2008 Aug 5. Trove
of Endangered Gorillas Found
in Africa. By ANDREW
C. REVKIN, NY Times. Excerpt:
A grueling survey of vast tracts
of
forest and swamp in the northern
Congo Republic has revealed the
presence of more than 125,000 western
lowland gorillas, a rare
example of abundance in a world
of rapidly vanishing primate
populations.
As recently as last
year, this subspecies of the world's
largest primate was listed as critically
endangered by international wildlife
organizations because known populations
- estimated at less than 100,000
in the 1980s - had been devastated
by hunting and outbreaks of Ebola
virus. The three other subspecies
are either critically endangered
or endangered.
The survey was conducted by the
Wildlife Conservation Society and
local researchers in largely unstudied
terrain, including a swampy
region nicknamed the "green
abyss" by the first biologists
to cross
it.
...The lowland gorillas discovered
in the Congo Republic survey are
secure for now, but pressures are
growing on wildlife in central
Africa as international demand
builds for tropical hardwood and
other
resources. The government of Congo
Republic has granted national park
status to one of the studied regions,
Ntokou-Pikounda, which is
estimated to hold 73,000 gorillas.
But there is little money for
staff or operations, conservation
society officials said....
2008 Aug 5. Alaska:
Suit Filed Over Polar Bears. By WIRE SERVICES.
Excerpt: The state has sued Interior
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, seeking
to reverse his decision to give
polar bears protection under the
Endangered Species Act.... The
lawsuit, filed Monday, argues that
the Interior Department failed
to consider that polar bears had
survived previous warming periods....
2008 July 15. Efforts
on 2 Fronts to Save a Population
of Ferrets. By Jim Robbins, The New York Times.
Excerpt:
WALL, S.D. — A colony
that contains nearly half of the
black-footed ferrets in the country
and which biologists say is critical
to the long-term health of the
species has been struck by plague,
which may have killed a third of
the 300 animals.
A much-publicized endangered species
in the 1970s that had dwindled
to 18 animals, the black-footed
ferret had struggled to make a
comeback and had been doing relatively
well for decades. But plague, always
a threat to the ferrets and their
main prey, prairie dogs, has struck
with a vengeance this year, partly
because of the wet spring.
The ferrets are an easy target
for the bacteria. “They are
exquisitely sensitive to the plague,” said
Travis Livieri, a wildlife biologist
here who is trying to save the
colony. “They don’t
just get sick, they die. No ifs,
ands or buts.”...
But the fight is not only against
the plague. While the federal Forest
Service is part of the effort to
protect ferrets, it has also, at
the request of area ranchers, poisoned
several thousands of acres of prairie
dogs on the edge of the Conata
Basin, a buffer strip of federal
land adjacent to private grazing
land. The buffer strip does not
have ferrets, but it is good ferret
habitat, experts say, and if they
were to spread there it could help
support the recovery.
But prairie dogs eat grass, and
a large village can denude grazing
land.
Of even more concern to biologists
and environmentalists, though,
is a Forest Service study of an
expanded effort to kill prairie
dogs in ferret habitat, which biologists
say could be devastating to the
restoration of the ferrets.
...Enough prairie dogs need to
survive the plague to keep the
ferrets from starving to death.
One ferret eats 125 to 150 prairie
dogs a year...
Summer 2008. Jurassic
Beach. Jennifer
Uscher, Nature Conservancy Magazine.
Excerpt:
... Throughout most of the past
century, the horseshoe crab never
registered as much more than an
oddity for beach goers to step
around.... "My grandparents
fed them to their chickens and
their hogs; it was the only thing
they were good for," says
Bill Hall, a marine researcher
and education specialist at the
University of Delaware. Then, in
the 1950s, scientists discovered
a compound in the crab's copper-based
blood that clots when it comes
into contact with harmful bacteria.
Many countries, including the United
States, now require that the biomedical
industry use this compound, called
lysate, to test just about any
object or substance used during
a medical procedure that could
cause infection-syringes, scalpels,
intravenous drugs.
