Fish and Wildlife to the Rescue

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Florida panther kitten FWCFish and Wildlife personnel rescue wildlife all the time. Sometimes they rescue rare wildlife. But this week there were two rescues of critically endangered species in adjoining states. Actually, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission staffers were involved in both rescues.

Off the coast of Georgia, a rescue team that included Georgia Department of Natural Resources biologists cut over 100 yards of heavy fishing rope from a 4-year-old male North Atlantic right whale, allowing it to swim more easily. The young whale one of only about 450 remaining North Atlantic right whales.

Read the Georgia Department of Natural Resources press release here.

In Florida, biologists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the Conservancy of Southwest Florida discovered an approximately week-old Florida panther kitten while conducting research at the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge in Collier County in mid-January.

There are 100 to 160 Florida panthers in the wild today, but this kitten will no longer be among them. Because it is too young to have learned survival skills from its mother, it will have to live in captivity. But with a gene pool this small, even captive individuals help with diversity.

Read the Florida Wildlife Commission press release here.

Photo: When you look at this Florida panther kitten, make sure you are thinking, “populations, not individuals.” Photo by Carli Segelson, courtesy Florida Wildlife Commission.

 

Moose Health in Montana and Minnesota

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Minn moose collaringMontana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has begun a 10-year study of moose in the state to try to determine the cause of a 75 percent over the last 20 years, says an article in the Ravalli Republic. The article follows Montanta FWP biologist Nick DeCesare as he tracks one of his collared moose and finds that the moose is haggard, has blue eyes and appears to be blind — all symptoms of arterial worm.

Arterial worm is carried by mule deer, the article notes, and is carried by horseflies. (A situation similar to the brainworm that infects moose in the East, carried by white-tailed deer, although a snail is the vector there.) The arterial worm is a top suspect in moose declines in the West.

Read the whole article, with details of the study, in the Ravalli Republic, here. The article appeared in the newspaper through Science Source, a project of the University of Montana School of Journalism.

Last week a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources press release said that, “Aerial moose survey results for 2014 show no significant change in Minnesota’s moose population even though more animals were seen than last year.” Last year the estimate was 2,760, while in 2014 the estimate is 4,350. The department says the difference is statistically insignificant.

“The higher estimate this winter likely is related to ideal survey conditions rather than any actual increase in the population,” said Lou Cornicelli, wildlife research manager for the DNR. “This year’s heavy snows across northeastern Minnesota made it comparatively easy to spot dark-bodied moose against an unbroken background of white.”

The press release also mentions an adult and calf mortality study that is in its second year, and shows 21 percent mortality among adult moose and 74 percent mortality for calves. DNR will collar additional adults and calves to replace the ones that died in the study.

Read the Minnesota DNR press release here.
Read an article in the Austin (Minn.) Daily Herald, here.

Photo: courtesy Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

Georgia Nongame Annual Report

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georgia license plateThe Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Nongame Conservation Section recently released its 2013 annual report. It released two versions: a 40-page full report and a six-page summary.

Surveys were the main research done in 2013, including surveys of wood stork nests, bald eagle nests, swallow-tailed kite nests and roosts, gopher tortoises, indigo snakes, and eastern hellbenders. They also did a study of the the trapping effort needed to accurately judge bog turtle populations.

They released captive-bred striped newts, reared gopher frog eggs and released the young, spent a lot of time on red-cockaded woodpecker conservation, and hired a new freshwater mussel biologist.

The big news, though, was lack of funding from special nongame program license plates. A new revenue-sharing method introduced in the last few years has meant a cut in funding for the department from the plates.

You can find links to both versions of the report here.

NYS Creates Recovery Plan for Northern Cricket Frog

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Northern_cricket_frog_at_Neal_Smith_National_Wildlife_RefugeThe northern cricket frog is one of New York State’s two endangered amphibians. New York State law does not require recovery plans for endangered species, but the state Department of Environmental Conservation has proposed one for this species, a recent department press release says.

The plan includes conserving appropriate, but unoccupied habitat. The plan also included reintroducing frogs to unoccupied habitat, but only “if suitable habitat still remains, northern cricket frog habitat requirements are understood, and a funded and scientifically sound protocol is in place to monitor northern cricket frog abundance and assess potential causes of decline at any re-introduction site.”

In other words, more research is needed. There is a very brief paragraph about data gaps, and an even briefer one about recovery partnerships. A long list of potential tasks, includes sections on research and recovery tasks.

The comment period on the plan closes a week from today, Feb. 21, 2014.

Download the recovery plan here.
Read the NYS DEC press release about the plan here.
Read a Reptile Magazine article about the plan here.

