Author Archives: MadelineBodin

What Do You Say to a Naked Moose?

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Winter tick infestations in moose can become so severe that the moose rub the hair right off their bodies. These have been called “ghost moose,” because of the whiteness of the mooses’ bare bodies. The tick infestation can lead to death from: anemia, distraction from grazing, or exposure to cold.

Estimating winter tick populations is an important component of moose management.

Research in New Hampshire found that counting winter ticks by any of three different methods turned up similar results. Winter tick populations were monitored by:
-dragging a white sheet over low vegetation in the spring,
-counting ticks on hunter-killed moose at check-in stations in the fall, and
-noting hair loss patterns on moose in the spring.

The three methods all revealed a similar pattern of lower winter tick numbers in 2008 and 2009, with a spike in 2010.

You can read about the New Hampshire research in an article written for a general audience in New Hampshire Fish & Game’s magazine, Wildlife Journal.

Alces Journal published a paper that reached a similar conclusion. The research there was in Maine, however. Read the paper here.

Photo: Alan Briere, courtesy NH Fish & Game

Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease in Penn.

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Last week epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) was found in white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania. The diagnosed deer were from Northampton County, in eastern Pennsylvania. The county is across the Delaware River from New Jersey, which is also reporting cases of EHD.

One captive deer in Erie County, in the northwestern corner of the state, has also died of EHD, according to a Pennsylvania Game Commission press release.


Read a story from the Wayne Independent here.

The always informative moderator’s comments from the ProMED listserv can be found here. (Scroll down to the end to find the comments in square brackets.) It contains background info on EHD from Iowa State University.

The important background information is that EHD is endemic to North America. The disease can infect most ruminants, but it it most common in white-tailed deer. A mild form of the disease is found in the southeastern U.S., where few deer die from the disease. Periodic outbreaks in the Midwest and Northeast can range from a small outbreak with few deaths to something more widespread. The severity of the outbreak depends on several things, including the weather (wet weather favors breeding midges), how many of the biting  midges are around, and herd immunity.

Read the details in the Iowa State University fact sheet.

Photo: A healthy white-tailed deer. Credit: Ryan Hagerty, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

More Bird Species Found When Willows Rebound

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A paper in the September issue of Ecological Applications says that when previously stunted willow trees near rivers in Yellowstone National Park started to grow, the diversity of songbird species found within the willow stands increased.

The study grouped the willow stands into three types: suppressed (likely by over-browsing and -grazing by elk and bison), released (where the willows had begun to grow), and previously tall. The “released” and “previously tall” willow stands had similar range in vegetation heights, but were not distributed over the landscape in the same way.

Because the diversity of songbird species in both the released and previously tall willow stands were similar, the researchers concluded the vertical complexity was more important to supporting that diversity than horizontal complexity.

The study has implication for other places where tree growth has been stunted by over-browsing by deer, moose, elk, or other animals.

The study does not address the reason why the willows started to grow (“…a possible consequence of wolf [Canis lupus] restoration, climate change, or other factors.”), so no help there. But if you need more data on the connection between tree height and songbird diversity, you can get it in this paper.

Abstract and access to the article through subscription or fee, here on the Ecological Applications site.

A free look at the paper on a researcher’s Web site, here.

Photo: Willow catkins in Yellowstone National Park, J. Schmidt, courtesy of National Park Service.

Facebook for Bears

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In Incline Village, Nevada, on Lake Tahoe, a group has created a Facebook page to post photos of local businesses who leave their garbage bins unlocked. The town had been plagued by bears earlier this year, leading to the controversial killing of one bear. The Facebook group believes that the unsecured dumpsters were the main thing that were attracting the bears into town.

Apparently, the idea has worked, and the page is now more focused on stopping a local bear hunt and on residential garbage lapses. A status message on the page says that local businesses have not protested or given the group a hard time about the public shaming.

Here’s the Associated Press story, as it appeared in the Deseret News (which, yes, is in Utah, but the story is the same no matter what publication you read it in).

Here’s the background on the large, unstoppable bear that was creating havoc earlier this year, again from the AP, as posted by Fox40.

And finally, here’s the Lake Tahoe Wall of Shame Facebook page. 1,013 people liked it when this item was posted.

Will public shaming work for your unsecured garbage problem? The fact that this is a citizens’ group, and not an government entity makes all the difference, I think. I’m actually surprised that this worked at all, but all the more power to this group for solving the problem quickly and with seemingly few hard feelings.