"Most people have no idea," says
Hall ...But thanks to lysate's
ability to alert against infection,
the horseshoe crab has helped save
many lives-more than a million
people, according to one estimate-since
the compound was discovered.
To supply the biomedical industry
with this anti-infection compound
... approximately 300,000 crabs
are caught and bled each year.
While some of these crabs are returned
to the ocean, only a little worse
for the wear, as much as 40 percent
of the catch dies from the trauma
or is sold to the bait industry.
Bill Hall helped start the crab
count in 1990 in part to monitor
the impact of the biomedical industry,
which had-and still has-a huge
stake in sustainably managing the
horseshoe harvest. "This crab
saves lives," says Hall. "There
is nothing to replace it."
While the biomedical industry's
limited catch was not considered
a major threat to the horseshoe
crab population, in the mid-1990s
Hall and others began to notice
signs that something was going
wrong with the numbers of crabs
coming onto shore during the annual
spawning counts.
Half a world away, a culinary trend
was sending the Delaware Bay horseshoe
crab population into a downward
spiral. Beginning in the 1990s,
surging demand in Asia for whelk
(or conch, as it is called) and
American eel gave watermen along
the Atlantic Coast a big incentive
to catch horseshoe crabs, which
they slice up and use as bait in
traps. ...From the late 1960s to
1996, the annual catch increased
from 10 tons to 2,550 tons.
A crash in the horseshoe population
wasn't far behind. And ... it put
at risk dozens of other species,
including threatened loggerhead
sea turtles ... and at least 11
species of migratory birds, which
rely on the crab's protein-packed
eggs as a crucial food source during
their intercontinental spring migrations....
2008 May 15. Polar
Bear Is Made a Protected Species. By FELICITY
BARRINGER, NY Times. The polar
bear, whose summertime Arctic hunting
grounds have been greatly reduced
by a warming climate, will be placed
under the protection of the Endangered
Species Act, Interior Secretary
Dirk Kempthorne announced on Wednesday.
But the long-delayed decision to
list the bear as a threatened species
may prove less of an impediment
to oil and gas industries along
the Alaskan coast than many environmentalists
had hoped. Mr. Kempthorne also
made it clear that it would be "wholly
inappropriate" to use the
listing as a tool to reduce greenhouse
gases, as environmentalists had
intended to do.
... the Interior Department added
stipulations, seldom used under
the act, that would allow oil and
gas exploration and development
to proceed in areas where the bears
live, as long as the companies
continue to comply with existing
restrictions under the Marine Mammal
Protection Act.
Mr. Kempthorne said Wednesday in
Washington that the decision was
driven by overwhelming scientific
evidence that "sea ice is
vital to polar bears' survival," and
all available scientific models
show that the rapid loss of ice
will continue. The bears use sea
ice as a platform to hunt seals
and as a pathway to the Arctic
coasts where they den.
...The Center for Biological Diversity,
Greenpeace and the Natural Resources
Defense Council filed suit in 2005
to force a listing of the polar
bear. ...Kassie Siegel, a lawyer
for the Center for Biological Diversity,
said the listing decision was an
acknowledgment of "global
warming's urgency" but would
have little practical impact on
protecting polar bears.
...Over all, scientists agree that
rising temperatures will reduce
Arctic ice and stress polar bears,
which prefer seals they hunt on
the floes. But few foresee the
species vanishing entirely for
a century and likely longer.
...The territorial government of
Nunavut, which is home to upward
of 15,000 polar bears, had campaigned
against new United States protections
for the bear, largely because of
worries that the lucrative local
bear hunts by residents of the
United States would stop when trophy
skins could no longer be brought
home.
2008 Apr 13. In
the West, a Fierce Battle Over
Wolves. By KIRK JOHNSON.
The NY
Times.
