Category Archives: Texas

Feds Announce State Wildlife Grants

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Oregon vesper sparrow and Mazama pocket gopher; mountain plover, burrowing owl and McCown’s longspur; the palila, a rapidly-declining Hawaiian honeycreeper; Karner blue butterfly, grasshopper sparrow, Henslow’s sparrow, and northern harrier; and white-tailed, Gunnison’s, Utah, and black-tailed prairie dogs are among the non-game species to benefit from this round of the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s State Wildlife Grants.

The competitive federal grants focus on large-scale, cooperative conservation projects for Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) that are included in State Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Plans (also known as State Wildlife Action Plans — what would government be without changing terminology?).

Seven projects will take place in 12 states: Washington (2), Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, Colorado, Hawaii, Michigan, Alabama, Arizona, Montana, Texas, Wyoming (and also British Columbia, Canada).

Read about the projects in the USFWS press release, here. Don’t bother to follow the link in the press release for more information about individual projects. It takes you to information about the grants that hasn’t been updated in years.

Photo: Black-tailed prairie dog, by Gary M. Stolz, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

 

Dickcissels and Restored Grasslands

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There are more dickcissels (Spiza americana) on grasslands restored with native grasses and they nest more frequently than on grasslands with exotic grasses, a study reported in the most recent issue of The Southwestern Naturalist found, but the rate of nesting success on the restored grasslands was not significantly higher.

Dickcissels are in steep decline, particularly in the heart of their range. Restoring grasslands with native species seems like a good way to slow their population decline. This paper suggests that other factors may be as important as whether the grasses in the grassland are native or exotic, such as the size of the grassland and the height of the grasses, but that overall, dickcissel nesting is more productive at restored sites .

Read the paper here (subscription or fee required to read the full text).
A little digging found that this paper is based on a master’s thesis. Read it here.

Photo: Dickcissel by Steve Maslowski, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Building in the “Fire Plain”

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Rivers have floodplains. We are starting to learn that the floodplain needs to do its thing — flood — for the surrounding natural systems to work. With all the attention that this year’s wildfires are getting, there is a little more attention being paid to not building where fire needs to do its thing.

Here’s an very brief opinion piece in the Helena Independent Record calling for blocking development in the “fire plain.”

Given that there are entire ecosystems that are fire-dependent, is it possible to designate a “fire plain”? Three years ago, Texas Forest Service GIS Specialist Karen Ridenour won a Firewise Leadership Award for investigating just that question. Here’s the press release on her award, with links to follow for more info.

Photo of prescribed burn in the Black Hills of South Dakota by Terry Tompkins, courtesy of US Forest Service

March Wildlife Disease Roundup

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Things have actually been pretty quiet over the past month when it comes to wildlife diseases. The big news, of course, is white nose syndrome in Alabama, but there have been a few other stories worth noting.

Rabbits can get prion diseases. Once it looked like they were immune to diseases in the family of mad cow and chronic wasting disease, but the latest research shows they can get it. (See the original paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)

At least one frog species, the Pacific chorus frog, is a carrier of chytrid fungus, a recent study found. Read the LiveScience story via MSNBC. The study was published recently in PLoS ONE, read it here. Or read the San Francisco State University press release, here.

A wolf suffering from parvovirus was discovered in Idaho. Parovirus effects all canids, including domestic dogs. There is a vaccine for the disease available for dogs. Read the Idaho Department of Fish and Game press release here.

Also, there has been an outbreak of canine distemper in gray foxes in Michigan.

For birds:
The red tides on the Gulf coast of Texas have caused the deaths of redhead ducks.
The death of eider ducks on Cape Cod (Massachusetts) has been pinned on a virus, named Wellfleet Bay virus.
Ten wild turkeys were found dead from avian pox, a virus, in southeast Montana.

Finally, back in late February, brucellosis, a cattle disease, was found in elk in Montana.

Photo: A Pacific chorus frog. Credit: Joyce Gross

Scent Marking Won’t Keep Coyotes Away

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Coyotes are territorial and mark their territories with urine. There are plenty of studies that show predator urine keeps prey away (such as keeping deer away from a garden with coyote urine). And using territorial marking has worked in repelling African wild dogs. But the trick doesn’t appear to work with coyotes.

A study reported in the last issue of The Wildlife Society Bulletin found that using coyote urine to mark off an area to keep other coyotes away, not only didn’t repel them, but only served to have coyotes linger in the area.

