Dollars and Sense at NETWC

Posted on September 24, 2014 by MadelineBodin

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.

EHD in Deer in Oregon

Posted on September 18, 2014 by MadelineBodin

090914_EHD_confirmed_black-tailed_deer_300 Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) has been confirmed as the cause of death in over 100 deer in southwestern Oregon, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced last week. EHD had not been observed in this region of the state before. The finding was confirmed by Oregon State University’s Veterinary Diagnostic Lab.

EHD is transmitted by gnats and causes disease in both deer and livestock. In this case, the diseased deer were black-tailed deer.

There have also been reports of more than 200 dead deer in two counties that are south of the EHD site, the press release says, but those deer where shown to have Adenovirus Hemorrhagic Disease (AHD), which is common in the area and spread through nose to nose contact.

Read the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) release here.

Photo: This black-tailed deer, which appears fatigued, died just a few days after this photo was taken. It was one of the deer that later tested positive for EHD. -Photo by ODFW-

Mule Deer Decline Research

Posted on September 3, 2014 by MadelineBodin

Why are mule deer declining in Western states? So far, that’s a mystery. The Wyoming Game & Fish Department reports that the Muley Fanatic Foundation has pledged $1.3 million in an attempt to solve that mystery.

The money will fund an ambitious, five-year research project called the Deer-Elk Ecology Research (D.E.E.R.) project. The department’s press release says that the project will use five kinds of high-tech tracking devices, satellite monitoring, laboratory analysis, 170 helicopter enabled animal captures and the dedicated services of a full-time Ph.D candidate and will involve the Muley Fanatic Foundation,the University of Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, as well as the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

The research will take place in the greater Little Mountain Area of southwest Wyoming because it is rich in the factors that are suspected in the mule deers decline: prolonged drought, habitat alteration, predation, and expanding elk populations.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department press release, here.
Link to the Muley Fanatic Foundation, here.

Photo: A completely different mule deer study, but still in Wyoming. This one in the Wyoming Range. Courtesy Wyoming Game and Fish

First Wild CWD in Iowa

Posted on April 25, 2014 by MadelineBodin

Late 2012 saw first case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in captive deer in Iowa, and there has been chronic wasting disease in wild deer in every state bordering Iowa, but Iowa only recorded its first case of CWD in a wild deer in the state in an announcement on April 9.

According to an Iowa Department of Natural Resources press release, “The deer was reported as harvested in Allamakee County during the first shotgun season in early December.”

The state is formulating a response plan and coordinating efforts with nearby Minnesota and Wisconsin.

A report by KTVO says that the gates of the hunting facility in Davis County where the first case of CWD was found two years ago were chained open when the facility was supposed to be quarantined to protect local deer from the disease.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources press release is here.
A Minneapolis Star-Tribune article about the finding is here.
A Rochester (MN) Post-Bulletin article is here.
The Des Moines Register article is here.
And the KTVO report is here.

Urban (and Suburban) Deer

Posted on February 4, 2014 by MadelineBodin

deer technical guide The Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Fish & Wildlife has put together a 32-page online booklet to help municipalities better understand deer and available management options. The impact of white-tailed deer within urban communities is not just a problem in several Indiana communities, but is a growing problem nationwide.

“The Urban Deer guide was developed to support communities that struggle with urban deer conflicts,” said Chad Stewart, DNR’s deer management biologist in a department statement. “Very few topics can be as polarizing as dealing with white-tailed deer in an urban setting. How to resolve these conflicts can cause elected officials many sleepless nights.”

The booklet includes appendices on using sharp-shooters, deer resistant plants, and a solutions matrix.

This link will take you straight to the PDF of the booklet, Urban Deer: Technical Guide.

Another CWD Deer in Pennsylvania

Posted on January 8, 2014 by MadelineBodin

white_tailed_deer_buck Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) was first detected in Pennsylvania in 2012 at a captive facility in Adams County. Subsequently, three free-ranging deer harvested by hunters during the 2012 season tested positive for CWD. Now, a Pennsylvania Game Commission press release reports, a white-tailed deer that was killed by a vehicle this fall has tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD).

The latest case is in the same county as one of the previous wild deer cases. Apparently, that’s the first report of CWD in Pennsylvania in 2013 (even though the press release came out in 2014, which makes things a little confusing).

Read the Pennsylvania Game Commission press release, here.
Read a brief article in PressConnects.com, a Gannett publication, here.

