Author Archives: MadelineBodin

Rattling support for the eastern massasauga

Posted on by
5

From the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Conserving the Nature of the Northeast blog:

eastern massasaugasThree years of research, more than $60,000 in funding, and continual habitat manipulation is the secret to resurrecting a degraded swamp in New York into basking habitat for one of the state’s slithering residents.

The eastern massasauga rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus) is listed as endangered by the state of New York and is a candidate for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. In the meantime, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues working to recover the species.

The massasauga lives in wet areas made of peat layers from years of decomposing plants. The layers hold water like a sponge, with new plants growing on each layer. Just two swamps in the Empire State support the species, but one has been so severely degraded that few massasaugas can actually survive there.

Keep reading…

Photo: Eastern massasauga, courtesy USFWS

Antibiotic Resistance Spreads to Wildlife

Posted on by
Reply

m_crow_5Antibiotic resistance isn’t just for humans and farm animals. An article in Environmental Health News says that antibiotic resistance has been found in crows, gulls, houseflies, moths, foxes, frogs, sharks and whales. You can follow links in the article to get to the journal article with the findings for each of those groups.

The big question raised in the article is, what is the implication for human health? Nobody really knows. But certainly, if you are handling wildlife, these findings give you a reason to be even more cautious. And they certainly have implications for wildlife rehabilitation.

Read the entire article in Environmental Health News.
The article focuses on a recent crow study, and you can find the abstract for that here.

Photo: Crow. By David Herr, courtesy US Forest Service

Windstorm Aids Rare Bird

Posted on by
Reply

golden-winged_warblerBill-HubickAn American Bird Conservancy press release explains how a 2011 windstorm in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area boosted efforts by the Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources to create young forest habitat for the imperiled

“Generally, most people saw the blow-down as massively destructive,” the release quotes Wisconsin DNR Wildlife Biologist Bob Hanson as saying. “However, with the correct management prescription, it actually has provided some great habitat for this potentially endangered species. The shotgun pattern the storm left created new areas of young forest, a requirement of the golden-winged warbler.”

You can read the American Bird Conservancy release here.

In 2012, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wrote about a coalition of state and federal agencies in the Upper Great Lakes Young Forest Initiative, which aims to help the golden-winged warbler and other birds, such as grouse, that rely on young forest habitat.

Read the WDNR Weekly News article here.

Photo: golden-winged warbler, by Bill Hubick, courtesy of American Bird Conservancy.

Oregon Fish Biologists in Helicopter Crash

Posted on by
Reply

Three people were injured when a helicopter carrying two Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists on a salmon spawning ground survey hit a power line and crashed into the river they were surveying on Monday, Oct. 28. None of the injuries were life-threatening, reports said.

News reports say that the pilot was airlifted the hospital and is now in fair condition. The assistant district fisheries biologist, Holly Huchko, suffered a broken back and is in intensive care. Eric Himmelreich, a fisheries habitat biologist, broke two vertebrae in the crash and is now in good condition.

Read the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife press release here.
The KPIC reports contains a video of the helicopter in the river.
The Mail Tribune article focuses on the helicopter.
The Douglas County News-Review has the most detailed report.

Is Halloween Good or Bad for Bats?

Posted on by
Reply

102610_batty_for_batsA press release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was titled, “Halloween Tradition Gives Bats a Bad Rap.”

True, all my Halloween decorations depict vampire bats flitting over bare trees, which shows a shocking disregard for true nature of vampire bat habitat. (Can you hear the geeky tongue-in-cheek in that sentence? Good.)

But is Halloween actually bad for bat conservation? As a wildlife conservation writer, I can tell you that my editors are always happy to have a bat story on Halloween, even when they may not be interested the rest of the year. I haven’t had the editor yet who is cheesy enough to require spookiness in that Halloween bat story.