Excerpt: DENVER - ...Since March
28, when the wolf was taken off
the list of federally protected
species in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming,
a fierce battle of perceptions
and posturing has unfolded on the
Web and in the news media as pro-wolf
and anti-wolf forces stake out
sometimes hyperbolic positions
concerning where in the West animals
and humans should exist.
The backdrop is a running time
clock and a lawsuit. On April 28,
a coalition of environmental groups
has said it will to go federal
court challenging the decision
to lift protections.
Until then, the court of public
opinion is in session, as cases
are built for how the new system
of state management is working
or not. ...Some ranchers and hunters
urge caution in killing wolves
unnecessarily, to avoid inflaming
emotions that could haunt the legal
process later on.
"I would certainly not want
to create any useful ammunition,
no pun intended, for the pro-wolf
environmental groups that have
announced their intention to sue," said
Budd Betts, a dude-ranch operator
and former Wyoming state legislator
near Jackson Hole. "The legal
aspect is connected to the emotional
and the political, and no judge
is immune."
Pro-wolf forces, meanwhile, say
that wolf killers may have created
a martyr. On the first day protections
were lifted, a partly crippled
and much photographed radio-collared
wolf named 253M was legally shot
near the town of Daniel in western
Wyoming.
The killing made headlines as far
away as Utah, where 253M had wandered
in 2002, before being transported
back to Wyoming. A story in The
Salt Lake Tribune quoted a woman
as saying she had wept at the news
of the animal's death.
Responding to what it says are
numerous public inquiries, the
Wyoming Game and Fish Department
began a w eekly wolf update on
its Web site, starting on April
4. "We're hearing a lot, from
all sectors of the public," said
a spokesman, Eric Keszler. "Some
want no wolves to be killed - others
ask where the trophy game area
is going to be."
Wyoming, Montana and Idaho plan
their first wolf trophy hunting
seasons this fall. About 1,500
wolves inhabit the three states,
most of them descended from 66
wolves introduced into Yellowstone
National Park and central Idaho
in the mid-1990s.
State management plans allow for
wolf hunting - or in some places,
outright eradication - with a target
population of 150 in each of the
three states....
2008 April 6, Koalas
In Danger. By
Kathy Marks, The Independent. Excerpt:
The future of the koala, perhaps
Australia's best-loved animal,
is under threat because greenhouse
gas emissions are making eucalyptus
leaves – their
sole food source – inedible.
Scientists warned yesterday that
increased levels of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere were reducing
nutrient levels in the leaves,
and also boosting their toxic tannin
content. That has serious implications
for koalas and other marsupials
that eat only, or mainly, the leaves
of gum trees. These include a number
of possum and wallaby species.
…Despite koalas' predilection
for eucalyptus, the leaves are
not nutritionally rich. In fact,
even in the best conditions they
are so low in protein that koalas – which
spend up to 20 hours a day asleep,
and most of the rest of their waking
hours eating – have to eat
700g (1.5lb) of them a day to survive.
…WWF Australia warned recently
that rising temperatures threatened
numerous Australian native species,
including the tree frog, the hare
kangaroo, the tiny tree kangaroo
and the greater bilby.
In a report last month, it said
that such creatures – already
endangered as a result of wide-scale
land clearing and the introduction
of exotic predators – could
be pushed into extinction by climate
change and its knock-on effects….The
Australian Koala Foundation estimates
that there are fewer than 100,000
koalas remaining in Australia today.
2008 Mar 25. Bats
Perish, and No One Knows Why. By TINA KELLEY.
NY Times. Excerpt:
Al ... Hicks, a mammal specialist
with the state's Environmental
Conservation Department, said: "Bats
don't fly in the daytime, and bats
don't fly in the winter. Every
bat you see out here is a 'dead
bat flying,' so to speak."
They have plenty of company. In
what is one of the worst calamities
to hit bat populations in the United
States, on average 90 percent of
the hibernating bats in four caves
and mines in New York have died
since last winter.