Read the article in Wildlife Society Bulletin. (Subscription of fee required, but the abstract pretty much tells you all you need to know.)

A Ph.D. student of that paper’s lead author did a similar study a few years ago, with captive coyotes, and got a similar finding. Read her doctoral thesis, with references to the predator/prey studies and other background info on the general concept — here.

Coyote photo by Steve Thompson, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Rare Birds: Dry or Oily?

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During Texas’s last drought, 23 whooping cranes died while wintering in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, says an Associated Press story in the Tampa Bay Times. With another drought this year, wildlife managers can only watch and wait to see what happens.

The total population of wild whooping cranes is about 400. The only self-sustaining wild population is the one that migrates between Aransas in Texas and Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada.

Read the story in the Tampa Bay Times, here.

In Colorado, St. Vrain State Park sits in the middle of a productive oil field. The state is short on funds. Oil companies are eager to expand into the park, which is home to bald eagles, American white pelicans and the state’s largest blue heron rookery.

Read about the conundrum in the Denver Post: This news story lays out the facts. This columnist explains the dilemma.

What’s a state to do? In Colorado, they said yes to limited drilling on 1/12. Read about the decision in the Denver Business Journal.

Photo: Whooping cranes in Aransas NWR, by Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

ESA Listings are Bigger in Texas

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Have a little patience with this New York Times article on how the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s settlements with WildEarth Guardians and the Center for BioDiversity mean “an unprecedented flurry” of Endangered Species Act listings in Texas. (There are 96 species under consideration in the state under the settlement.)

The top of the story tells you what you should already know. (Settlement. 250 species under consideration, total. Six years.) The middle tells you something that should come as no big surprise. (Oil companies sincerely oppose the listing of a couple of lizard species that will really cramp their drilling style.)

But the end, ah, the end, raises some important questions. Just how does a state manage such a flurry of listings? Who is paying the academic researchers whose work is so crucial to the listing discussion? Where will the feds find researchers? Where will the researchers find the time? All food for thought.

Read the New York Times article here.

Read our previous postings on:
the Houston toad and
the WildEarth Guardians/Center for Biodiversity settlement.

 Photo: Houston frog; courtesy of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Burro Removal in Texas

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It’s the wild horse controversy, served up Tex-Mex style, with shorter legs and longer ears. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is shooting wild burros found on state land in the Big Bend region. The burros have their advocates, and even on the adjoining Big Bend National Park, it is illegal to hunt the wild burros, which are not a native species, but are considered to be historically significant.

Read the Associated Press story on the controversy, which emphasizes the conflict between native bighorn sheep, prized by wealthy hunters, and the lowly burros, embraced by animal-lovers across class lines. Here’s the story in the New York Times. (But if you are trying to keep under your monthly article limit, here is the same story in the Washington Post.)

The Wildlife Society’s position is that burros are not native, and the feral animals need to be managed responsibly. Read the organization’s comment here.

More Drought Impacts

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The drought in Texas is so severe this year that it appears to be reducing reproductive success in animals ranging from deer to quail. This National Public Radio story discusses the results of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife surveys. Antelope in one area of the state may be especially hard hit, the story says, because they have been afflicted with a parasite that was already reducing their reproduction and survival.

In a press release, the department urges hunters to hunt early this season, so there will be more food later in the season for surviving deer.

A story that ran in AgWeek in August points out that Texas is so big that the impacts of its drought may be felt in other states. Not only does it share ecosystems with its neighboring states, but it is such an important migration route for birds, that hard times in Texas may have ripple effects all over the Americas in the bird populations that use the central flyway. Read more here.

Toad in the Hole

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There is a lot of media coverage out there about the dire situation of the endangered Houston toad since a wildfire swept through its last stronghold, Bastrop State Park, 30 miles southeast of Austin, Texas. However, an article in the San Antonio News-Express points out that in the heat of the summer the toads burrow a foot or more underground to escape the heat. There is a chance that the toads were far enough underground when the fire swept through that they were insulated from the heat of the fire.

The article explains that it’s not the fire as much as the fragmented landscape that may seal the toad’s doom. The Houston toad is listed as endangered both federally and in Texas.

Read the San Antonio News-Express article here.

Read info on the Houston toad from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department here.

(Yes, that’s two toad stories in a row. Sometimes it works out that way.)

Photo courtesy of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.