by Editor on March 10, 2010
Can Bison Return To The Plains? Conservationists Think It's Possible. Photo By Stefan Didam-Schmallenberg
Conservationists Present A Plan For Restoring Buffalo Herds To The American Landscape
A respected international conservation organization has expressed optimism about the possibility of returning herds of American bison to a significant portion of their historic range.
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), changes in the use of agricultural lands in the American West and Midwest have created opportunities to restore bison—popularly known as “buffalo”—which once roamed in the millions from the interior of Alaska to the plains of northern Mexico. Throughout much of their range, bison were once a keystone species, fertilizing and conditioning the soil for native grasses as well as serving as food for such predators as wolves and bears, along with numerous scavengers. The native Americans of the Western plains also depended on buffalo as a food source.
When European settlers first set eyes on the buffalo, they were astonished to see herds that stretched as far as the eye could see. The settlers erroneously assumed that their numbers were limitless.
However, within a few short decades during the late 1800’s, out-of-control market hunting drove the bison to the brink of extinction. By 1900, fewer than 30 wild plains bison (Bison bison bison) remained in a remote valley in Yellowstone National Park, while the only remaining wood bison (Bison bison athabascae) consisted of a herd of around 200 that dwelled south of Canada’s Great Slave Lake. It was only then that the US and Canadian governments took steps to preserve the few buffalo that were left.
Bison currently number around half a million, over 90 percent of which reside in commercial herds. Meanwhile, wild buffalo populations occupy around 1 percent of their former range.
But the IUCN, which is the organization that maintains the international Red List of Threatened Species, hopes to increase the number of wild bison and expand their range. The IUCN recently published a detailed blueprint for bison restoration entitled American Bison: Status Survey and Conservation Guidelines 2010.
According to the report, wild bison, which are listed on the Red List as a “Near Threatened” species, still face significant challenges which could drive them back toward extinction. However, the organization adds that land-use changes in the West and Midwest may have made it possible to begin reassembling portions of the native ecosystems that existed when bison were one of western North America’s dominant species. Those land-use changes include an ongoing trend toward the abandonment of family farms in the Great Plains region where bison once predominated. [click to continue…]
by Editor on March 3, 2010
A Woodcock—Native To North America—Dines On An Imported Delicacy. Photo:Ronald SI
It seems strange to think of earthworms as aliens. After all, they are some of the first wild creatures we notice as children, and they seem to be everywhere, performing their lowly task of soil enrichment. It seems impossible that they would not always have been here. And yet, scientists tell us, in many parts of the United States there were no worms until they were transported here from Europe and elsewhere by yet another invasive species—humans beings.
Earthworms Are Not Always Helpful
At least since the end of the last great Ice Age, most of North America has been an earthworm-poor environment.
In the northern US, the Ice Age glaciers scraped away the topsoil along with most of the worms it contained. When the glaciers retreated about 10,000 years ago, the northern forests grew back without the help of worms tilling and enriching the soil.
Then came European settlers, bringing with them plants from Europe and elsewhere—as well as the dirt those plants were growing in, and the worms that dirt contained. Worms were also introduced intentionally, as a way to fertilize and improve the productivity of European-style vegetable gardens.
Now, anyone in the Northeast or the upper Midwest who turns over a rich spadeful of garden dirt is likely to find that dirt literally crawling with at least one non-native earthworm species. For instance, the night crawlers (Lumbricus terrestris) so prized by fisherman are native to Europe, not North America, and so are the several species of “red wigglers” so common to American gardens and compost bins. In fact, about one-third of the more than 180 earthworm species found from Canada to Mexico are aliens in America. And in terms of sheer population numbers, the migrants thoroughly overwhelm the natives in most places. [click to continue…]
by Editor on February 24, 2010
As The Arctic Warms, Grizzlies Push Into Polar Bear Habitat, Setting Up A Potential Conflict Between Species. Photo:Jean-Pierre Lavoie
Climate Change May Be Benefiting One Species To The Detriment Of Another
Wildlife researchers from the American Museum of Natural History report that grizzly bears have been appearing in Canadian sub-Arctic habitat that previously was the exclusive domain of polar bears. The research team, led by Dr. Robert Rockwell, documented the presence of grizzlies in northwest Manitoba’s Wapusk National Park, in the area of Hudson Bay.