Photo: A (very) healthy deer. Joe Kosack/Pennsylvania Game Commission

Wyoming Studies Mule Deer and Burbot

Posted on January 3, 2014 by MadelineBodin

Wyoming Game and Fish Department personnel, researchers with the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming, personnel from the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service, and many volunteers are trapping mule deer for two research projects in southwest Wyoming, a Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) press release says.

In one region, the department would like to know how many deer travel between Wyoming and Colorado, an important point of information for managing mule deer in both states. In that study, mule deer are netted when they feed at a bait of apple pulp and are fitted with bright yellow numbered ear tags and white vinyl visual collars. Some bucks are fitted with VHF ear tags.

In another region, the deer are netting by helicopter and fitted with GPS collars.

Read all the details, including the time frame of these multi-year studies, in the WGFD press release, here.

WGFD has also teamed up with researchers from the University of Idaho and Trout Unlimited to learn more about an illegally introduced population of burbot (a fish) in the Green River, according to another WGFD press release.

The tricky part is that burbot are native to some watersheds in Wyoming. The research, says the press release, “aims to study the effectiveness of various sampling gears for capturing burbot in flowing water, learn more about how they are potentially affecting this world-class sport fishery and what actions can be taken to prevent such negative impacts.” It notes that in some parts of its native range, burbot are in decline.

Photo: a Wyoming mule deer captured in the second study. Courtesy of Wyoming Game and Fish.

Third Time’s the Charm for Wildlife Passages

Posted on November 12, 2013 by MadelineBodin

A pronghorn is released in western Colorado At Trapper’s Point in Wyoming, migrating pronghorns and mule deer are funneled by two rivers to 13-mile stretch of Highway 191, where they attempt to cross. Each year they endanger their own lives crossing the highway, and human lives as well, High Country News’s Goat blog reports.

Last year the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) opened eight wildlife crossings, including both under- and overpasses at the site. The deer and pronghorns were guided toward the passages with fencing.

The effort worked — the deer and pronghorn eventually used the passages, but not without a lot of searching, looking and just plain standing around, first. Worse still, during the spring migration, the pronghorn and deer repeated the process. The passages still made them nervous.

But the third time is the charm, according to the excellent Goat blog post and a press release from the Wildlife Conservation Society. When encountering the passages for the second time on their fall migration, the animals didn’t hesitate, but proceeded right through.

Read High Country News’s Goat blog, here.
Read the Wildlife Conservation Society press release, here.

Photo: A pronghorn being released after being collared in Colorado. Courtesy Colorado Division of Wildlife

EHD News

Posted on September 25, 2013 by MadelineBodin

It’s been a quiet summer for epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) in deer. Either conditions didn’t favor the biting midges that spread the disease among deer, or the northern states that experience periodic fatal outbreaks of the disease are becoming used to the new normal.

EHD season isn’t over, though, as these two news items show. Reuters says that wildlife managers in Montana are trying to pin down the cause of death for 100 white-tailed deer along the Clark Fork River. EHD had not been previously found in Montana west of the Continental Divide, the article says.

Read the Reuters story here.

In North Dakota, there is no doubt that EHD is the cause of deer deaths there. An Associated Press story says that North Dakota’s Game and Fish Department has suspended the sale of 1,000 doe hunting licenses because of an EHD outbreak that began in August and continues, the article quotes ND wildlife Chief Randy Kreil as saying.

Read the AP article in South Carolina’s The State, here.

Getting the Lead Out

Posted on September 3, 2013 by MadelineBodin

lead - periodic table Two stories today focus on two different states’ efforts to get lead out of the environment.

An article in the Portland (Maine) Herald Press literally goes behind the scenes of the recent legislative ban on lead fishing gear in Maine, which was passed earlier this year, but won’t totally ban the lead gear until 2017. It goes into the lab of Mark Pokras, a Tufts University professor of wildlife health, who played a role in encouraging that legislation. Pokras has been studying lead poisoning in loons for over 20 years.

Pokras says that lead poisoning is responsible for the deaths of over a third of the loons that find their way to his lab in Massachusetts.

Read the story in the Portland Herald Press, here.

In Minnesota, studies show that a bad shot with a lead bullet (such as one that hits a hip bone), can cause lead to splinter throughout a white tailed deer’s flesh to the extent that it would be difficult, or impossible, to remove all of it. For the sake of public health, and also for the sake of the state’s bald eagles, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources encourages deer hunters to voluntarily use copper bullets.

The article details some of the differences between hunting with copper and lead bullets, which implies that a different technique may be more effective when using copper bullets.

Read the story in the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, here.

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