Wildlife biologists fear a significant
die-off in about 15 caves and mines
in New York, as well as at sites
in Massachusetts and Vermont. Whatever
is killing the bats leaves them
unusually thin and, in some cases,
dotted with a white fungus. Bat
experts fear that what they call
White Nose Syndrome may spell doom
for several species that keep insect
pests under control.
Researchers have yet to determine
whether the bats are being killed
by a virus, bacteria, toxin, environmental
hazard, metabolic disorder or fungus.
Some have been found with pneumonia,
but that and the fungus are believed
to be secondary symptoms.
...One affected mine is the winter
home to a third of the Indiana
bats between Virginia and Maine.
These pink-nosed bats, two inches
long and weighing a quarter-ounce,
are particularly social and cluster
together as tightly as 300 a square
foot.
"It's ironic, until last year
most of my time was spent trying
to delist it," or take it
off the endangered species list,
Mr. Hicks said, after the state's
Indiana bat population grew, to
52,000 from 1,500 in the 1960s....
2008 Mar 25. Link
to Global Warming in Frogs' Disappearance
Is Challenged.
By ANDREW C. REVKIN, NY Times.
Excerpt: ...The amphibians, of
the genus Atelopus - actually toads
despite their common name - once
hopped in great numbers along stream
banks on misty slopes from the
Andes to Costa Rica. After 20 years
of die-offs, they are listed as
critically endangered by conservation
groups and are mainly seen in zoos.
It looked as if one research team
was a winner in 2006 when global
warming was identified as the "trigger" in
the extinctions by the authors
of a much-cited paper in Nature.
The researchers said they had found
a clear link between unusually
warm years and the vanishing of
mountainside frog populations.
The "bullet," the researchers
said, appeared to be a chytrid
fungus that has attacked amphibian
populations in many parts of the
world but thrives best in particular
climate conditions. The authors,
led by J. Alan Pounds of the Monteverde
Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa
Rica, said, "Here we show
that a recent mass extinction associated
with pathogen outbreaks is tied
to global warming." The study
was featured in reports last year
by the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change.
Other researchers have been questioning
that connection. Last year, two
short responses in Nature questioned
facets of the 2006 paper. In the
journal, Dr. Pounds and his team
said the new analyses in fact backed
their view that "global warming
contributes to the present amphibian
crisis," but avoided language
saying it was "a key factor," as
they wrote in 2006.
Now, in the March 25 issue of PLoS
Biology, another team argues that
the die-offs of harlequins and
some other amphibians reflect the
spread and repeated introductions
of the chytrid fungus. They question
the analysis linking the disappearances
to climate change....
2008 Feb 22. U.S.
Ends Protections for Wolves in
3 States. By KIRK JOHNSON,
NY Times. Animal
advocates say that gray wolves
in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho
still need protection, despite
considerable growth in their numbers.
2008 January 2. A
Divide as Wolves Rebound in a
Changing West. By KIRK JOHNSON,
NY Times
Excerpt:
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Sheltered for
many years by federal species
protection law, the gray wolves
of the West are about to step out
onto the high wire of life in
the real world, when their status
as endangered animals formally
comes to an end early this year.
The so-called delisting is scheduled
to begin in late March, almost
five years later than federal
wildlife managers first proposed,
mainly because of human tussles
here in Wyoming over the politics
of managing the wolves....From
the 41 animals that were released
inside Yellowstone from 1995
to 1997, mostly from Canada,
the population grew to 650 wolves
in 2002 and more than 1,500 today
in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
The wolves have spread across an
area twice the size of New York
State and are growing at a rate
of about 24 percent a year, according
to federal wolf-counts....The
director of the Wyoming Game
and Fish Department, Terry Cleveland,
said changes in economics and
attitude were creating a profound
wrinkle in the outlook for human-wolf
relations. Mr. Cleveland, a 39 year-veteran
with the department, said that
many newcomers, who are more
interested in breath-taking vistas
than the price of feed-grain
and calves, do not see wolves
the way older residents do. In
the public comment period for
Wyoming's wolf plan, sizable majorities
of residents in the counties
near Yellowstone expressed opposition....Many
new land owners around Yellowstone
have also barred the hunting
of animals like elk on their
property, sometimes, in a single
pen stroke, closing off thousands
of acres that Wyoming hunters had
used for decades. ... But the trend
of land enclosure, Mr. Cleveland
said, is probably not in the wolf's
long-term interest. "As large
ranches become less economically
viable, the alternative is 40-acre
subdivisions," he
said, "and that is not compatible
with any kind of wildlife."