Photo: Northern cricket frog at  Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa. Photo by Sara Hollerich, used courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Acoustic Method Best for Sampling Bats

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State Wildlife Biologists Wanted for Bat SurveyFrom a US Geological Survey press release:

Recording bats’ echolocation “calls” is the most efficient and least intrusive way of identifying different species of bats in a given area, providing insight into some populations that have been decimated by white-nose syndrome.This new research by scientists from Virginia Tech, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Army is published in the Journal of Ecology and the Natural Environment.

White-nose syndrome, an unprecedented disease of cave hibernating bats caused by a cold-loving fungus, has caused the deaths of more than six million bats. It has spread from central New York to at least 22 states and five Canadian provinces since 2006. In addition to the endangered Indiana bat, populations of the formerly abundant little brown bat and northern long-eared bat have experienced severe disease-related declines, particularly in the Northeast and central Appalachians.

“Acoustic sampling is a noninvasive sampling technique for bats, and its use often allows for the detection of a greater number of bat species in less time than traditional sampling methods such as netting,” said study co-author W. Mark Ford, a USGS scientist at the Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Virginia Tech. “Low population numbers make netting both time and cost prohibitive. Netting also has low capture rates for WNS affected species. Moreover, acoustic sampling minimizes the handling of bats, which lessens the chance of unintended cross-contamination and exposure to the white-nose fungus from one bat to another or from equipment and personnel to uninfected bats.”

Read the rest of the USGS press release here.
Read the paper (open access;PDF) here.

Photo: An acoustic bat detector in a roof-top car mount. Courtesy New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the bat survey coalition

NH Moose Study – First Year Report

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NH moose_collaring_Jan2014A total of 43 moose were captured and collared during the first two weeks of a three year moose study in New Hampshire, a New Hampshire Fish and Game press release reports.The study hopes to find the causes of a decline in moose in the state. Biologists took blood samples from the collared moose, as well as hair samples, fecal samples and winter ticks.

For this initial project work, Fish and Game contracted with a specialized helicopter wildlife crew from Aero Tech, Inc., to capture and collar moose for the study, using net-guns and tranquilizer darts, the release goes on to say. Extremely cold temperatures made the work challenging, because it affected some equipment. Another 45 moose will be captured for the study next January.

Find the NH Fish and Game press release here. It includes links to additional information on the moose decline in NH.

Photo: courtesy NH Fish and Game.

 

 

Urban (and Suburban) Deer

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deer technical guideThe 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.

Construction Netting Harms Swallows

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Nets installed to keep cliff swallows away from a bridge construction zone in Petaluma, California wound up killing dozens of the birds last year, the Press Democrat reports. The construction firm had to pay a $3,525 fine for killing the birds, but now a local conservation organization has won a victory that will force CalTrans and its contractors on the Petaluma bridge project to use hard plastic sheeting instead of netting to keep the birds away during construction.

Read all the details in the Press Democrat, here.

Roadside construction nets, although these were used on the ground to control erosion, also killed wildlife in New York State. We wrote about it here.

Photo: American tree swallows nesting under the bridge over Cayucos Creek, Cayucos, CA. By marlin harms. Used under Creative Commons license.

Construction Netting Harms Swallows

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Nets installed to keep cliff swallows away from a bridge construction zone in Petaluma, California wound up killing dozens of the birds last year, the Press Democrat reports. The construction firm had to pay a $3,525 fine for killing the birds, but now a local conservation organization has won a victory that will force CalTrans and its contractors on the Petaluma bridge project to use hard plastic sheeting instead of netting to keep the birds away during construction.

Read all the details in the Press Democrat, here.

Roadside construction nets, although these were used on the ground to control erosion, also killed wildlife in New York State. We wrote about it here.

Photo: American tree swallows nesting under the bridge over Cayucos Creek, Cayucos, CA. By marlin harms. Used under Creative Commons license.

Worse Year for Monarchs

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Monarch_butterflyDepending on where you live, you may have noticed it in autumn. There were very few monarch butterflies around. It wasn’t unexpected. Numbers were low last winter in Mexico, and the weather over the summer didn’t favor the hatching of new monarchs.

World Wildlife Fund, Mexico’s Environment Department and the Natural Protected Areas Commission just announced that the numbers of monarch butterflies overwintering among the Transvolcanic mountains of central Mexico are the lowest since they started keeping records back in 1993. They measure the butterflies in the number of hectares that they cover in the park. This winter they covered 0.67 hectares. At their recorded high, in the winter of ’95-’96 they covered over 20 hectares.

Why, oh, why, do you ask? At one time the forest where the monarchs roost over the winter was being cut down, but that problem seems to have been solved. Climate change is in the mix. But the big problem, according to MonarchWatch, at the University of Kansas, is that herbicide tolerant (HT) crops have removed milkweed from a part of the country vital to the monarchs’ migration: the Midwest.

Read the report from MonarchWatch, here. It includes all the details on the HT crops theory.
Read the Associated Press news story in SF Gate, here.

Photo: by Mark Musselman, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service