Author Archives: MadelineBodin

Animals on the Move

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Feral swine are moving into southern New York State, from scattered toe-holds in the northern part of the state. (Hopewell Evening Tribune)

Armadillos are heading north, perhaps because milder winters let them survive in unexpected places.(The Daily Climate)

Bears are returning to previously-burned regions of Arizona. Arizona Game and Fish warns returning home-owners in bear-prone areas to throw away spoiled food at the landfill. This is probably a good idea for residents returning to flooded areas in other states as well.

While there have been plenty of black bear sightings in urban and suburban areas all over the country, bears are causing more than the usual ruckus in densely populated New Jersey. (Newark Star-Ledger) See this article (Nyack Patch) and these articles also.

And in Greenwich, Connecticut, people are still seeing mountain lions. (Hartford Courant) (See last week’s post.)

Photo: John and Karen Hollingsworth, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit’s Last Stand

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Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is making what may be a final attempt to restore the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit to its native habitat. A 2007 attempt to reintroduce zoo-bred rabbits into the wild ended in most of the naive rabbits being eaten by predators.

This time the rabbits will be released into a fenced enclosure, with gradual exposure to predators through smaller enclosures with tunnels to the outside. The rabbits are not pure-bred Columbia Basin pygmies, but have been bred with pygmy rabbits from Idaho and Oregon, which are not endangered. In fact, most other pygmy rabbits in the West thrive.

Read more in this article in the Idaho Statesman. An InsideScience report on the restoration is available via US News and World Report. Or read the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife press release. Read the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s species profile (well technically, a “distinct population segment” profile) here.

Photo: A pygmy rabbit of unknown distinct population segment, likely from Idaho, courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Photo Credit: R. Dixon (IDFG) and H. Ulmschneider (BLM)

Nevada Law Lets Gov Appoint Wildlife Director

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A bill signed into law this week in Nevada means that the state’s governor will have more of a say in who the state’s wildlife director will be. Previously, the Nevada governor needed to select a wildlife director from among the candidates submitted by the state’s Wildlife Commission. The new law eliminates that restriction on the governor’s appointment.

Read more about the new law in this article in The Danbury (Ct.) News-Times (Why a Connecticut outlet ran this Associated Press story on Nevada when few other outlets did is beyond me.) It also had the news when the bill passed the Nevada legislature.

The Daily Sparks Tribune has some of the background of the dust-up between governor and director that lead to the bill.

How Did the Animal Cross the Road? The Shocking Answer

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One problem with fencing off highways so that large animals don’t wander on is that exits, entering roadways, and driveways can’t be fenced off. Animals on highways cause accidents, injury, and sometimes death for both the animal and passengers in the car that hits them. Often, fencing is crossed off the list of possibilities for directing wildlife crossings because there is simply too much other pavement entering the highway that can’t be fenced.

The California Department of Transportation is installing mats that deliver an electric shock to animals entering a highway in southern California. The stretch of Highway 101 has a problem with large animals causing accidents. The mats will be most helpful for keeping bears off the highway. The mats won’t shock cars or people wearing shoes.

Read the whole story in the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

This isn’t the first time shock mats have been used to keep wildlife off a highway. Four years ago New Mexico installed the mats as part of a whole suite of devices installed to reduce wildlife-caused accidents east of Albuquerque.
New Mexico Game & Fish press release
The most recent news on the project appears to be from The Christian Science Monitor, three years ago.
The Tijeras Canyon Safe Passage Coalition Web site looks like it hasn’t been updated since then.

Photo: Just a generic highway. No relation to the two mentioned.

Connecticut Mountain Lion Struck By Car

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A mountain lion was struck and killed by a car on a Connecticut highway Saturday morning (June 11). News reports say Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection officials believe it to be the same animal that was spotted in Greenwich, Connecticut earlier that week. The reports also mention that it is likely a captive animal that escaped or was released.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the mountain lion extirpated from the East back in March. Captives roaming free and the occasional wild wanderer should keep the Internet humming for years to come.

See reports in the Hartford Courant, and NBC News.

Update: The Connecticut DEP press release.

