Category Archives: Massachusetts

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

Black Bear Safety

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This paper in the Journal of Wildlife Management is timely. Black bears are awake, looking for food, and, not finding much in nature, are looking to garbage cans and bird feeders (or, as at my house yesterday, a compost bin), when they can get at them.

Canadian scientists, with help from a scientist at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and a Brigham Young University researcher, investigated over a century of fatal black bear attacks on humans, and got a big surprise. The conventional wisdom about bear attacks — that they are mostly mothers defending their young — did not hold up to analysis.

The study found that male bears were involved in 92 percent of fatal black bear attacks. The people’s food or garbage likely played a role in the attack 38 percent of the time. Ninety-one percent of the time, the person who was killed was alone or with one other person.

The number of fatalities was a surprise as well, at least to me. The scientists studied 63 deaths. The rate of fatal attacks seems to be increasing, with 86 percent of the attacks occurring between 1960 and 2009. And while I had imagined the mid-Atlantic US to the southern Appalachians as offering a dangerous mix of big black bears and lots of people, it turns out that Canada is home to most black bear fatalities, with 44 of the 63 fatal attacks. (With another five in Alaska, leaving the contiguous U.S. states with just 14.)

Read more about the study in the Toronto Globe and Mail, complete with a nice map.

Read the abstract, or the whole article with subscription or for a fee, in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

Photo credit: Waverley Traylor, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Black Bear Safety

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This paper in the Journal of Wildlife Management is timely. Black bears are awake, looking for food, and, not finding much in nature, are looking to garbage cans and bird feeders (or, as at my house yesterday, a compost bin), when they can get at them.

Canadian scientists, with help from a scientist at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and a Brigham Young University researcher, investigated over a century of fatal black bear attacks on humans, and got a big surprise. The conventional wisdom about bear attacks — that they are mostly mothers defending their young — did not hold up to analysis.

The study found that male bears were involved in 92 percent of fatal black bear attacks. The people’s food or garbage likely played a role in the attack 38 percent of the time. Ninety-one percent of the time, the person who was killed was alone or with one other person.

The number of fatalities was a surprise as well, at least to me. The scientists studied 63 deaths. The rate of fatal attacks seems to be increasing, with 86 percent of the attacks occurring between 1960 and 2009. And while I had imagined the mid-Atlantic US to the southern Appalachians as offering a dangerous mix of big black bears and lots of people, it turns out that Canada is home to most black bear fatalities, with 44 of the 63 fatal attacks. (With another five in Alaska, leaving the contiguous U.S. states with just 14.)

Read more about the study in the Toronto Globe and Mail, complete with a nice map.

Read the abstract, or the whole article with subscription or for a fee, in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

Photo credit: Waverley Traylor, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Spring research round-up

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Black duck
The New York State Department of Envirnmental Conservation and the New York Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (located at Cornell University) are conducting two black bear research projects in south-central New York this season. One study will estimate bear population density using a genetic (DNA) identification technique. The other will study bear movements and habitat selection in core bear ranges and fringe areas. Read more.
Also this spring, the NJ Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish and Wildlife’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program is teaming up with Montclair State University and the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey for the state’s first broad-based scientific study of chytrid fungus. The study seeks to find out if chytrid fungus is having an impact on the state’s amphibian populations. More info from the State of New Jersey.
This winter the Massachusetts Fish and Wildlife Department studied black ducks along the state’s coast. The department is concerned about the birds because their numbers have been declining. Read about the study in this article from the Cape Codder, via the WickedLocal Eastham blog. The study will continue for three more years.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Fish and Wildlife recently completed catfish research in the Wabash River. There had been no harvest limits on large catfish in the state, and the public had expressed concerns about fishing pressure. The state is looking into regulating the fishery. Some info on the regs from the Indiana General Assembly. A report on catfish in the Wabash River.
Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Dept.

Isolated populations further endanger NE cottontail

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Photo: US Fish & Wildlife

Genetic analysis of the remaining New England cottontail populations show that five population clusters of rabbits are not mingling, which makes the survival of some of the populations even less likely than was already thought.

The University of New Hampshire based team of researchers found that New England cottontail rabbits in southern Maine, and central and southeastern New Hampshire formed one population cluster; Cape Cod, Massachusetts was home to another cluster; parts of eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island were home to a third cluster; and western Connecticut, southeastern New York and southwestern Massachusetts had a fourth cluster. One isolated population in eastern Connecticut was home to the fifth cluster, which was genetically isolated, even from the two other population clusters nearby.

The researchers say that immediate conservation efforts should focus on shoring up New England cottontail populations in Maine, New Hampshire, and on Cape Cod. Eventually, they say, the connectivity between the populations needs to be restored.

The New England cottontail is not a federally endangered species. It was found “warranted by precluded,” by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Translated into English, that means they found that it probably deserves protection, but they just don’t have the resources to do it.

Read the article in the journal Conservation Genetics, here.

For more on the New England cottontail, and why it looks just like an eastern cottontail, but isn’t one, read more in the Outside Story nature column.

How dense do coyotes get?

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The pack density of urban coyotes can be high, says a paper in the current issue of American Midland Naturalist. As part of a long-term study of coyotes in Massachusetts, the researchers observed that a pack of coyotes north of Boston was able to survive in a particularly small territory. The pack, they say, was of average size for the region: four coyotes in winter, six to seven in summer. But the pack occupied just two square kilometers. Read more here.

Find a free version of the paper here.

Northeast bat numbers down in summer too

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In this Biodiversity and Conservation paper, a US Forest Service researcher compares the results of an acoustic bat survey performed last summer at Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts to results from four years ago and finds that numbers are down 72 percent.

Photo: A healthy Indiana bat, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service