Author Archives: MadelineBodin

Hunting and Food Safety

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hunting at sunsetMost of the news from state wildlife agencies across the country this week are about hunting: seasons opening and closing, whether the numbers are up or down for a particular season. For the folks at the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Center, that’s a good reason to take a look at food-safety issues associated with hunter-killed wildlife.

For the most part, the news is good. Taking care when field dressing and butchering the meat avoids the most common problems, they say. The occasional wound or parasite is to be expected, the entry says, and is no cause for alarm.

For all the details, plus a link to common sense wild meat handling guidelines, see the CCWHC blog entry, here.

We’ll hear more from the CCWHC blog on Monday.

Photo courtesy US Fish and Wildlife

NM Crane Mystery

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mystery crane NMIt’s not so much of a mystery, as a quirky little crane that has attracted media attention nationwide. Back in November, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico posted a photo on its Facebook page of a crane that was darker, thinner, smaller and had more compact feathers than the flock of sandhill cranes it was with.

The refuge is known for its sandhill cranes, so it made sense that this was simply a color morph, or a crane that had preened dark mud into its feathers. But the guessing game had begun, with the most outrageous guess supposing that this was a hybrid between a sandhill crane and a trumpeter, native to South America.

The photo of the bird that is getting the most exposure is by Clint Henson of the New Mexico Department of Game & Fish.

Read more about the guessing game in the San Francisco Chronicle, here.
The Bosque del Apache NWR Facebook page is worth a visit just for the many stunning photos, of cranes, other creatures and beautiful vistas.

Photo: Mystery crane and sandhill friends, courtesy of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

NY State Seeks Rabbit Heads

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NE cottontail 2

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is seeking cottontail rabbit heads from hunters east of the Hudson River. The eastern cottontail is almost identical in appearance to the imperiled New England cottontail. The only sure way to tell the two rabbit species apart is by sampling DNA or looking at the shape of the skull. The collected heads will allow both.

To gather more information about the distribution of the New England cottontail in the state, as well as possibly turning up the once widespread Appalachian cottontail (S. obscurus), the NYS DEC is turning to rabbit hunters in Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia or Rensselaer County, or in the Sterling Forest State Park in Orange County to contribute the heads from their prey.

More information is available on the NYS DEC New England cottontail survey web page, here.

You can keep an eye out for the extremely short notice in the DEC’s Field Notes newsletter, here. It is in the Nov. 30 edition, which wasn’t posted yet when this went on-line.

Photo: A New England cottontail, source unknown.

Midwest Otter Recovery

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otter_pair_maxwellRiver otters now occupy more than 80 percent of Indiana counties, says Scott Johnson, nongame biologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources in a department press release.

That is remarkable, because in 1942 river otters had been extirpated from the state. A restoration program began in 1995, 303 otters were transported from Louisiana and released at 12 sites in northern and southern Indiana.The otters thrived and in 2005 they were removed from the state’s endangered species list.

More recently, otters have moved into central Indiana, finding habitat in an area that was long thought not to be ideal, says Johnson.

In what is perhaps the modern sign of wildlife restoration success, the otters are now considered a nuisance to some Indiana pond owners. The IDNR received 34 river otter complaints last year and issued 10 control permits in 2012.

Read the IDNR press release, here.

In Illinois, river otter restoration may be considered even more successful. Last week, National Public Radio reported that Illinois had reinstated an otter trapping season for the first time in 90 years. The story’s headline says that the state has been overrun by otters.

Read or listen to the NPR story, here.

Photo: River otters, courtesy Indiana Department of Natural Resources

Midwest Otter Recovery

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otter_pair_maxwellRiver otters now occupy more than 80 percent of Indiana counties, says Scott Johnson, nongame biologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources in a department press release.

That is remarkable, because in 1942 river otters had been extirpated from the state. A restoration program began in 1995, 303 otters were transported from Louisiana and released at 12 sites in northern and southern Indiana.The otters thrived and in 2005 they were removed from the state’s endangered species list.

More recently, otters have moved into central Indiana, finding habitat in an area that was long thought not to be ideal, says Johnson.

In what is perhaps the modern sign of wildlife restoration success, the otters are now considered a nuisance to some Indiana pond owners. The IDNR received 34 river otter complaints last year and issued 10 control permits in 2012.

Read the IDNR press release, here.

In Illinois, river otter restoration may be considered even more successful. Last week, National Public Radio reported that Illinois had reinstated an otter trapping season for the first time in 90 years. The story’s headline says that the state has been overrun by otters.

Read or listen to the NPR story, here.

