Author Archives: MadelineBodin

Media Buzz: Lions and Wolves and Bears (and Owls)

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The past 30 days have been rich in wildlife stories that may geA male wolf from Oregonnerate questions in your state and influence public opinion:

This past weekend the birth of two (or possibly three) cubs to a black bear named Jewel in Ely, Minnesota was captured on a solar-powered video camera.

A report from WCCO, a CBS television station says that 500 schools were following the video feed. (Which makes it unfortunate that the cubs were born on a Sunday.) It also says that:

 “Jewel is the younger sister of Lily, who gave birth before the Internet in 2010. One of the bears that Lily gave birthto was Hope, who is believed to have been killed by a hunter last year.”

See the whole story, including video, on the station’s website, here.

In Florida, 2012 has been a bad year for the endangered Florida panther. Four of the animals have been killed so far this year, says an article in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. In 2011, the article says, the 24 Florida panther deaths were off-set by the 32 panther cubs that were born.

Read the whole article, here.
When Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission issued a press release on Jan. 12, only 3 panthers had died. Read that press release, here.

On Dec. 28 an Oregon wolf crossed the state border into California, making it the first wild wolf known in the state in nearly 90 years. The young, male wolf’s location is known because it has a GPS collar. It is officially known as OR7, but has been nicknamed “Journey.”

Read more in the Los Angeles Times, here.

Finally, the news reports on the irruption of snowy owls, continue. We reported on this nearly two months ago (read that post, here), but new outlets continue to report on it, including, last week, The New York Times. You can read the NY Times story here.

Photo: Not necessarily OR-7, but another light-colored, collared male wolf in Oregon. Courtesy Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

Monofilament Recycling Danger

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Recycling fishing line is a great idea. It prevents wildlife from dieing or being injured by getting tangled in discarded line, a process that can sometimes be slow and painful.

Unfortunately, the most common kind of monofilament fishing line recycling bin — a PVC pipe capped with an elbow, is creating its own danger to wildlife, the Missouri Department of Conservation has revealed. Cavity nesting birds are entering the pipes, getting tangled in the fishing line, and dying.

In other places, uncapped PVC pipes, used as boundary markers and in irrigation systems are trapping and killing birds and lizards. We’ve written about that before. (Here.)

That the elbow-capped pipes are also a danger is a surprise. Kudos to the Missouri Department of Conservation for retro-fitting its monofilament recycling bins with a rubber covering over the opening– and especially for getting the word out on the danger of this design.

-Read the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) press release, here.
-Get all the details on the MDC blog. (It includes a video)
-More information is available from the MDC’s Stream Team, here.
The press release includes a link to more info from Audubon California. Find it here.

 Photo of dead tree swallows above courtesy of Dianne Fieri

Fish + Fire = Comeback

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We won’t blame you if you think that the combination of fish plus fire equals dinner. But a recent study in the Intermountain West confirms earlier findings that native fish, particularly native salmonids, thrive in the decades after a forest fire.

The study was published in the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. To read the paper, go to this US Forest Service summary page, then click on the PDF link.

A US Forest Service fisheries biologists has continued the study, and is giving talks on the results. Read the article about his talks in the Ravalli Republic.

As for fish and fire: sure, the first few years after a forest fire are tough for the fish. But the introduction of trees into the stream is such a habitat boost that after a few years, native fish populations start to grow. Shrubs and other low plants growing streamside also provide food and shelter for native fish.

This Bitterroot Mountain study confirms the findings of studies done after the 1988 Yellowstone fires, that also found that native fish populations rebounded after the fire.

You can read an article on the talk, here.

Photo: Brook trout, like this one, don’t fare well after fires in the Intermountain West, because they are not native and therefore not adapted to the region’s fire-fueled ecology. Photo by , courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife ServiceEric Engbretson

Florida’s Researcher Spotlight: Jim Rodgers

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As we begin a recurring feature, profiles of state research biologists, we find that the state of Florida has already been profiling their own researchers for quite some time. So why not get the party started early, with this profile of Jim Rodgers, ornithologist.

Jim Rodgers has always wanted to be a wildlife biologist, well, either that or a professional surfer or fishing boat captain. He’s adjusted his career goals only slightly since his mid-teens, switching from marine biology to birds.

Consistency has paid off: Rodgers has studied wood storks and snail kites, two of the continent’s most fascinating bird species. Up next? Gull-billed terns.

Read the entire profile on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission website, here.

Nutria in Delaware: They’re Back

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An alert fur-buyer tipped off the Delaware Department of Natural Resources to a breeding population of nutria just barely on the Delaware side of the state’s border with Maryland in the northern part of the Delmarva Peninsula.

Nutria, an invasive, nonnative rodent, have been found in the Chesapeake Bay/Delmarva Peninsula region for decades. But mostly they are in Maryland, and in 2002, Delaware thought it had eradicated the last of the its own breeding population of the animal.

Read the Delaware Department of Natural Resources press release on the find, here.

Read a news-story from Delaware Online, a Gannett Company, here. The story includes a link to a Google map showing the pond where the nutria group was found.

Find out more about nutria in the region from the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chesapeake Bay Nutria Eradication Project, here. This Web site has a map of nutria presence on the Delmarva Peninsula.

Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlilfe Service

DNA Helps Find Rare Aquatic Species

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You may be able to hang up your snorkel and flippers. Dutch researchers have found that even rare and endangered animals leave enough DNA in their freshwater ecosystems to be detected in even small amounts of water from that ecosystem. (As little as 15 milliliters, or about a tablespoon.)

This makes DNA analysis much quicker and more thorough than electrofishing, or the ever-popular snorkel survey.

The study tested six different species, including both vertebrates and invertebrates. The team found that an animal’s DNA only persisted in the environment for about two weeks, so when the animal was removed, the DNA was soon gone too.

The catch: high-throughput DNA sequencing techniques are required.

The paper will be published in the journal Molecular Ecology. The entire article is available with a subscription, or for a fee, here.

Or you can read the ScienceDaily report on the paper, here.

Coincidentally, a French team seems to have come to a similar conclusion. Their paper is in PLoS ONE and is open access. Read it here.

Photo: Federally endangered clubshell mussel, photo by Craig Stihler, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

White Nose Syndrome Toll at Least 5.7 Million

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White nose syndrome has killed somewhere between 5.7 million to 6.7 million bats, biologists at the Northeast Bat Working Group’s annual meeting in Pennsylvania, which was held last week, estimated. The figures were released Tuesday afternoon.

Read the press release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department, here.

Not much out there about where these new estimates come from. A Washington Post article says, “The estimate was derived from winter trips to mines and caves through December 2011.” The innovation was counting the bats using digital imagery, rather than “counting noses,” as was done in the past, USFWS WNS coordinator Jeremy Coleman is quoted as saying.

Read the Washington Post article here.

In a Los Angeles Times article, coordination of survey strategies across the United States and Canada is credited for the new estimate.

Read the LA Times article here.

Photo credit: Jonathan Mays, Wildlife Biologist, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife

USFWS: No More Snakes on Planes

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“The US Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized a rule that would ban the importation and interstate transportation of four nonnative constrictor snake species,” a press release from the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced today. The four snake species are: the Burmese python, the yellow anaconda, and the northern and southern African pythons.

The four species of snakes are listed as “injurious species” under the Lacey Act.

The press release notes: “The Burmese python has established breeding populations in South Florida, including the Everglades, that have caused significant damage to wildlife and that continue to pose a great risk to many native species, including threatened and endangered species. Burmese pythons on North Key Largo have killed and eaten highly endangered Key Largo wood rats, and other pythons preyed on endangered wood storks.”

Burmese pythons eat alligators. ‘Nuff said?

Florida’s congressional representatives have wanted the ban for years, says an article from the McClatchy news syndicate. A powerful pet snake lobby has stood in the way, the article says. Who would have thought that a story about nonnative snakes would require “following the money”?

Read the entire article — which includes a lovely graphic — here.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service release says that the ban of five more big, nonnative snake species is on the horizon. Read the entire press release here.

The service also gets in on “following the money.” Its handout on the cost of large constrictor snakes is here.

Photo: A Burmese python and an American alligator duke it out in the Everglades. Photo by Lori Oberhofer, courtesy National Park Service

USFWS: No More Snakes on Planes

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“The US Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized a rule that would ban the importation and interstate transportation of four nonnative constrictor snake species,” a press release from the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced today. The four snake species are: the Burmese python, the yellow anaconda, and the northern and southern African pythons.

The four species of snakes are listed as “injurious species” under the Lacey Act.

The press release notes: “The Burmese python has established breeding populations in South Florida, including the Everglades, that have caused significant damage to wildlife and that continue to pose a great risk to many native species, including threatened and endangered species. Burmese pythons on North Key Largo have killed and eaten highly endangered Key Largo wood rats, and other pythons preyed on endangered wood storks.”

Burmese pythons eat alligators. ‘Nuff said?

Florida’s congressional representatives have wanted the ban for years, says an article from the McClatchy news syndicate. A powerful pet snake lobby has stood in the way, the article says. Who would have thought that a story about nonnative snakes would require “following the money”?

Read the entire article — which includes a lovely graphic — here.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service release says that the ban of five more big, nonnative snake species is on the horizon. Read the entire press release here.

The service also gets in on “following the money.” Its handout on the cost of large constrictor snakes is here.

Photo: A Burmese python and an American alligator duke it out in the Everglades. Photo by Lori Oberhofer, courtesy National Park Service

Rare Birds: Dry or Oily?

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whooping cranes at Aransas NWR

Photo: Whooping cranes in Aransas NWR, by Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

During Texas’s last drought, 23 whooping cranes died while wintering in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, says an Associated Press story in the Tampa Bay Times. With another drought this year, wildlife managers can only watch and wait to see what happens.

The total population of wild whooping cranes is about 400. The only self-sustaining wild population is the one that migrates between Aransas in Texas and Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada.

Read the story in the Tampa Bay Times, here.

In Colorado, St. Vrain State Park sits in the middle of a productive oil field. The state is short on funds. Oil companies are eager to expand into the park, which is home to bald eagles, American white pelicans and the state’s largest blue heron rookery.

Read about the conundrum in the Denver Post: This news story lays out the facts. This columnist explains the dilemma.

What’s a state to do? In Colorado, they said yes to limited drilling on 1/12. Read about the decision in the Denver Business Journal.

Photo: Whooping cranes in Aransas NWR, by Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service