Category Archives: climate change

Dollars and Sense at NETWC

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deb markowitz VTANR“What we did to protect animals actually protected roads,” said Vermont Agency of Natural Resources secretary Deb Markowitz at a general session at the Northeastern Transportation and Wildlife Conference this week (Sept. 21 – 24) in Burlington, Vermont. In places where culverts had been resized to allow wildlife to walk along the banks during low flow periods, the culverts have held during floods like the one caused by Tropical Storm Irene in Vermont.

A documentary on the Highway Wilding project that built wildlife passages along the TransCanada Highway in Banff National Park said that the cost of hitting a moose with a vehicle averages $30,000. Hitting a deer averages over $1,000. It doesn’t take many wildlife collisions to cost-justify a wildlife crossing, the documentary said, and some highway locations are the scene of hundreds of collisions.

Photo: Camera fail. None of my photos of Markowitz speaking even made it onto my camera’s memory card. Here’s her official portrait off the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources website.

Birds and Environmental Health

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environmental health news logo-wideIt has bird week here at State Wildlife Research News, but Environmental Health News is dedicating months to articles reflecting on birds and environmental health. The publication’s Winged Warnings series will contain 16 articles when it concludes in October.

Right now you can read many informative articles about the impacts of heavy metals, toxics, climate change, night lighting and other environmental problems that harm not just birds, but humans as well.

Find the home page for the Winged Warnings series here.

State of the Birds

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2014SOTB_Cover_300pxAccording to a National Audubon Society press release issued last week, more than half of the common bird species in North America are at risk from climate change. The release announced a comprehensive study of North American bird populations based on Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count and other sources.

“The study identifies 126 species that will lose more than 50 percent of their current ranges – in some cases up to 100 percent – by 2050, with no possibility of moving elsewhere if global warming continues on its current trajectory. A further 188 species face more than 50 percent range loss by 2080 but may be able to make up some of this loss if they are able to colonize new areas. These 314 species include many not previously considered at risk,” the release says.

Read the Audubon press release here.
Read Audubon articles and access the report itself, here.
Read The New York Times article on the report here.
Read the USA Today article on the report here.

The very next day the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, a 23-member private/public partnership released its annual State of the Birds report. There, the message was much the same, with a slightly more optimistic frame. The New York Times reports that the State of the Birds says that “nearly one-third of America’s birds are in trouble.”

Federal agencies play a big role in the State of the Birds report, and this report emphasizes the importance of habitat to bird populations, pointing to specific regions as trouble spots.

“After examining the population trends of birds in desert, sagebrush and chaparral habitats of the West, the report’s authors identify aridlands as the habitat with the steepest population declines in the nation. There has been a 46 percent loss of these birds since 1968 in states such as Utah, Arizona and New Mexico,” the Initiative press release states.

The State of the Birds also emphasizes success stories, such as the impact of wetland restoration on waterfowl populations.

The 2014 State of the Birds landing page is here. It includes links to the press release, the full report, a watch list and a list of common birds in decline.
Read the very brief New York Times article here.
Read the National Public Radio report here.

The State of the Birds report has been issued since 2009. Audubon played a lead role in putting together the report and publicizing it in 2009, 2010 and 2011. It does not appear that there was a State of the Birds report in 2012. In 2013 the Audubon’s CEO issued a statement saying that Congress’s inaction on the Farm Bill was harming birds. This year, Audubon issued its own report emphasizing climate change as a threat. Audubon is still a member of the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative and its name still appears on the State of the Birds report.

 

It’s Not The Heat, It’s the Water Regime

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black-bellied_salamander_cressler_high_resToday is the second day in a US Geological Survey amphibian two-fer. If you like your wildlife moist and federally researched, you’ve come to the right place.

Scientists have long suspected that climate change is an important factor in amphibian declines, a US Geological Survey press release notes, and resource managers are asking whether conservation measures might help species persist or adapt in a changing climate. Three recent U.S. Geological Survey studies offer some insight into the issue.

The studies were conducted by researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, or ARMI.

One study found that it’s not the heat, it’s the precipitation that will drive amphibian’s response to climate change. That is, the alternating droughts and deluges that are predicted to worsen as climate change increases, will hurt amphibian populations as they struggle to adapt to ever-changing water levels. Read that paper in the journal Biology.

Another study confirmed that drought hurts populations of mole salamanders, at least over the short term. The study was important because the mole salamanders are similar to the federally threatened flatwoods salamander, and the finding implies that climate change will be yet another stressor to the threatened species. Read the paper in the journal Wetlands.

The third study showed U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wetlands Reserve Program is effective in increasing the species richness of frogs and toads on farms in the program. Creating permanent, or at least long-lasting, water sources seems to be the primary reason. Learn more in the paper in the journal Restoration Ecology.

You can read a more detailed summary of these three studies in the USGS press release, here.

Photo: Black-bellied salamander (Desmognathus quadramaculatus) was found in the Citico Creek Wilderness, Cherokee National Forest, Tennessee. Not sure what it has to do with these studies, but it’s cute. Photo by Alan Cressler, courtesy USGS.

It’s Official: National Wildlife Climate Policy

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climate strategy reportYou’ve probably heard about the drafts (since it was called for by Congress four years ago), but now the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Policy has officially been announced.

The big news appears to be a plan to create wildlife corridors so wildlife can more easily move in response to climate change. It also urges wildlife managers to plan for a changing climate, not just current conditions.

The strategy (or Strategy, as it is called in materials) appears to come with neither regulatory teeth nor funding.

