Role of Predators in Ecosystem Balance

Posted on May 3, 2012 by MadelineBodin

Do wolves and other large predators keep deer and other large herbivore populations in check, or is the food supply that really limits the herbivore population?

Two Oregon State University biologists did a meta-analysis of 42 published studies and found that large predators play a huge role in keeping ecosystems in balance. The analysis spanned North America and Eurasia, which may be why the study was published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research.

But it’s not a single predator alone that keeps the herbivores at levels that allow for a healthy mix of plants to grow, the paper also says. When an ecosystem hosts at least two large predators — such as wolves and bears, or wolves and lynx — each predator has an impact on a different part of its prey’s life cycle, reducing the population more than one alone.

Read the article in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, here. (Fee or subscription required.)
Or here.
Read an article from the Environmental News Service, here.
The OSU press release is here.

Photo: Yellowstone wolf, courtesy of Oregon State University

App Happy

Posted on May 2, 2012 by MadelineBodin

You may be using a smartphone to enter data in the field (hey, it beats lugging a laptop), and now the public can get in on wildlife conservation apps, too.

The National Wildlife Refuge System has been busy adding interactive smartphone applications. Patuxent Research Refuge, outside Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico are putting QR codes at trailheads. The Aransas Wildlife Refuge in Texas, and Great Meadows in Massachusetts, are putting QR codes on visitor brochures, kiosks, interpretive panels and printed trail maps.

That’s in addition to the app the system introduced last year, MyRefuge, featuring maps of scores of refuge recreation trails and other visitor attractions. Also last year, the system introduced the interactive iNature Trail at J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Florida.

There’s more, and you can read about it in the National Wildlife Refuge System press release, here.
Access MyRefuge, here.

The BirdLog apps lets bird watchers (and researchers) enter data into eBird in the field using an iPhone or Android smartphone. An app for iPad is coming soon. A portion of the cost goes to Cornell Lab of O conservation activities.

Read the Cornell Lab of Ornithology release here.
The eBird press release is here.

Getting injured animals to wildlife rehabilitators and keeping the public safe as they try to assist injured wildlife can be difficult. It’s hard to be available 24-hours a day. In the Boulder, Colorado region a new web site and app, AnimalHelpNow, lets people report injured wildlife on their smartphones. The developers hope to have versions for other parts of the country soon.

Read (or listen) to the National Public Radio story on the app, here. Lots of links to follow to get the app and other information.

Finally, it’s not all sunshine and happiness is app-land. New apps that give Yellowstone visitors the locations of bears and other watchable wildlife have park advocates worried. The park’s bear jams are already dangerous, both as a travel hazard and because people get too close to the animals.

Read the article in USA Today.
Read the blog post in Field & Stream

Photo: A visitor prepares her smartphone to scan quick response (QR) codes along the iNature Trail at J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge, FL

Solar Flares Over Desert Protection

Posted on May 1, 2012 by MadelineBodin

Which is more important, to save the global environment or to protect a particular ecosystem?

An article in the Los Angeles Times says that big, national environmental groups are leaning toward saving the planet even at the cost of rare and valuable ecosystems, frustrating local environmental groups who want to preserve those ecosystems.

The current arena is the Mojave Desert, where massive solar projects could provide power to southern California’s throngs, but where the fragile desert and its inhabitants would be better off being left alone.

With the big guns backing the solar projects, the only advocates for animals like the desert tortoise are the small, local enviro groups.

Read the article in the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Desert tortoise by Rachel London, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

Changes to Wisconsin Endangered Species List

Posted on April 30, 2012 by MadelineBodin

Snow Egret The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has proposed changes to the state’s endangered species list.

According to a DNR press release, it recommends removing seven animals from the list: greater redhorse (fish), barn owl, snowy egret, and Bewick’s wren, pygmy snaketail (dragonfly), Blanding’s turtle and Butler’s gartersnake. The proposal recommends nine plants also be removed from the list: American fever-few, bog bluegrass, Canada horse-balm, drooping sedge, hemlock parsley, prairie Indian-plantain, snowy campion, yellow gentian, and yellow giant hyssop.

The state is also recommending that eight other species are in need of greater protection by being listed as endangered or threatened. Those species include: three birds — black tern, Kirtland’s warbler, upland sandpiper; one freshwater mussel — fawnsfoot; and four insects — beach-dune tiger beetle, ottoe skipper, a leafhopper (Attenuipyga vanduzeei), and an issid planthopper (Fitchiella robertsoni).

The DNR will host two open house discussions of the proposal in early May.

Read the DNR press release here.

Photo: Snowy egret, photo by Lee Karney, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Sage Grouse on the Brink

Posted on April 27, 2012 by MadelineBodin

A recent study of sage grouse in northeastern Wyoming says that the population there is just one severe weather event or West Nile outbreak away from extirpation. The study was conducted by three University of Montana wildlife biologists on behalf of the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Read the report, a 46-page PDF, here.
Here’s the BLM web page with links to other info about the report
And here’s the story in the Casper Star-Tribune.

Despite the dire forecast, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission will not close the three-day hunting season in northeastern Wyoming. The reasoning, says a Field & Stream blog post, is that because it is primarily energy development and disease, not hunting, that is causing the birds’ decline, hunters should not be penalized.