Some advocates of wolf protection
say that for all the talk of
moderation and the nods to a changing
ethos, old attitudes will take
over once the gray wolf is delisted. "I
think it's going to be open season," said
Suzanne Stone, a wolf
specialist at Defenders of Wildlife,
a national conservation group....
2007 December 18. Zoologist
Gives a Voice to Big Cats in
the Wilderness. By CLAUDIA
DREIFUS, NY Times. Excerpt:
Among zoologists, Alan
Rabinowitz is known as the Indiana
Jones of wildlife conservation.
But he is actually more the Dag
Hammarskjold of biology. ...That
is because Dr. Rabinowitz, executive
director of science and exploration
at the Wildlife Conservation Society,
is a kind of international diplomat
for big cats - jaguars, leopards,
pumas.For 20 years, he has traveled
the world, imploring the power
elite of democracies and dictatorships
to dedicate large parcels as reserves
for these imperiled felines.In
the 1980s, he persuaded the leaders
of Belize to establish the world's
first jaguar preserve. More recently,
this Brooklyn-born biologist prevailed
on the junta in Myanmar to transform
8,400 square miles of forest into
the Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve....
Q. With so many of the world's
animals in danger, why do you mostly
advocate for big cats?
A. Because cats get to the human
psyche. People love big cats. If
I go to a government and say, "If
you don't do something quickly,
you're going to lose your tigers," they
listen. If I say, "You're
about to lose all your wolves," they
won't care. But leopards, tigers,
jaguars - people have a huge admiration
for them. My real goal is to save
large sections of pristine wilderness
for all types of wildlife. One
way to do that is to make sure
that the top predators have enough
safe territory to thrive in. Because
big cats need so much territory,
when you save them, you're really
saving whole ecosystems and you're
saving the other animals down on
the food chain. This is what's
called the "apex
predator strategy" in conservation.
The other thing I've seen is that
no government, even if they are
doing a lot of development, wants
to lose their big cats. Even when
you're talking to the most authoritarian
of dictators, none of them wants
to be the guy at the helm when
the last of his country's tigers
go extinct....
Q. What originally drew you to
conservation?
A. As a child, I had this horrific
stutter. In school, I was put in
what was called the retarded classes.
I was very angry that people couldn't
see past the stuttering. From the
second grade on, I stopped talking,
except to the little green turtle
and the chameleon I kept at home.
Talking to the animals, I realized
they had feelings. I didn't know
if they understood me. But I saw
that they were exactly like me.
They weren't broken, but people
mistreated them because they can't
communicate. I thought if these
animals had a voice, people wouldn't
be able to crush them and throw
them away. When I was a child,
I promised the animals that if
I ever got my voice back, I'd be
their voice....
2007 November 13. Off
Endangered List, but What Animal
Is It Now? The Great Lakes gray
wolf is off the endangered species
list, but biologists say it has
hybridized with coyotes and wolves
from Canada. By MARK DERR.
NY Times. Excerpt:
Amid much fanfare this year,
the federal Fish and Wildlife
Service declared the western
Great Lakes gray wolf successfully
recovered from an encounter with
extinction and officially removed
it from the endangered species
list. Under the protection of
the Endangered Species Act, the
wolf boomed in population to
4,000 in Michigan, Minnesota
and Wisconsin today, up from
just several hundred in northern
Minnesota in 1974.
