swamp near near Statesboro, Georgia, according to a press release from Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Nongame Conservation Section. The fungal disease was confirmed by the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, the release notes.

The mud snake was the first wild snake confirmed with the disease, but previously a captive rat snake had been diagnosed with the fungus, a brief article in a newsletter from Georgia Department of Natural Resources says.

Mud snakes are solitary, so the finding suggests that all snake species are vulnerable to the fungus, the press release says.

Read many more details, including a description of the disease, in the Georgia DNR press release, here.
The Georgia DNR newsletter article can be found here, but you have to scroll down.

Photo: Mud snake with Snake Fungal Disease, courtesy of Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

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Monthly Archives: September 2014