Category Archives: Arizona

Desperately Seeking Stable Corridors

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Researchers from Northern Arizona University are looking for wildlife corridors to study — but not just any corridors. They are looking for long ( from half a kilometer to 100km), wide (more than 100 meters) corridors of natural habitat through human dominated landscapes. These corridors need to have similar unconnected sites nearby to serve as a reference or control site.

For a detailed description of the ideal study site, visit this page on the study’s Web site. It even describes the wiggle room for good, but not perfect, sites.

So far, all the research on wildlife corridors has focused on short ones. There’s lots of talk about establishing longer corridors, particularly to conserve wildlife during a period of rapid climate change, but no research proving those long corridors will work, the researchers say. This study will fill that research gap.

The researchers will accept study sites in any part of the world, and are offering a reward to the first person who tells them about a suitable site that is used in the study.

Please visit docorridorswork.org for more information on the project (including links to scientific papers describing corridors and the research parameters) or to suggest landscapes for the research. Contact: Dr. Andrew Gregory, Andrew.Gregory@nau.edu 1-928-523-2167

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.

2011: Year of the Turtle

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You may think that 2011 is the year of the rabbit. And in the Chinese zodiac, it is. But 2011 is also the year of the turtle, as designated by Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (PARC). The goal is to spread the word about the worldwide risk to turtle species. According to PARC information, 40 percent of turtle species worldwide are threatened with extinction.

The Year of the Turtle program provides participants with a cool logo; a monthly newsletter with education materials, a calendar, photos, and interviews with turtle experts; a national site for turtle-related events; links to a wealth of information; and, most recently, a t-shirt available for purchase.
Fifty partners have joined with PARC to support the Year of the Turtle. Many of these partner organizations are reptile societies and conservation organizations of various stripes, but four states have also joined in: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Georgia, and Arizona.
Tomorrow we’ll take a look at how two of those states, Connecticut and Massachusetts, have woven the Year of the Turtle into their education and citizen science programs.

Illustration: PARC’s Year of the Turtle logo

Squirrels, snails captive bred in Arizona

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File under “food for thought”: according to an article in the New York Times, four Mount Graham red squirrels and hundreds of Three Forks springsnails are being raised in captivity at the Arizona Zoo. For the squirrels, the reason is a worse than average fire season has increased the threat to the rare squirrel.

The Mount Graham red squirrel was once thought to be extinct. It was placed on the federal Endangered Species list in 1987. It has been controversial because it once held up the construction of the Mount Graham International Observatory in one of those somewhat rare and always fascinating big science vs. wildlife conservation showdowns.

The Times article includes a link to further species info on the squirrel.

Photo: Mount Graham red squirrel, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Wildlife Under Fire

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With wildfires burning in Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia in addition to the headline-grabbing Arizona Wallow Fire, this article from the Denver Post on the Arizona fire’s effect on endangered wildlife is worth a look.

The news: while adult spotted owls should have been able to fly away from tree crown fires, their nestlings and young likely didn’t make it. Find out more about species ranging from wolves to trout in the Denver Post story.

Photo: This is a controlled burn on a Maryland national wildlife refuge, but you get the idea. Photo credit: Catherine Hibbard, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

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

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.

Bighorn sheep use overpass

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Photo: Arizona Game & Fish

Bighorn sheep have already been photographed using a wildlife highway overpass in Arizona, south of Hoover Dam. The overpasses were completed in January.

Arizona Game and Fish officials were concerned when they heard that Highway 93, in northwest Arizona, was going to be widened. The area is home to the nation’s largest contiguous population of bighorn sheep. Experience had shown that big horn sheep are wary of wildlife underpasses, which are much more popular with the sheep’s predators. Since bighorn sheep like to stay high, and were approaching the highway from the ridgelines anyway, four overpasses were incorporated into the 15-mile-long highway expansion project.

For more information about the project and the results, read this article in the Prescott Daily Courier. You can find information on the project from the Arizona Game and Fish Department here, and includes video.