But the victory celebration was
premature, according to two evolutionary
biologists, Jennifer A. Leonard
of Uppsala University in Sweden
and Robert K. Wayne of the University
of California, Los Angeles. The
historic Great Lakes wolf did not
return intact from the edge of
oblivion. Instead, the scientists
report in the online edition of
the journal Biology Letters, it
hybridized with gray wolves moving
in from Canada, coyotes from the
south and west and the hybrids
born of that mixing....
2007 November 12. World's
Smallest Bear Faces Extinction.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.. Excerpt:
GENEVA (AP) -- The world's smallest
bear species faces extinction
because of deforestation and
poaching in its Southeast Asian
home, a conservation group said
Monday.
The sun bear, whose habitat stretches
from India to Indonesia, has been
classified as vulnerable by the
World Conservation Union.
''We estimate that sun bears have
declined by at least 30 percent
over the past 30 years and continue
to decline at this rate,'' said
Rob Steinmetz, a bear expert with
the Geneva-based group, known under
its acronym IUC
The group estimates there are little
more than 10,000 sun bears left,
said Dave Garshelis, co-chair of
the IUCN bear specialist group.
The bear, which weighs between
90 and 130 pounds, is hunted for
its bitter, green bile, which has
long been used by Chinese traditional
medicine practitioners to treat
eye, liver and other ailments.
Bear paws are also consumed as
a delicacy.
Another threat comes from loggers,
who are destroying the sun bear's
habitat, Steinmetz said.
Thailand is the only country to
have effectively banned logging
and enforced laws against poaching,
allowing the sun bear population
to remain stable there, Garshelis
said.
IUCN said six of the eight bear
species in the world are now threatened
with extinction.
Other vulnerable bear species are
the Asiatic black bear, the sloth
bear on the Indian subcontinent,
the Andean bear in South America
and the polar bear. The brown bear
and the American black bear are
in a lesser category of threat,
IUCN said....
On the Net: World Conservation
Union: http://www.iucn.org/en/news/archive/2007/11/12--pr--bear.htm
2007 June 5. SCIENTIST
AT WORK | LINDA J. GORMEZANO
A Team of 2, Following the Scent
of Polar Bears
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Excerpt:
The hunt begins with a loud shout
in Spanish by Linda J. Gormezano."¡Búscalo!" Seek.
Waiting with ears pricked and tail
wagging, Quinoa, her black male
Dutch shepherd, leaps to work,
straining at the leash, nose down,
weaving left and right. ... The
quarry sought by Quinoa, named
for the Andean grain, is something
utterly conventional and doglike:
feces, poop or, as field biologists
prefer to call it - scat. It comes
from polar bears.
Although this exercise is taking
place in the Mianus River Gorge
Preserve, a wooded nook tucked
in Bedford, N.Y., 40 miles northeast
of Manhattan, the small hidden
heaps contain things as foreign
to New York as can be - the bones
and feathers of snow geese, kelp
and lyme grass, a trace of seal.
The samples, hidden ahead of time
(on Petri dishes), came from the
collection Ms. Gormezano has been
amassing since 2005 in fieldwork
on the grassy coastal plains ringing
the western shore of Hudson Bay
in central Canada, one of the southernmost
bastions of the great ice-roaming
predators.
... Ms. Gormezano is using scat
to track the wanderings, genetics
and condition of the bears, which
in that northern region, particularly,
have shown signs of stress that
could be related to the warming
Arctic climate and retreating sea
ice. ... Other methods for tracking
shifts in populations involve chasing
the bears in helicopters, sedating
them with darts and tagging or
collaring them. But such methods
can pose risks or alter the bears'
behavior, she said. ... In contrast,
bear scat, and also tufts of fur
left in dens or sleeping spots,
can be collected without affecting
the bears. Tests of DNA in the
feces can distinguish individual
animals. So the dispersion of scat
provides a map of a particular
bear's wanderings.
"All the issues with global
warming are going to affect southernmost
populations, especially around
southern Hudson Bay and western
Hudson Bay, where they're already
starting to see changes, reduced
reproductive output, thinner subadults," Ms.