Photo: River otters, courtesy Indiana Department of Natural Resources

New Wildlife Resources Director in Utah

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greg sheehan utahIn Utah, Greg Sheehan has been named as the new director of the Division of Wildlife Resources, according to a recent press release from the division.

Sheehan, a department employee with 20 years’ experience, has been the DWR’s Administrative Services chief since 2002. The release quotes Mike Styler, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources as saying that “Greg brings a business background to the position, but he’s much more than an MBA.”

Read more about Sheehan in the Division’s press release, here.

Wild Cat News

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Three Florida panthers (Puma concolor) were hit and killed by vehicles in a one week period this November, the Naples News reports. That brings the Florida panther death total to 23 for the year. It’s possible that this year will tie or break the record number of panther deaths of 25, set in 2007. But more important, the trend of the total number of deaths each year generally increasing over the last 10 years.

What does it all mean? Another article in the Naples News quotes Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission panther team leader Darrell Land as saying the trend is no reason to worry. He says in the article that more panthers mean more deaths. He also says that known panther births are keeping pace with the panther deaths.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) does not agree, saying in a press release that something needs to be done to stem the mounting death toll of the federally endangered species.

However, it was the Naples News article that noted:

In 2004, PEER represented former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Andy Eller in an unsuccessful attempt to get his job back after he questioned the science his agency was using to approve development in panther habitat and was fired.

In other wild cat news, disease may not be the first thing you think of when you think of predators in urban areas. But Fluffy and Fido have to worry about catching (and giving) diseases to bobcats in addition to worrying about winding up as a bobcat’s dinner, a recent paper in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology says. Actually, the paper focuses on disease transmission between humans and bobcats, which may be farther off anyone’s radar, and the diseases mentioned are familiar to pet owners.

NBCNews.com has the LiveScience story, here.
You can find at least the abstract for the Journal of Clinical Microbiology paper, here. (Full access requires a subscription or fee.)

Finally, the ninth mountain lion (Puma concolor) confirmed in Kansas in modern times was seen in a trail camera photo this month, although the photo was taken in October, a press release from the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism says. Read the press release here.

Photo: courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

Coyote/Wolf Hybrids in the East

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A recent study published in Molecular Ecology, which studied the hybridization between eastern wolves, gray wolves and coyotes in and around Algonquin Provincial Park (APP) in Ontario found that about 36 percent of the animals tested were hybrids of two or three of the three Canis types.

West of the park the genes tested switched sharply from eastern wolf to coyote and hybrids. South and northwest of the park, the genes were a bit more complicated. However, the most remote locations with the most moose also had the animals with greater wolf ancestry.

The eastern coyote is generally larger than its western counterpart, and it appears to behave differently, too. The genetics of the eastern coyote could help inform the management of coyotes in the region, so papers like this are worth noting.

Reading the article in Molecular Ecology requires a subscription or a fee, but you can access it here.

Photo: coyote, by Steve Thompson, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife

Girls and Hunting

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According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources:

Girls are the fastest growing segment of Wisconsin’s hunting population. The number of licensed women gun deer hunters in Wisconsin is projected to increase by 50 percent to 75,000 in 20 years. As of opening day, females represented 32 percent of resident first-time license buyers and 30 percent of resident first-time junior gun deer licenses.

 

A very unscientific survey of the photos in a local Vermont newspaper celebrating youth hunting day, showed not quite one-quarter of the young hunters pictured with a deer were girls.

Read the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources page, including videos, here.

In other deer hunting news, the season tallies are starting to come in. You can find Minnesota’s here. And you can find numbers on Missouri’s season, the biggest in years, here and here. In Alabama, hunters are self-reporting on-line. Read the story from the Alabama Media Group.

Photo: Mother and daughter hunt together in Wisconsin, courtesy of the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources.

Wyoming Funding Woes

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Think your fish and wildlife department’s funding would be secure, if only hunting and fishing license sales were healthy? It seems that even excellent hunting and fishing license sales don’t guarantee a healthy budget, as the situation in Wyoming seems to show.

A Caspar Star-Tribune editorial says that tourism is Wyoming’s number two industry, and many of those tourists come to hunt and fish in the state. Still, that doesn’t prevent the state Game and Fish department from going hat-in-hand to state legislators when they need raise license fees to keep up with inflation. When Fish and Game makes an unpopular decision, the legislature just says, “no.”

That may be a problem that many state fish and wildlife departments would rather deal with than the funding problems they have now in their own states, but it does show that things are rough all over.

Read the entire editorial in the Caspar Star-Tribune, here.