Many state wildlife departments take advantage of the holiday link by sending out press releases debunking myths (as the California release did, when you get down to it) or just celebrate bats. Take, for example, this press release from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Given the popularity of zombies these days, being affiliated with the creepiness of Halloween could be giving bats some street cred. What do you think?

Photo: Who says bats aren’t cute? Art from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Batty for Bats! program.

No News This Week

Posted on by
Reply

It’s not that there is no state wildlife research news out there this week  (although actually, the great bulk of press releases I’m receiving are about hunting), but other things have come up, so it’s another week without posts. Sorry.

There will be more later in the week, which will run in next week’s newsletter.

River Otters Exposed to Banned Chemicals

Posted on by
Reply

otter teamRiver otters have made a remarkable comeback in the last few decades, particularly in Illinois, as we reported recently. However, those Illinois river otters have significant amounts of long-banned chemicals — such as PCBs and DDE (a chemical that results from the breakdown of DDT) — in their tissues, a recent study from the Illinois Natural History Survey has found.

A press release from the University of Illinois reveals that for one chemical, the concentrations were higher in the otters now than they were when the chemical was in legal use:

The researchers were surprised to find that average concentrations of one of the compounds they analyzed, dieldrin — an insecticide (and byproduct of the pesticide aldrin) that was used across the Midwest before it was banned in 1987 — exceeded those measured in eight river otters collected in Illinois from 1984 to 1989. Liver concentrations of PCBs and DDE (the latter a breakdown product of the banned pesticide DDT) were similar to those in the earlier study, the release says.

Scientifically, this is a mystery still to be solved. Were the chemicals used long after they were banned? Did it take decades for the chemicals to climb the food chain from algae to top predator? Are female otters passing the contaminants to their offspring in their milk?

But for wildlife managers, it has a lesson useful right now. When trying to find causes for unknown population declines, don’t dismiss the effects of toxic chemicals just because those toxic chemicals were banned from use decades ago.

The University of Illinois press release.
The paper, in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety. It is a free access journal.

Photo: Samantha Carpenter (left), a wildlife technical assistant with the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS); Kuldeep Singh, pathobiology professor at the U. of I. Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory; Nohra Mateus-Pinilla, an INHS wildlife veterinary epidemiologist; and U. of I. animal sciences professor Jan Novakofski found that Illinois river otters are contaminated with banned pesticides and PCBs.  Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

California Bans Lead Bullets

Posted on by
1

On Friday (Oct. 11), Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed the nation’s first law banning the use of lead bullets in hunting into law. The bill was written to slow the decline of the California condor, which ingests the lead bullets when scavenging at hunters’ gut piles or when eating the bodies of animals shot but not killed by hunters. The law contains an escape clause that will revoke the ban if the federal government bans non-lead bullets because of the armor-piercing abilities.

California had previously banned lead bullets in the areas of the state where there are condors. It is the first state in the nation to ban lead bullets.

One odd fact, the bill was signed in a group of 11 bills. Most of the other of the bills in the group focused on gun control. Protests against banning lead bullets for hunting have often portrayed the bill as a gun control measure rather than a wildlife conservation and human health measure.

Read the Los Angeles Times article here.
Read the KCET blog post here.
Find a Google list of other news articles here.

Mapping Bears in Florida

Posted on by
Reply

bear tracksThe Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is asking citizens to report sightings of black bears or their tracks to a new mapping website. It is particularly interested in reports of females with cubs or of cubs alone, a press release states.

“Our bear range data is 11 years old, and we are excited about getting the public’s help in identifying all the places where bears now live in Florida,” said FWC bear research biologist Brian Scheick in the press release. “What we learn from the new bear sightings Web page will inform the FWC’s efforts to document bear distribution and help with future bear management decisions,” Scheick said.

The citizen science bear mapping project follows on the heels of a successful FWC effort to map fox squirrels. We covered it back in October 2011. And a more recent mink mapping effort, that we covered in July.

Read the FWC press release here.
Read an article in the Orlando Sentinel here.
Go to the FWC black bear sighting registry, here.