Gormezano said. "So this is
a great opportunity to try out
a new method." ...
2007 April 23. Bees
Vanish, and Scientists Race for
Reasons. By
ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO. NY Times. Excerpt:
BELTSVILLE, Md. ... The volume
of theories to explain the collapse
of honeybee populations "is
totally mind-boggling," said
Diana Cox-Foster, an entomologist
at Penn State. More than a quarter
of the country's 2.4 million bee
colonies have been lost - tens
of billions of bees, according
to an estimate from the Apiary
Inspectors of America, a national
group that tracks beekeeping. So
far, no one can say what is causing
the bees to become disoriented
and fail to return to their hives.
... With Jeffrey S. Pettis, an
entomologist from the United States
Department of Agriculture, Dr.
Cox-Foster is leading a team of
researchers who are trying to find
answers to explain "colony
collapse disorder," the name
given for the disappearing bee
syndrome. ...the most likely suspects:
a virus, a fungus or a pesticide...."There
are so many of our crops that require
pollinators," said Representative
Dennis Cardoza, a California Democrat
whose district includes that state's
central agricultural valley, and
who presided last month at a Congressional
hearing on the bee issue. "We
need an urgent call to arms to
try to ascertain what is really
going on here with the bees, and
bring as much science as we possibly
can to bear on the problem." So
far, colony collapse disorder has
been found in 27 states, ...Honeybees
are arguably the insects that are
most important to the human food
chain. They are the principal pollinators
of hundreds of fruits, vegetables,
flowers and nuts. ... more beekeepers
have resorted to crisscrossing
the country with 18-wheel trucks
full of bees in search of pollination
work....
2007 February 13. Group:
Germany's Amphibians Threatened.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. Excerpt:
BERLIN (AP) -- This year's unusually
warm winter could cause large
numbers of amphibians to die
in Germany, an environmental
organization said Tuesday. Unseasonably
warm weather and rain over the
last few days has already brought
amphibians out of hibernation,
the German-based Euronatur organization
said. ...Newts already have been
sighted in pools of water in southern
Germany, and the first toads should
be seen in the next few days if
the weather continues to be warm,
Euronatur said. If a cold spell
hits now, it could be especially
deadly for newts, toads and other
amphibians. Eggs could cease developing
and adult animals, which are not
able to return to hibernation in
time, could die. Shorter winters
and hotter summers in Germany and
other changes attributed to global
climate change have depleted native
amphibian populations, shortened
the lifecycle of already threatened
animals, and dried up small water
pools that amphibians inhabit during
the summer's hotter months.
2007 February 6. For
Wolves, a Recovery May Not Be
the Blessing It Seems.
By JIM ROBBINS. NY Times. Excerpt:
HELENA, Mont., Feb. 5 - ...At first
glance, it seems like a win for
conservation that wolves are now
successful enough that the United
States Fish and Wildlife Service
proposed taking wolves in Idaho
and Montana off the endangered
species list.... But the price
of success may be high. In Idaho,
the governor [C. L. Otter] is
ready to have hunters reduce
the wolf population in the state
from 650 to 100, the minimum
that will keep the animal off
the endangered species list.
...The proposed delisting, as
it is called, comes because the
population of wolves in the northern
Rocky Mountains is surging. ...wolves
in [Wyoming] will continue to
have federal protections under
the Endangered Species Act, federal
officials say, because the state's
policies are not adequate to
keep the wolf from becoming endangered
again. ...At the same time, the
service announced that the delisting
process for wolves in Michigan,
Wisconsin and Minnesota was complete.
At 4,000 total, the wolf population
in those states is considered
fully recovered, and the comment
period is finished. ....Defenders
of Wildlife, an environmental
group that played a pivotal role
in the wolf's return, opposes the
delisting. "We don't support
the delisting at this time," said
Jamie Clark, executive vice president
of the group. "Hunting is
fine. But you have to be judicious
about where you hunt and when you
hunt. Wyoming and Idaho say they
are going to kill wolves, but there's
no mention of population science
or monitoring. Its politics, not
science." ...On the other
hand, some officials say that federal
protection has resulted in far
too many wolves and that delisting
is needed to cull the excess....