Photo: Connecticut State Police/Ct. DEP

Connecticut Mountain Lion Struck By Car

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A mountain lion was struck and killed by a car on a Connecticut highway Saturday morning (June 11). News reports say Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection officials believe it to be the same animal that was spotted in Greenwich, Connecticut earlier that week. The reports also mention that it is likely a captive animal that escaped or was released.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the mountain lion extirpated from the East back in March. Captives roaming free and the occasional wild wanderer should keep the Internet humming for years to come.

See reports in the Hartford Courant, and NBC News.

Update: The Connecticut DEP press release.

Photo: Connecticut State Police/Ct. DEP

Fire, Water, and Wildlife

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There is fire in the West, while flooding continues everywhere else.

Two of Arizona’s four packs of endangered Mexican wolves are in the immediate area of the Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona. An interagency team is monitoring the effects of the fire on the endangered wolves.

Read more in this press release from the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Or this very brief article from KPHO.

When flooding first struck the Mississippi River, there was also flooding in South Dakota and Vermont. The flooding continues there as well, prompting these two stories about flooding and wildlife.

The first, from the Greenfield (S.D.) Daily Reporter says that wildlife officials are asking the public not to rescue wildlife displaced by the flooding. They particularly ask people to leave fawns alone, since does can leave fawns for what seems to humans like a long time. Not sure how that relates to the floods. Wildlife officials all over the country are asking the public to do the same thing. Read more.

In Vermont, high water on Lake Champlain means that black terns — a state-threatened bird — probably won’t raise broods in the state this year. It is expected to be a rough nesting year for aquatic birds, and even ground-nesting birds may be effected by the flooding that hit the state last week. Beavers and muskrats are also dealing with the high water, and are seeking high ground, which is forcing them on to roadways more than usual.

The article ran in the Sunday Rutland Herald and Barre Montpelier Times-Argus, but is behind a paywall.

Update: Arizona Game and Fish has a Web page with information about the state’s fires and wildlife, including its impact on hunting and fishing in the area. It plans to update the site as needed:
http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/fire_impacts_on_wildlife.shtml


Photo: a Mexican wolf in Arizona on a much cooler day. Photo courtesy of the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

Invasives Are Food for Thought, But Not For Growth

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How do invasive species become invasive? There are a number of hypotheses, and sorting them out is vital to wildlife managers trying to lessen the invasives’ impact. One recent study, published in the journal Ecology, found that generalist plant-eaters, in this case insects, grew more slowly when eating a plant that was not native to their continent.

The plant was spotted knapweed, known to have at least one defensive chemical not yet found in plants native to North America. The researchers concluded that when it came to generalist herbivores and spotted knapweed, the “novel weapons hypothesis,” which says the invasives thrive because native predators are vulnerable to their unfamiliar defenses, seems to be the case.

The study is interesting for a bunch of reasons, but particularly because it offers some insight into the role of spotted knapweed in North American ecosystems. There are many implications, but let’s start with the trickle-up effect in the ecosystem of spotted knapweed consumers (moths, grasshoppers) that are smaller, but still abundant. That could really mess with the energy budget of their predators. Also, while we may think of the biggest impacts as coming from the invasive plant not being eaten at all, even when eaten, the sub-lethal effects of consuming spotted knapweed can echo through the food chain.

Read the whole article, and come to your own conclusions. It’s open access: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/full/10.1890/10-1230.1
Photo: A bee on spotted knapweed.
Photo credit: Cody Hough, college student and photographer in the Michigan area.

Colorado Combines Wildlife Department with Parks

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Coloradans are taking the newly created partnership between their state wildlife department with their state parks department seriously. This article in New West discusses how several Western states are looking to combine state agencies to save money.

What the article doesn’t mention, however, is that there are almost as many ways to organize the bureaucracy of wildlife management at the state level as there are states, or that many states in other regions already combine parks and wildlife, most famously, Texas.

I think it matters less where a state sticks its wildlife management function within its bureaucracy, than how the people of the state view their relationship to wildlife. That’s something that can’t be legislated.

For more, see: “Colorado Shuffles Parks, Wildlife Departments” in New West.