The Town of Churchill, Manitoba, on Hudson Bay, is perhaps the world’s most popular spot for observing polar bears.
According to a report by Dr. Rockwell, which was published in the scientific journal Canadian Field-Naturalist, Wapusk National Park contains plentiful food resources for grizzlies, including berries, fish, caribou and moose. The report was careful not to attribute the grizzly’s northern expansion to any particular factor. However, wildlife researchers have previously predicted that climate-change-related warming of the Arctic and sub-Arctic tundras could create conditions favorable to a natural colonization by grizzly bears.
Polar bears, meanwhile, are struggling as a species due to a climate-change-related loss of habitat. The white bears hunt for prey such as seals on ocean ice—and that ice has become increasingly scarce due to rising temperatures in the northern oceans.
Habitat encroachment by grizzly bears could further harm polar bears through competition for food resources. In addition, Dr. Rockwell’s team reported some evidence to indicate that grizzlies may occasionally attack, kill and eat hibernating female polar bears and their young—and that polar bears may do the same to dormant grizzlies.
A further potential problem is the hybridization of polar bears and grizzly bears, which are closely related species. Polar bears are believed to have evolved from grizzlies during a glacial period about 300,000 years ago, and when the two species mate—which has occasionally occurred in the wild—they produce fertile young. Hybrid bears could complicate the survival of polar bears as a distinct species.
Read Dr. Rockwell’s original article.
by Editor on February 9, 2010
Alaska Launches A Public Relations War Against Polar Bears. Let’s Just Say NO!
It’s time to say NO TO ALASKA.
On February 4, a committee of the Alaska State Legislature approved a budget of $1.5 Million to launch a nation-wide public-relations war against polar bears and the US Endangered Species Act. Alaska’s government views polar bears as being an obstacle to oil and gas exploration and exploitation along the state’s Arctic coastline. Although federal protections recently extended to polar bears do not prohibit the development of natural resources in polar bear habitat, they do require permission for those activities.
But the Alaska legislature apparently would prefer that the oil companies’ lives not be made more complicated by concerns for polar bears and other wildlife. The state’s Legislative Council is currently shopping for just the right public relations firm to lead the charge against the bears and in favor of weakening the Endangered Species Act.
Polar bears were listed as “Threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 2008 after the US Fish & Wildlife Service determined that climate change in the Arctic was severely reducing the amount of sea ice on which the bears hunt seals and other marine mammals.
In late 2009, the federal government proposed the designation of over 200,000 square miles of Alaskan land and water as “critical habitat” for polar bears. Some of this critical habitat also contains potential reserves of oil and natural gas.
The Endangered Species Act prohibits actions that adversely affect critical habitat for a listed species. Commercial activities within critical habitat are not banned, but they do require government regulation and oversight.
In announcing the critical habitat proposal, US Interior Department Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Tom Strickland, said, “Proposing critical habitat for this iconic species is one step in the right direction to help this species stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change. As we move forward with a comprehensive energy and climate strategy, we will continue to work and protect the polar bear and its fragile environment.” [click to continue…]
by Editor on January 11, 2010
A dolphin-loving American consumer would have to look awfully hard these days to find a can of tuna that was not technically “dolphin safe.” In fact, less than 2 percent of of all canned tuna sold in the US is caught by chasing and intentionally netting combined groups of yellowfin tuna and dolphins. The bad news is that the main “dolphin-safe” fishing method is responsible for killing a lot of other sea life—as well as at least a few dolphins.
What Exactly Is Safe About it?
BY PAUL GUERNSEY
It has been a habit of mine for years: Whenever I buy a can of tuna in the supermarket, I conscientiously search the label for the “dolphin-safe” logo. Upon locating the emblemized image of the world’s most popular sea mammal and its accompanying handful of reassuring words, I invariably feel a little flash of relief followed by a brief glow of virtue. Then it’s on to the dressing aisle to get that jar of mayonnaise. . . .
Unfortunately, in the wake of some recent research into what the term “dolphin-safe” actually means, my enjoyment of a tuna sandwich—I like mine on rye, with lettuce and sliced Spanish olives—is now surrounded by a great deal more ambiguity than it used to be. This is not because I think the large, multi-national tuna fleet that operates off the western coasts of the Americas is still killing 130,000 dolphins every year the way it did before widespread public horror and a US consumer tuna boycott in the late 1980’s led to sweeping changes in the fishery. By all accounts, it’s not—although some dolphins do continue to suffer unintentional drownings in purse-seine fishing nets.