2007 January 23. A
Radical Step to Preserve a Species:
Assisted Migration. By CARL
ZIMMER, NY Times. Excerpt:
The Bay checkerspot butterfly's
story is all too familiar. It
was once a common sight in the
San Francisco Bay area, but development
and invasive plants have wiped
out much of its grassland habitat.
Conservationists have tried to
save the butterfly by saving
the remaining patches where it
survives. But thanks to global
warming, that may not be good
enough. ...Studies on the Bay
checkerspot butterfly suggest
that this climate change will
push the insect to extinction.
The plants it depends on for food
will shift their growing seasons,
so that when the butterfly eggs
hatch, the caterpillars have little
to eat. Many other species may
face a similar threat, and conservation
biologists are beginning to confront
the question of how to respond.
The solution they prefer would
be to halt global warming. But
they know they may need to prepare
for the worst. One of the most
radical strategies they are considering
is known as assisted migration.
Biologists would pick a species
up and move it hundreds of miles
to a cooler place.... Dr. Jason
McLachlan, a Notre Dame biologist,
...and his colleagues argue that
assisted migration may indeed
turn out to be the only way to
save some species. But biologists
need to answer many questions
before they can do it safely
and effectively. The first question
would be which species to move.
If tens of thousands are facing
extinction, it will probably
be impossible to save them all.
...The next challenge will be to
decide where to take those species.
..."We don't
even know where species are now," Dr.
McLachlan said. Simply moving a
species is no guarantee it will
be saved, of course. ...As species
shift their ranges, some of them
will push into preserves that are
refuges for endangered species. "Even
if we don't move anything, they're
going to be moving," Dr. McLachlan
said....
2007 January 2.The
Rancher and the Grizzly: A Love
Story. By Bruce Barcott Excerpt:
People, livestock, and a threatened
predator are learning to get
along in the new west. As an
afternoon rainstorm sweeps down
Montana's Madison Valley,…rancher
Todd Graham stands inside a dusty
barn and asks his neighbors for
help….Graham addresses
a veritable cross section of
the new West: sheep ranchers,
cattlemen, conservation biologists,
government officials, retirees,
and second-home owners. Seated
in folding chairs, they've gathered
for a Living With Predators workshop
jointly organized by the Madison
Valley Ranchlands Group (which
defends livestock) and Keystone
Conservation (which defends animals
that want to kill the livestock)…..The
Madison Valley today is the crash
point of two demographic trends:
a hot western housing market
and rebounding populations of
predators….About 7,000
people live in the valley, and
cattle still outnumber them ten
to one. But that's changing.
Retirees and second-home owners,
eager to claim their slice of
Montana heaven, are snapping
up 20-acre ranchettes carved
out of 1,000-acre working ranches…....Humans
aren't the only creatures attracted
to the valley. Yellowstone's
grizzlies, once threatened with
extinction, have made a strong
recovery....Having reached their
population limit within Yellowstone
-- these bears need plenty of
territory to roam, forage, and
mate -- they are fanning out
beyond the park's boundaries…..As
their numbers grow, Yellowstone
grizzlies face a crucial test:
Can they survive on land owned
by ranchers, farmers, and the
new wave of retirees, telecommuters,
and vacation-home owners?.....One
of the largest relatively intact
temperate ecosystems on earth,
the Yellowstone region hosts
perhaps the greatest concentration
of large mammals in the contiguous
United States, including the
nation's biggest populations
of grizzlies outside Alaska.
It's a region marked by concentric
circles of wildlife protection.…..A
final decision is expected from
the Fish and Wildlife Service
in early 2007. If the Yellowstone
grizzly loses its threatened
status, protection of the bear
will be turned over to state
wildlife agencies….
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