Read a Los Angeles Times article, here.
Find the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaption Strategy website, here. (Follow links to summaries and frequently asked questions.)

And I just have to say that maybe next time “wildlife” will already be understood to include both fish and plants, and perhaps invertebrates as well.

Lizards and Climate Change

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shortHornedLizardTwo papers in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography* outline two threats that the increased local temperature aspect of climate change makes on lizards.

The first paper is about lizards in South America, but North American reptiles might experience something similar. Bearing live young allowed lizards to occupy colder climates, the paper says, but those species are now limited to those climates. As temperatures rise, those species will be forced either closer to the pole(s) or to higher elevations — severely limiting available habitat.

Read the paper The evolution of viviparity opens opportunities for lizard radiation but drives it into a climatic cul-de-sac, here. (Fee or subscription needed for full article.)
Read the University of Exeter press release on EurekAlert, here.

Another paper in the journal took data on the body temperature of lizards and compared it to the temperature of their environments. It found that it was the temperature of the environment, not the species’ body temperature, that correlated most closely (either positively or negatively) with important life-history factors such as clutch size and longevity.

Because environmental temperature seems to play a bigger role than body temperature (and therefore the lizards’ ability to compensate for environmental temperature), the paper says, climate change can have a “profound influence on lizard ecology and evolution.”

Read the paper Are lizards feeling the heat? here. (Fee or subscription required for full article.)

*In this case it is a coincidence that I ran two items from this journal on consecutive days. I received alerts on these papers from two different sources. Go figure. I’ll try to make next week lizard- and biogeography free.

Photo: The viviparous North American species the short-horned lizard, courtesy of the National Park Service.

Moose of “Special Concern” in Minn.

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mooseThe the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ list of endangered, threatened and special concern species is due to get its first update since 1996, a DNR press release reports. While 302 Minnesota species will be affected, moose are getting all the attention.

The iconic north woods animal is proposed for listing as a species of special concern. The designation reflects a 50 percent decline in the number of moose in the state since 2005, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. There are now about 4,000 moose in the state.

What is causing the rapid decline is still a bit of a mystery, but a combination of disease, parasites and a warming climate appear to be the causes, the Star-Tribune notes.

CBC News reports University of Minnesota Duluth biologist Ron Moen as saying that wildlife managers in Ontario should keep an eye out for their own moose. The southern part of western Ontario shares a border with Minnesota.

As for why the gray wolf’s delisting in the other direction, from special concern to not on the list, is not receiving much attention, that’s because this year’s wolf hunting season (and the federal delisting) packed more punch than this proposed delisting.

Read the Star-Tribune article here.
Read the Minn. DNR press release here.
Get more details about the list changes, here.

Photo: Moose, courtesy MN DNR

Moose Decline

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Warmer temperatures and more parasites may be the causes of a sharp decline in moose in Montana, Wyoming and Minnesota, says an article in the Billings Gazette. The decline has been noted for at least 30 years, the article says, but just recently has the matter been studied in-depth.

Montana hired Rich Deceasre as a full-time moose biologist with the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks just two months ago, the article says. Deceasre will conduct an eight- to ten-year study of moose. The protocol will be the same as for a recent Idaho study, so that the data can be compared.

Much more info, including an overview of the Minnesota moose decline, is in the Billings Gazette article. Read it here.

Photo by Alan Briere, courtesy NH Fish & Game

When the Weather is for the Birds

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Black vulture range lags behind climate change

The Black Vulture has expanded its range northward and now occurs in parts of Massachusetts where the minimum winter temperature is similar to that in Baltimore, Maryland in 1975. Photo by Liz Malyszek

Citizen scientists noticed the impact of a mild winter in the United States and Canada this year, reflected in the species composition of the birds tallied during the Great Backyard Bird Count, reports an article in ScienceNow, the online news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). You can also read the press release from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

However, birds are not responding quite so quickly to overall climate trends, says a paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology (fee or subscription required to view entire article). It’s more work from the Cornell Lab of O, but this time the press release is from Cornell University.

Climate Vulnerability of Taxa at the State Level

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Clapper rail, California Fish and GameUsually it is hard enough figuring out what’s stressing species right now to figure out which may need protection. Predicting the future — such as how land uses might change — adds another level of complexity. Figuring out the impact of climate change, with its assortment of predictive models, is more complex still.

A team from PRBO Conservation Science, a non-profit bird ecology research organization, took on the challenge of predicting the vulnerability of California’s bird species to climate change at the behest of the California Department of Fish and Game. The results were released by the science journal PLoS ONE last week.

Instead of applying existing, national models of species vulnerability, the research team developed their own framework. They were able to do this because of the abundance of data unique to California, the paper says.

“What’s most exciting about the study is that our unique approach is one that other scientists and resource managers can duplicate to help them conserve wildlife in the face of climate change,” said Tom Gardali, an ecologist with PRBO Conservation Science and the paper’s lead author, in a press release issued jointly by PRBO and the California Department of Fish and Game.

Read the PLoS ONE paper here. (Open access.)
Read the California Fish and Game release here. (It includes a link to a complete list of vulnerability ratings, by taxa.)

What do the paper’s findings mean on the ground, for California’s birds? Wetland taxa are the most vulnerable, notes a KQED climate blog, and many of the birds found to be vulnerable are found in San Francisco Bay.

The KQED Climate Watch blog says:

“That’s primarily because of sea level rise and also because there are already so many imperiled species that use that habitat in the bay,” says Tom Gardali…

Photo: The clapper rail is one of the at-risk birds identified by the climate change study. Photo courtesy California Fish and Game