Author Archives: MadelineBodin

Plague: Human Cases in NM, Squirrel Case in Cal.

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New Mexico has had all three cases of plague in humans that have occurred in the United States this year, a New Mexico Department of Health press release reports.

Read the press release here. (Will open a PDF.)

The bacteria that causes plague is endemic in the southwestern US. Wildlife cases are so common that I don’t report them here, but those cases can be an important warning to locals to take extra care to keep their pets away from wildlife and to avoid flea bites, and for wildlife managers and researchers to take precautions as well.

Just such a warning is in place in Palomar, California, where ground squirrels at a campground have been diagnosed with plague.

Read the story in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Plague: Human Cases in NM, Squirrel Case in Cal.

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New Mexico has had all three cases of plague in humans that have occurred in the United States this year, a New Mexico Department of Health press release reports.

Read the press release here. (Will open a PDF.)

The bacteria that causes plague is endemic in the southwestern US. Wildlife cases are so common that I don’t report them here, but those cases can be an important warning to locals to take extra care to keep their pets away from wildlife and to avoid flea bites, and for wildlife managers and researchers to take precautions as well.

Just such a warning is in place in Palomar, California, where ground squirrels at a campground have been diagnosed with plague.

Read the story in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

New Loon Study Announced

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loonThe Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) of Gorham, Maine announced yesterday that it will begin the largest loon conservation study in North America.

The announcement was made in Wyoming, an interesting choice, since it is not exactly a hotbed of loon activity. Wyoming is, however, home to one of the many ventures of the study’s funder, Joe Ricketts. BRI was awarded a $6.5 M grant from the new Ricketts Conservation Foundation for the study.

A press release about the announcement sent to Society of Enviromental Journalist members said: “Underlying the Foundation’s mission is the reality that government no longer has sufficient resources to deal effectively with the growing environmental challenges we face. As a result, private individuals and corporations must increasingly shoulder the responsibility of conserving our wildlife and wilderness areas. www.joericketts.com” (The website says, among other things, that Ricketts is a part owner of the Chicago Cubs.)

 

The press invitation also says: “The loon is a key bioindicator of aquatic integrity for lakes and near shore marine ecosystems. These iconic birds are becoming more exposed and susceptible to serious threats from type E botulism, mercury pollution, lead poisoning, oil spills, and over development.”

Visit the BRI website’s loon program page, here.

Photo: Loon, courtesy of the State of Minnesota, where the loon is the state bird.

US Fish and Wildlife Service Gov’t Shutdown News

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Because the federal government shutdown has shutdown not only the USFWS website, but all the DOI websites, here is the USFWS press release announcing its operations or lack there of during the shutdown:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Suspends Operations Due to Federal Government Lapse in Appropriations

Because of the shutdown of the federal government caused by the lapse in appropriations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will suspend most programs and operations, including public access to all National Wildlife Refuges and all activities on refuge lands including hunting and fishing.

“Closing off public access to our national wildlife refuges and public lands is the last thing we want to do, but is consistent with operations called for during a government shutdown” said Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Dan Ashe. “This is difficult news for the families, birdwatchers, hunters and anglers, and recreationists who enjoy the great outdoors on the refuges – as well as for the many local businesses who depend on the tourism and outdoor recreation economy they generate. I think it’s most difficult for the thousands of furloughed Service employees who are impacted in carrying out their mission to protect our nation’s resources and providing for their families.”

Main impacts to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from the lapse in appropriated funding include:

• All 561 National wildlife refuges are closed to public access. Visitor centers and other buildings are closed.

• The National Wildlife Refuge System hosts more than 46.5 million people per year, and generates more than $342 million in local, county, state and federal tax income. Refuges also support more than 35,000 private-sector jobs.

• All activities on federal lands and in public buildings are canceled. This includes hunting and fishing activities on refuge lands.

• No permitting work or consultations will occur with respect to the Endangered Species Act, Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species, the Lacey Act or the National Environmental Policy Act.

• The shutdown will affect more than 7,000 Service employees, who are furloughed until an appropriation is passed.

• Employees and others may not volunteer their services on behalf of Service functions or on federal lands.

Services and programs that will remain operational fall into the following exempted categories:

• Programs financed by sources other than annual appropriations.
• Activities expressly authorized by law.
• Activities necessary to protect life and property.
• Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration and Sport Fish Restoration.
• Natural Resource Damage Assessment Fund activities
• Refuge Law Enforcement emergency operations
• Firefighting emergency operations
• Care and feeding activities at hatcheries and captive breeding facilities.

Because the website will not be maintained, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website will be down for the duration of the shutdown. Additional information will be available at www.DOI.gov/shutdown as well as at OPM.gov, which will contain information about the government’s operating status on Tuesday, Oct.1, 2013, and the days following.

New Python Trap From APHIS

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wp_c_python_trap_image006It’s got to be a really big snake to trip the trap recently patented by the US Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC). But that’s the point. The idea is to live trap invasive pythons in Florida while leaving the native snakes alone. One difference between the native snakes and the non-native pythons is that the pythons tend to be a lot bigger.

“Though the trap is based on a standard live trap design, the Large Reptile Trap is the first to require two trip pans to be depressed at the same time in order to close the trap door. The pans are spaced such that non-target animals are unlikely to trigger the trap,” said NWRC wildlife biologist and trap inventor John Humphrey in a USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) press release.

The big question now is: will it work?

