Tag Archives: wildlife

News Briefs: Swallows, Conferences and more

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Ohio misses out on 2011 Pittman-Robertson funds.

Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation has begun surveying for prairie chickens using both an aerial survey and road-side listening survey.

A YouTube video of a paraglider chasing and then kicking an owl in flight has prompted federal and Utah state wildlife officials to investigate.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife plans to euthanize 50 wild bighorn sheep to prevent the spread of Mycoplasma pneumonia.

Highway construction safety netting snags and kills swallows in Petaluma, California. The highway department is working on fixing the situation.

Conferences

There is still time to register for the 31st Annual Native American Fish & Wildlife Society National Conference. It will take place at the Radisson Fort McDowell Resort at Scottsdale, AZ from May 7-9, 2013. Links to more info, here.

The deadline for papers and posters for The Wildlife Society annual conference (this year in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is midnight tonight (4/12). Decisions will be announced in early June.

WNS: Gray Bat Trouble, and Canada Gets Organized

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gray bats WNSAn Alabama cave that contains contains the largest documented wintering colony of federally listed endangered gray bats — about a million of them — has been struck by white nose syndrome (WNS), the US Fish and Wildlife Service reported yesterday. The good news is that WNS is not known to cause death in gray bats.

The infected bats found in the cave were tri-colored bats (aka eastern pipestrelles).

“With over a million hibernating gray bats, Fern Cave is undoubtedly the single most significant hibernaculum for the species,” said Paul McKenzie, Endangered Species Coordinator for the Service in the press release. “Although mass mortality of gray bats has not yet been confirmed from any WNS infected caves in which the species hibernates, the documentation of the disease from Fern Cave is extremely alarming and could be catastrophic. The discovery of WNS on a national wildlife refuge only highlights the continued need for coordination and collaboration with partners in addressing this devastating disease.”

Read the entire release, which has lots of details about the cave and how the infection was found, here.

In Canada, Environment Canada has committed to an additional $330,000 over four years for national coordination, surveillance and response to WNS. The US has had a national WNS coordinator (Jeremy Coleman, USFWS) for five years. The Canadian funds will go to the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre.

“Canadian biologists and managers have done an incredible job responding to the threat of this disease with the resources they have,” said Katie Gillies, Imperiled Species Coordinator at Bat Conservation International in a letter to that organization’s members. “But hiring a formal WNS coordinator will certainly streamline those efforts and maximize their impact on this tragic disease. This is a very important step.

 

Read the Environment Canada press release here and here.

Photo: Gray bats, courtesy USFWS

Kansas Kicks Off 5 Year Review

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kansas piping ploverThe Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism (KDWPT) has begun a review of threatened, endangered, or species-in-need-of-conservation (SINC) species, a department press release says. The review is required every five years by state law.

The last time Kansas reviewed its lists, in 2008, it added the shoal chub, plains minnow, and delta hydrobe snail to the threatened list and removed the bald eagle and peregrine falcon.

The KDWPT relies on a task force, which includes members from universities and federal agencies, to make suggestions for changes to the list. The task force’s recommendations are presented to the KDWPT Secretary and the Kansas Wildlife, Parks and Tourism Commission.

The public can petition the task force to include (or remove) a species. The form (a PDF) is available on-line, here.

Read the KDWPT press release here.
Read more information about the state’s endangered and threatened species list here.

Photo: Piping plovers are threatened in Kansas. Courtesy KDWPT.

Sage Grouse Under Fire

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Sage Grouse vs transmission linesA US Fish and Wildlife Service report says that sage grouse are threatened by the loss and fragmentation of their sagebrush habitat. The habitat is being lost most commonly to wildfires which burn hotter because of invasive species. Ironically, another cause of habitat loss in the invasion of conifers into the sagebrush ecosystem, which is caused when fires don’t occur frequently enough.

A Wyoming Public Media report says that the USFWS report doesn’t tell people what to do, it just explains the threats.

A press release from the American Bird Conservancy says that the Bureau of Land Management should pay attention to the report.

You can find the 115-page report here.

In related news, the Idaho Statesman reports on an effort by a Nevada county on a local ranch to kill ravens with poison eggs and to reduce wildfires by increasing livestock grazing. The goal is to increase the number of sage grouse and stave off an endangered species listing.

The county does not expect support from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the article reports, and has already drawn the ire of a regional environmental group. The article says:

“Their fixation on killing and poisoning native wildlife and turning lands back into a dustbowl is really twisted,” said Katie Fite, the biodiversity director for the Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project.

Photo: Greater sage grouse by Stephen Ting. Courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

 

USFWS Turns ESA Take Permits Over to Florida

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Florida_Scrub_JayLast year the US Fish and Wildlife Service quietly handed over the responsibility for issuing incidental take permits for species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Now, two environmental groups, the Center for Biodiversity and Conservancy of Southwest Florida, have given the US Fish and Wildlife Service 60 days to settle with them, or they will sue.

The Tampa Bay Times article notes that Florida developers were pleased with the switch to state control over the federal endangered species law. That may be because, the article says, two members of the eight member Florida commission are developers and a third is a paving contractor.

The feds turned over EPA enforcement to the Florida state government as well, the article notes.

Read the whole Tampa Bay Times article here.

Photo: Florida scrub jay, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Peeps Not a Species of Concern

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marshmallow_peepsIn a press release issued this week, the American Bird Conservancy named Peeps its Easter bird of the week for the second straight year and declared that while the overall population is severely depleted each year at this time, “Populations appear to quickly rebound in subsequent years and therefore they are not a species of conservation concern.”

Further, the report says, there is reason to believe that each color morph is actually an individual species. “There simply isn’t any evidence that these forms interbreed,” said ABC senior scientist Dr. David Wiedenfeld in the release. “While they can often be found roosting in the same box, the fact is that nobody has ever seen an intermediate bird between the color morphs,” he added.

More fun can be found both in the ABC press release and its bird of the week profile (which are nearly identical).

This is what happens when Easter is the day before April Fool’s Day. However, you can expect all seriousness from us on Monday. (And personally, I have never found different color morphs nesting in the same box.)

Photo: Marshmallow Peeps, by Just Born

It’s Official: National Wildlife Climate Policy

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climate strategy reportYou’ve probably heard about the drafts (since it was called for by Congress four years ago), but now the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Policy has officially been announced.

The big news appears to be a plan to create wildlife corridors so wildlife can more easily move in response to climate change. It also urges wildlife managers to plan for a changing climate, not just current conditions.

The strategy (or Strategy, as it is called in materials) appears to come with neither regulatory teeth nor funding.

Read a Los Angeles Times article, here.
Find the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaption Strategy website, here. (Follow links to summaries and frequently asked questions.)

And I just have to say that maybe next time “wildlife” will already be understood to include both fish and plants, and perhaps invertebrates as well.

Penn State Develops CWD Model

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white_tailed_deer_buckEight years ago, research done by Penn State University, the Pennsylvania Wildlife Commission, and the US Geological Survey found in a study of white-tailed deer, that 70 percent of yearling males will disperse, and the average dispersal is six to seven miles. Depending on the amount of forest on the landscape, the researcher says, those yearling males may go just a mile or as far as 30 miles.

Now, another team of Penn State researchers are using that dispersal data to model the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Pennsylvania.

So far, the conclusions are that in parts of the state with less forest, the Game Commission may have to consider disease-management areas that are larger. It also has implications on sampling efforts to try to get a handle on the prevalence of the disease.

Read the Penn State University press release here.

Photo: Joe Kosack/Pennsylvania Game Commission