Photo: Just a random black bear, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Beetles in the Big City

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An article in the September issue of Ecological Applications asks: “Do birds and beetles show similar responses to urbanization?” The answer: No.

Birds are the go-to animals when it comes to studying the impacts of urbanization, but how well do birds represent other animal groups?

A paper in a 1999 issue of Ecological Applications found that the biodiversity of birds and butterflies correlate well across the urban gradient.

However, this paper, and others, say that beetles respond to different aspects of urbanization than birds do. A 2007 paper in the journal Landscape Ecology reported on a French study of birds, beetles and small mammals and concluded that urban woodlands were an important reservoir of species diversity. Another study conducted in Europe, Canada and Japan, and published in Global Ecology and Biogeography in 2009 found that urbanization itself didn’t have a big impact on ground beetle diversity, but that forest species were lost when the forest was lost.

This is all helpful to know if you are trying to conserve beetles, but also for understanding urban ecology.


Photo: Carabid beetle By Michael K. Oliver, Ph.D. (Photo taken by me) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Water on the Wing

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It’s no surprise that birds lose fat during migration, but the loss of muscle mass, even when there is still fat to burn, has been a puzzle. A paper in the Sept. 9 issue of the journal Science shows that by metabolizing muscles and organs, the birds gain water.

In wind tunnel tests with Swainson’s thrushes, the researchers found that, even flying hard with no water to drink, the birds maintained their water balance in very dry conditions.

Read the paper in Science (fee or subscription required), here.

Or read the promotional blurb from the journal announcing the paper here.

NPR covered the story, as did the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Swainson’s thrush, courtesy National Park Service

Light Pollution Impacts

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A few weeks ago Scientific American had an excellent article that briefly described the wildlife impacts of light pollution — and it had footnotes. The focus is on cities, but the information applies everywhere.

If you need to get yourself up to speed on the ecological impacts of night lighting, or you need a resource to inform others (as long as they are scientifically literate), this is the place to start. Read the article here.

Photo: iStockphoto

Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease – Update

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It is the season of biting midges, and therefore the season for epizootic hemorrhagic disease in deer.

In Kansas, there have been several reports of dead or dieing deer. Two of those cases have been confirmed as epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD), or EH, as this article in InfoZine that reported the outbreak calls it. Read the story here.

EHD is cited as the likely source of dead and dieing deer in Montana, in this article from the Liberty County Times.

Read the ProMed entries on both these events for background, wise commentary and corrections to the articles. The comments are at the bottom of the page in [brackets]. Read it here.

There is a possible outbreak in North Dakota. It is still being investigated. Read the story in the Bismark Tribune.

And finally, two weeks ago New Jersey announced a possible outbreak of EHD. We posted that as an addition to that week’s wildlife disease update, but in case you missed it, here’s the press release.

Late addition: On Sept. 7, 2011, New York State has announced that the death of 100 deer in Rockland County two weeks ago was caused by EHD. Read the press release here.

Photo: A healthy deer. Photo credit: Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

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Bighorn sheep will find a way.

How can landowners keep cattle (or sheep or other livestock) in while allowing pronghorn to migrate and tortoises to roam freely? It can be done, and the Arizona Game and Fish Department has 30 pages worth of advice and instruction on constructing a fence that can keep in what landowners want to keep in (and keep out what landowners want to keep out), while allowing wildlife passage. There is even a section on international border fencing.

While the focus is on Arizona species (pronghorn, mule deer, javelina, desert tortoises and Gila monsters), the advice can be adapted for other species and other areas of the country.

For doubters, there is even a section on the impacts of fencing on wildlife, complete with gruesome photos.

The 34-page PDF of fencing guidelines can be found here. 

Photo: Bighorn sheep will go over, under or through most fencing. Photo credit: Christine Page, courtesy of Arizona Game and Fish.

Love, Lizards and Prescribed Burns

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Alan Templeton, a scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, has been studying collared lizards for decades and has been in love with them since he was a teenager. He found that the lizards only survive as far east as Missouri in an unusual fire-dependent ecosystem. But after a population decline, prescribed burns on these ecosystems didn’t help the lizard’s recovery much. It took landscape-level burns to get the ecosystem back in working order so the lizards could thrive.

Templeton’s paper on the lizard study is on the cover of the journal Ecology this month. 

Read the story from Washington University here.

Read the original press release from Washington University here.

Read the paper in the journal Ecology. (Free access.)