More Mountain Lions

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mo mountain lionWhere are there more mountain lions? There are increases Puma concolor sightings just about everywhere, recent news reports say.

An article in The New York Times focuses on mountain lions’ expansion east from their strongholds in the Rocky Mountains and Texas. The article says that mountain lion sightings are now common in the Midwest, and it includes a map that shows recent sightings, including several in New England.

Read The New York Times article here.

In Arizona, an abundance of mountain lions in the Catalina Mountains has some folks worried about a planned release of bighorn sheep there, says an Arizona Daily Star article. A management plan calls for killing mountain lions that kill the bighorns, although the mountain lions should have plenty of other prey, the article quotes Jim Heffelfinger, regional game specialist for the Arizona Game and Fish Department as saying.

An increase in deer in the area likely lead to the increase in mountain lions, the article says.

Read the Arizona Daily Star article here.

Mountain lion populations have been going up in California for at least 20 years, with hundreds of sightings annually, but that doesn’t mean the sight of two mountain lions in Redlands, California isn’t news. Redlands is near the San Bernardino Mountains, east of Los Angleles.

Read the Los Angeles Times article here.

Photo: One of the increasing number of Midwestern mountain lions, courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

More Mountain Lions

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mo mountain lionWhere are there more mountain lions? There are increases Puma concolor sightings just about everywhere, recent news reports say.

An article in The New York Times focuses on mountain lions’ expansion east from their strongholds in the Rocky Mountains and Texas. The article says that mountain lion sightings are now common in the Midwest, and it includes a map that shows recent sightings, including several in New England.

Read The New York Times article here.

In Arizona, an abundance of mountain lions in the Catalina Mountains has some folks worried about a planned release of bighorn sheep there, says an Arizona Daily Star article. A management plan calls for killing mountain lions that kill the bighorns, although the mountain lions should have plenty of other prey, the article quotes Jim Heffelfinger, regional game specialist for the Arizona Game and Fish Department as saying.

An increase in deer in the area likely lead to the increase in mountain lions, the article says.

Read the Arizona Daily Star article here.

Mountain lion populations have been going up in California for at least 20 years, with hundreds of sightings annually, but that doesn’t mean the sight of two mountain lions in Redlands, California isn’t news. Redlands is near the San Bernardino Mountains, east of Los Angleles.

Read the Los Angeles Times article here.

Photo: One of the increasing number of Midwestern mountain lions, courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

City Life Changes Birds

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Euro blackbirdThe bright lights (and noise) of the big city haven’t just made the days of songbirds longer, they have thrown a wrench in the birds’ circadian rhythms, researchers studying European blackbirds have found. The study, which is in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that city birds wake up 30 minutes earlier than their forest counterparts and stay up nine minutes later after dark.

When brought into the lab, the city birds still started their days earlier, but their sleep and rest cycles were off.

Read the journal paper, here.
Read coverage of the study from the BBC, here.
And read the Atlantic Cities blog post, here.

Photo: European black bird by Malene Thyssen, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Malene GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5

City Life Changes Birds

Posted on by
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Euro blackbirdThe bright lights (and noise) of the big city haven’t just made the days of songbirds longer, they have thrown a wrench in the birds’ circadian rhythms, researchers studying European blackbirds have found. The study, which is in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that city birds wake up 30 minutes earlier than their forest counterparts and stay up nine minutes later after dark.

When brought into the lab, the city birds still started their days earlier, but their sleep and rest cycles were off.

Read the journal paper, here.
Read coverage of the study from the BBC, here.
And read the Atlantic Cities blog post, here.

Photo: European black bird by Malene Thyssen, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Malene GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5

Early Results in Minn. Moose Calf Study

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Moose_CalfLate last month Minnesota Department of Natural Resources researchers collared 49 moose calves within hours of their birth, the Grand Forks Herald reports. Part of a larger study trying to solve Minnesota’s high moose mortality rate, the collared calves were born to collared mothers, a fact that allowed researchers to find them quickly after birth, the article says.

Results have come quickly, perhaps too quickly. Researchers knew that over half of all moose calves die within their first year. But already 22 of the calves, nearly half, have been found dead, mostly from predation by wolves and bears.

The study revealed other surprises. Of the moose that gave birth last month, 58 percent had twins, which was a higher rate than the researchers expected. They also found that the calves started eating plants earlier than had been previously thought.

The article says that the high adult death rate is the big issue in Minnesota, but a low rate of survival for calves is another concern. The 22 necropsies that will be performed on the dead moose calves should shed light on the issue.

More details in the Grand Forks Herald article, here.

Photo: A moose calf, although not from this study. By Leroy Anderson, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

Vultures As Pollution Sentinels

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Turkey_VultureResearchers from the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania have been studying vultures throughout the New World to see if they are effective sentinels for environmental pollutants, such as lead.

The theory, says an Associated Press article that ran in the Havasu News (AZ), is with their ability to eat and digest biological toxins, vultures may be accumulating man-made toxins as well. Testing them for toxins may reveal hot spots that can then be investigated.

A Hawk Mountain Sanctuary blog reveals that they have been at this for ten years. The big news today is that they have expanded the study in to Arizona. The hope is that information from the tough vultures will provide more information on the lead poisoning that is killing the already federally endangered California condors.

Read the Associated Press article here.
Read the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary “Vulture Chronicles” blog here.

Photo: Turkey vulture, by Lee Karney, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Indiana Studies Urban Fawns

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collared fawn IndianaFrom an Indiana Department of Natural Resources press release:

DNR Division of Fish & Wildlife biologists are partnering with Ball State University biologists to determine how white-tailed deer fawns move in urban areas compared to rural areas.

The study kicked off this spring with more than 30 fawns being collared with lightweight radio transmitters to track their movement. The project will last two years and the data collected will be used to help with statewide management of white-tailed deer. The data will also provide insight into the differences in the lives of urban and rural fawns.

Read the entire press release here.

Photo: Collared fawn, courtesy of Indiana DNR

 

 

 

Mountain Lion Caught Fishing

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The Missoulian reports that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear manager Jamie Jonkel caught something unexpected on the trail camera he set up to monitor a trout spawning stream on a tributary of the Blackfoot River. He expected to get videos of black bears catching rainbow trout. And he did.

But he also got a video of a mountain lion pouncing on a trout and then another shot of the lion with the trout in its mouth.

See the article for speculation about how rare or common this behavior is in mountain lions, as well as speculation for its cause. For the record, the article says that the area is good mountain lion habitat with plenty of game.

Read the article in the Missoulian, here.

Tracking a Bird Eye Disease

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House Finch with eye diseaseHouse finch eye disease, which was first struck in the 1990s, unexpectedly became more virulent over time, says a paper published this week by PLoS Biology. It was a less virulent strain, however, that spread west across the country. But once it became established in California, it became more virulent.

“For the disease to disperse westward, a sick bird has to fly a little farther, and survive for longer, to pass on the infection. That will select for strains that make the birds less sick,” said Dana Hawley of Virginia Tech, the lead author of the study in a Cornell Lab of Ornithology press release.

By 1998 the House Finch population in the eastern United States had dropped by half—a loss of an estimated 40 million birds, the release says. The disease does not kill birds directly, but it makes them easy targets for predators.

Read the Cornell press release here.
Read the PLoS biology paper here.

Photo: Male house finch with eye disease, by David Smith. Used courtesy Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

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.