Read more about the trap and the invasive python problem in Florida in the Christian Science Monitor, here.Or read the APHIS press release here.

Photo: New python trap. Courtesy USDA APHIS.

CWD in Plants

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cwd_map 9-30-13Plants, including crop plants such as alfalfa and tomatoes, may serve as a reservoir for the prions, or misfolded proteins, that cause chronic wasting disease in deer (as well as other prion diseases such as scrapie in sheep, and mad cow disease), reports WisconsinWatch after a careful reading of the The Wildlife Society conference program.

WisconsinWatch is produced by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. And they certainly investigated here.

Christopher Johnson, U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center will present a talk on his research at the conference on October 7.

Oh, and Johnson found that the prions from plants were infectious when injected into mice.

I’m going to skip right over the scary prospect of plants as a reservoir for prion diseases and go right to the next point made in the WisconsinWatch article: this finding is not going to change the fact that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has pretty much given up on managing CWD in the state.

Johnson’s findings have not yet been published in a scientific journal, and it appears that the National Wildlife Health Center has not yet released a report or a press release on the research.

Find The Wildlife Society Conference abstract here.
Read the WisconsinWatch article here.

Map: Incidents of CWD, courtesy of USGS National Wildlife Health Center

Pond Study Points to Chytrid Reservoir

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pond research chytridAbout a third of the ponds in a Missouri study harbored chytrid fungus. A Washington University in St. Louis scientist decided to take advantage of the fact that the fungus does not seem to cause amphibian deaths in the region, and tried to tease out the factors that lead to the fungus flourishing in one pond and not another.

The 29 ponds studied were all roughly the same size and depth. They were clustered in the east-central section of Missouri (no surprise, around St. Louis).

No single factor determined which ponds had the fungus and which did not. But some fancy statistical analysis showed that the affected ponds shared amphibian community structure, macroinvertebrate community structure, and pond physicochemistry.

Since the research was done, crayfish and nematodes have been found to be infected with the chytrid fungus, making them possible reservoirs for the disease. This study suggested that variations in invertebrate communities was a factor in which ponds harbored the fungus.

In the paper, which was published in PLoS ONE, the researchers recommend that more research be done on the non-amphibian life in infected ponds to figure out how they are contributing to sustaining the fungus.

Read the Washington University in St. Louis article here.
Read the PLoS ONE paper here.

Photo: A pond survey crew samples the creatures that live in a Missouri pond in order to better understand the differences between ecosystems that favor chytrid and those that do not. Alex Strauss, the first author on this paper, is wearing a blue shirt.  Photo credit: Elizabeth Biro/Washington University – Tyson Research Center

EHD News

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It’s been a quiet summer for epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) in deer. Either conditions didn’t favor the biting midges that spread the disease among deer, or the northern states that experience periodic fatal outbreaks of the disease are becoming used to the new normal.

EHD season isn’t over, though, as these two news items show. Reuters says that wildlife managers in Montana are trying to pin down the cause of death for 100 white-tailed deer along the Clark Fork River. EHD had not been previously found in Montana west of the Continental Divide, the article says.

Read the Reuters story here.

In North Dakota, there is no doubt that EHD is the cause of deer deaths there. An Associated Press story says that North Dakota’s Game and Fish Department has suspended the sale of 1,000 doe hunting licenses because of an EHD outbreak that began in August and continues, the article quotes ND wildlife Chief Randy Kreil as saying.

Read the AP article in South Carolina’s The State, here.

 

New Legless Lizards in California

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lizard_head_hr_jparham photo creditFour new species of legless lizards have been discovered in California, joining the one species of legless lizard that was previously known in the state.

An NBC News report notes that the four new species were not found in the wilderness, but in some heavily trafficked areas including: “dune bordering a runway at Los Angeles International Airport; an empty lot in downtown Bakersfield, Calif.; a field littered with oil derricks; and the margins of the Mojave Desert.”

The paper describing the four species was published in the journal Breviora and is open access. (The paper was the top link on this page at the time this was posted.)

Lots of people like new legless lizard species, apparently, so you can find coverage in:CNN.com (the most detailed coverage)
Reuters
Popular Science (refers to Reuters coverage)
the previously mentioned NBC News report
and last but not least, the California State University, Fullerton press release.

The reports even include a handy clue for telling a legless lizard apart from a snake. If it blinks, it’s a lizard.

Photo: This legless lizard, which has a purple belly, is among four new species discovered in the state by CSUF scientist James Parham and a research colleague at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley. Credit: James Parham, used courtesy of CSU-Fullerton

 

River Otter Comeback in Illinois

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River_OttersIllinois Department of Natural Resources furbearer biologist Bob Bluet told the Springfield (IL) State Journal Register that the state’s first river otter trapping season culled slightly more otters than anticipated because fur prices were up. “More people were trapping and there was more opportunity to catch otters,” he said.

River otters haven’t been trapped in Illinois since 1929. It was believed their numbers were down to just 100 before 1990. A reintroduction program, which ran from 1994 to 1997 was so successful, that the otters became s nuisance in some places, the article says. The recent trapping season harvested 13 percent of the state’s population, not quite enough to reduce the number of otters in the long term, Bluet told the newspaper.

For more details on the river otter’s restoration in Illinois, the nuisance factor and the recent trapping season, read the article in the Springfield State Journal Register.

An abridged version of the article ran in the West Kentucky Star.

Photo: River otters by Jim Leopold, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service