The blog post leans heavily on another article from the Casper Star-Tribune. Read that one here. That article notes that state biologists proposed closing the hunting season, but were over-ruled when dozens of people attended the Game and Fish Commission meeting to protest the closing. The article does not note the irony of the citizens who disagreed with the over-ruled scientists saying that the scientists’ recommendation was based on politics.

More troubling than even the possible extirpation of this population, or the politics behind the species’ management, is the fact that the Wyoming sage grouse management plan is the model for the nation. We’ve written about Wyoming’s plan being the national model before:
When a newspaper editorial praised the Wyoming sage grouse management plan;
And when the BLM took the lead on coordinating sage grouse management efforts across its range.

Photo: Greater sage grouse by Stephen Ting. Courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Disease Round-up: Rare, Rabid Bear; Desert Fox Distemper Spreads & more

Posted on April 26, 2012 by MadelineBodin

Rabid bears are “almost unheard of” in the eastern half of the United States. After all, transmission is typically through the bite of infected animal, and what’s going to bite a bear?

Apparently something bit a black bear in Albermarle, Virginia, because after it attacked a man, it was tested and found to have rabies.

This is gotten more coverage since, but the first article I saw on this was on GoDanRiver.com

In the Mojave Desert, an outbreak of canine distemper in desert kit foxes near a solar power installation is spreading, with dead foxes found 11 miles from the original site. Read more in the Victorville Daily Press.

We’ve written about this distemper outbreak twice before. Read the first post here. The second post, with possible causes, is here.

And while we just posted news about bullfrogs spreading chytrid fungus between continents a few days ago, yet another study shows that geese — both escaped domestic and Canada geese — can spread chytrid fungus between water bodies, either as they migrate, or simply as they visit ponds and lakes in their own neighborhood.

Read the article in ScientificAmerican.com
Or read the scientific paper with the findings in PLoS ONE.

Photo: Canada goose in Alabama, by Gary M. Stolz, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

State Biologist Profile: Utah’s Frog Lady

Posted on April 25, 2012 by MadelineBodin

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wTqwATzW7s]

Paula Trater has been monitoring frogs near Utah’s Provo River since 1992. As this article in the Salt Lake Tribune notes, her business card says biological technician for the Utah Reclamation Mitigation and Conservation Commission, but folks on the river have come to call her “the Frog Lady,” a title that, she admits, is easier than her official one.

Find out about Paula Trater’s work, including a 3+ minute video and a slide show in the Salt Lake Tribune, here.

Note about video: There will probably be an ad. Sorry about that. It’s YouTube’s ad, not mine, though.

Tool: Infrared Monitoring

Posted on April 24, 2012 by MadelineBodin

In a recent study on the origins of the fungus that causes white nose syndrome in bats, the bats in the study were monitored with infrared cameras. This allowed the researchers to see when the bats were rousing (they need to warm up first).

Read a mention of the infrared monitoring in this Associated Press story on the Yahoo News site.
You can also find the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper here, but you need a subscription or to pay a fee to read the whole paper.

A more common use for infrared imaging has been for wildlife surveys. For example, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has used thermal imaging to survey the ratio of bucks to does and does to fawns for deer management. But this technology can do more.

Scientists are using infrared thermal imaging cameras to detect sarcoptic mange in Yellowstone wolves. The patches of bare skin caused this form of scabies stress the animal because the calories used up to compensate for the heat loss can doom the animal.

Read an article on an early stage of the study in the Billings Gazette.
Read information from the US Geological Survey, here.
And a tip of the hat to Wired Magazine, which dedicated a full page to the story in its May 2012 issue. (Sorry, no direct link because the May issue wasn’t online when this was posted.)

While the Billings Gazette article describes the scientists renting a $40,000 camera, in the Wired Magazine update, $4,000-$5,000 per camera is the price mentioned. There seem to be a lot of possibilities for using infrared thermal imaging in wildlife management that go beyond surveys.

Photo: Thermal image of a wolf with a small bald spot on its rear leg, from the initial test of concept. Courtesy of the US Geological Survey.

Swift Decline: Chimneys or Beetles?

Posted on April 23, 2012 by MadelineBodin

Chimney swifts decline 95 percent in Canada between 1968 and 2005. After studying a six-foot deep pile of swift guano in a now-capped chimney on the campus of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, researchers believe that DDTs impact on the beetle population played an important role in the swifts’ decline.

Studying the hard remains of insects in the pile, they found that the birds switched from a diet rich in beetles to one where true bugs (which include cicadas and stink bugs) were dominant.The researchers believe the switch from the energy-rich beetles to the less caloric true bugs was the worst kind of crash diet.

Read the news brief in ScienceNow.
Read the paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. (Open access.)

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

Bat Numbers Rise in 1st WNS Caves

Posted on April 20, 2012 by MadelineBodin

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) released today the results of its winter survey of bat hibernacula. The most encouraging results were from the five hibernacula in the Albany area, where the disease was first discovered. The press release says:

Previous reports have suggested that little brown bat counts at these sites seem to be stabilizing in recent years. This year’s surveys saw substantial increases in little brown bats at three out of five of these caves. The largest and best documented of these sites saw an increase from 1,496 little brown bats in 2011 to 2,402 this year.

It goes on to say that it’s too soon to say whether this represents a recovery or just the fact that bats literally like to hang out together, and may moving from other hibernacula to form a larger group.

Read the NYS DEC press release, here.

Quite a few media outlets picked up the story immediately.
Read the Albany Times-Union article, here.
Read the Associated Press article in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, here.

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