Category Archives: population

New Black-footed Ferret Colony Found in S.D.

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The Caspar Star-Tribune reports that a new wild colony of black-footed ferrets has been found on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota. North America’s only native ferret was thought to be extinct in the wild when illness struck a population in Meeteetse, Wyoming and the survivors were brought into captivity between 1985 and 1987.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species description for the black-footed ferret said that, “It is unlikely that any undiscovered wild populations remain.”

According to the Star-Tribune, Mike Gutzmer, with Columbus, Nebraska-based New Century Environmental LLC was hired by reservation leaders to investigate reports of black-footed ferrets in the area. Gutzmer searched the reservation’s prairie dog towns for a month before finding the new population.

Re-introduced ferrets now breed in 19 locations, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Read the Star-Tribune article here.
Read the USFWS black-footed ferret page here.

Photo: Black-Footed Ferret Photo by Charlene Bessken, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife

Vermont Eagle Population Soars

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Vermont has long lagged behind the other New England states in bald eagle populations. Even when bald eagle populations in neighboring states recovered to the point where they had dozens of nesting pairs, Vermont was still not home to eagles that were successfully raising young.

That changed in 2008, when a single pair fledged a single chick. In 2009, the state did its best to help a second breeding eagle pair that lost their nest when the tree it was in fell down. Now, just four years after that first eagle fledged, 23 eagles were fledged in 15 Vermont nests this year, reports the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Read the Vermont Fish and Wildlife press release, here.
Read Vermont’s bald eagle recovery plan, here.

Summer’s Grizzly-death Pattern a Puzzle

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Yellowstone grizzly

The percentage grizzly bears dieing from natural causes is up, so the percentage of grizzly bears killed by humans in the Greater Yellowstone area so far this summer is way down, says an article in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, citing data from Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.

The increase in natural deaths may be due to the advancing age of the grizzly population, the article says.

The study team is collecting data that will inform a decision on whether area grizzly bears will remain “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

See the numbers and the theories behind the unusual mortality numbers in the Jackson Hole News & Guide article.

Photo of a grizzly bear in Yellowstone by Terry Tollefsbol

Summer’s Grizzly-death Pattern a Puzzle

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Yellowstone grizzly

The percentage grizzly bears dieing from natural causes is up, so the percentage of grizzly bears killed by humans in the Greater Yellowstone area so far this summer is way down, says an article in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, citing data from Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.

The increase in natural deaths may be due to the advancing age of the grizzly population, the article says.

The study team is collecting data that will inform a decision on whether area grizzly bears will remain “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

See the numbers and the theories behind the unusual mortality numbers in the Jackson Hole News & Guide article.

Photo of a grizzly bear in Yellowstone by Terry Tollefsbol

Bumblebee Blip in Utah

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A mild winter means more bumblebees in Utah, a researcher says. Particularly, one rare species that previously only had 129 bees has been seen by the dozens in one Utah city alone. This news is hopeful because, generally, bumblebees have been in decline nationwide.

Read the story in the Deseret News, here.

The story on the Utah bumblebee boom has created a lot of buzz itself, but not a single story identifies which species of bumblebee has experienced the spring population bump. I contacted the researcher, but he did not respond.

If your state also experienced a mild winter, this may be the year to search for rare bumblebee species.

Photo: bumblebee by Laura Perlick, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife

This Year Is Just Ducky

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The north-central United States, south-central and northern Canada, and Alaska are known as America’s duck factory. In the past year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service reports, duck populations in these regions are up, in spite of a decline in breeding habitat conditions.

The USFWS press release announces the availability of the 26-page long 2012 Trends in Duck Breeding Report.

According to the report, the decline in breeding conditions is due primarily to a mild winter (which means less snow, therefore less snowmelt), a dry spring and warmer than typical spring temperatures.

The shocking statistic was a 49 percent decrease in ponds from last year. The report says that the number of ponds this year was similar to the average, so it appears that last year’s wet weather had as much to do with the pond decline as this year’s dry weather.

The least shocking statistic is that mallard numbers are way up.

Read the press release here.
Download the report (a big PDF), here.

Photo: Mallard drake by Erwin and Peggy Bauer, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

March Roundup of New Research

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Spring is here and a bunch of wildlife surveys are underway around the country.

In Delaware:
-It’s the fifth and final year of the Delaware Breeding Bird Atlas.
-A special effort is being made in 2012 to tally owls as part of the atlas.
–Horseshoe crabs are being tallied again, and volunteers are being trained.
-The annual osprey count is offering a volunteer training for the first time since 2007.

Maryland is two years in to four years of surveys for an amphibian and reptile atlas and is looking for volunteers.

In Kansas, they are searching for lesser prairie chicken breeding areas, or leks, from the air with helicopters. Field crews will train on March 29-31 and conduct official survey work across all of western Kansas until the middle of May. The Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism is also asking people to report leks. The survey is part of a five-state effort, and the survey technique will be evaluated.

In North Dakota, the Game and Fish Department has launched a two-year study of white-tailed deer in intensely farmed agricultural areas.

In Maine, biologists at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife have visited up to 100 dens each winter for 37 years, making the survey in the nation’s oldest radio-collar monitoring program for bears. This year the Maine Sunday Telegram wrote a story about it, with lots of pics. Read it here.

And in Washington, commuters have been reporting wildlife sightings for over a year on the I-90 corridor in anticipation of road improvements. The project’s first annual report was released recently, generating articles in the Everett Herald  and The Seattle Times, and coverage other media.

Photo of I-90 Wildlife Watch billboard by Paula MacKay/Western Transportation Institute, used by permission.

Hot Weather and Urban Deer Hunters

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When the temperature approaches the 80s, do deer hunters stay home? A recent press release from the Missouri Department of Conservation shows that fewer deer were killed during urban deer hunts in years when the weather is warm than in years with more seasonable temperatures.

Similar trends are seen during regular hunting seasons, but the result is more acute during urban hunts, because they may only last a day or a few days.

The nicest thing about this press release is that it offers a few years of data, with the number of deer killed and the temperature. Add it to or compare it with your own data from urban hunts for some possible insight. Read more here.

If you are interested in urban deer, don’t miss the current issue of The Wildlife Society Bulletin, which focuses on urban deer. Articles include contraceptive use, the influence of roads and various controlled hunt issues. Read more here. (Fee or subscription required.)

Photo: courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources

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

Disease is Less Potent Where There Are More Species

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Previous research has shown that higher levels of biodiversity leads to lower levels of infectious disease because of the “dilution effect,” where some species are poor hosts of the disease or may not be infected at all, slowing disease transmission.

The dilution effect has been studied in Lyme disease and West Nile.

A paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows the dilution effect at work in chytrid fungus infections in Western toads. Other news outlets have reprinted the press release from Oregon State University. (We have a OSU two-fer this week. Go Beavers.)

Read the original release via EurakAlert. 

The press release does not make clear that this was a laboratory experiment, or that the experiment was conducted with tadpoles. The Western toad tadpoles were raised in aquaria with American bullfrogs and Cascades frogs. You can read the Ph.D. dissertation that is the basis for the paper here. (It’s a big PDF, but that shouldn’t be a surprise.)

The laboratory setting with just three species (well, four, if you count the fungus) makes the conclusion that much more striking. It would be interesting to see how these findings hold up in the field.

Read the PNAS paper here (fee or subscription required).
Read a conference summary of the research from the Ecological Society of America annual meeting here.

Photo: Western toad. Courtesy Oregon State University.