Rather, most of my reservations now have to do with the “dolphin-safe” part of the tuna industry. And while it is possible that fishermen using “dolphin-safe” methods off the coasts of western North and South America may be under-reporting the number of dolphins they kill—most “dolphin-safe” boats are too small to require observers aboard—it is not even primarily dolphins that I and many other conservationists are concerned about.
What bothers me—and should concern every environmentally conscious US consumer of canned tuna—is the tremendous number of fish, including sharks and other marine species, that are killed and discarded as “by-catch” by fishermen using the most widely employed “dolphin-safe” fishing technique—a collateral-damage problem that, ironically, the still-sizable contingent of non-dolphin-safe fishermen manages for the most part to avoid.
According to an estimate by the Environmental Justice Foundation, each dolphin spared by switching from “non-dolphin-safe” fishing techniques to the most widely employed alternative costs the lives of 25,824 small tuna (these are discarded, not kept and utilized), 27 sharks and rays, 382 mahi mahi (also known as “dolphin fish”), 188 wahoo, 82 yellowtail and other large fish, 1 billfish such as a marlin or sailfish and 1,193 triggerfish and other small fish.
Dr. Martin Hall, principal scientist for the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC)—the regulatory body that oversees tuna fishing on the American side of the Pacific—offers estimates that, while still horrific, are somewhat lower, most notably, in the number of small tuna inadvertently killed per dolphin spared (15,620) as well as a smaller number of triggerfish and other small fish.
Of special concern to conservationists is the number of sharks caught as by-catch, because many species of these marine predators are under intense fishing pressure worldwide, and an increasing number of them have been appearing on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
US consumers have been purchasing tuna labeled as dolphin-safe since 1990. [click to continue…]
by Editor on December 17, 2009
The Arctic Fox Is One Of Nine Animals the IUCN Says Is Threatened By Global Warming. Photo:USFWS
Global Climate Change Threatens A Host Of Animals Other Than Just Polar Bears
We have mentioned in other places on this site that the the world contains thousands of vulnerable, threatened and endangered species, and that lists of the “most threatened” animals often say as much about the people making the lists as they do about either the listed animals or the specific threats facing them. In other words, the makeup of the list depends on the message that a particular lister is trying to communicate to anyone who might read that list. The personal preferences, and even prejudices, of the lister might also play a role.
That’s not to say, however, that lists are not useful. In the last week, two conservation organizations have stepped forward with lists that they hope will serve to remind people that, while global climate change has been causing some much publicized problems for polar bears, there are a lot of other creatures as well that are likely to suffer because of global warming.
The two lists, not surprisingly, have very different animals on them. The Species and Climate Change list, published last week by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), profiles 9 animals, mostly from the Arctic but also from elsewhere, as well as one plant, in order to illustrate several of the many environmental problems that befall living things when their climate changes. The IUCN, by the way, is the international organization that maintains the complete lists of the world’s thousands of endangered, threatened and vulnerable species.
Meanwhile, the Wilderness Conservation Society last week published its own list of Species Facing the Heat as a way to draw attention to some “unsung” animals that are being threatened by global climate change.
The IUCN List Includes: [click to continue…]
by Editor on December 15, 2009
An Octopus Species Is The First Invertebrate Documented As One Of A Growing Number Of Animals That Use Tools. Photo:Nick Hobgood
Octopus Carries And Uses Coconut-Shell “Armor;” Critically Endangered Gorillas Launch “Weapons” At People
It used to be that we humans believed tool use was one of the main things that separated us from the rest of the animals.
Then the famed chimpanzee researcher Dr. Jane Goodall came along in the 1960’s and documented tool use among chimpanzees: She witnessed chimps modifying tree branches and then poking them into termite mounds in order to harvest a snack of termites.
The shock of Dr. Goodall’s discovery soon faded, however, as humans discussed it and finally concluded that, since chimps are our closest animals relatives and actually quite a bit like us in many ways, tool use among them probably should not have taken us by such surprise. But of course, tool use among any other species would be extremely unlikely . . .
Since then, however, species after species has been revealed by animal behaviorists to be makers and users of tools—and, unlike chimps, some of them are very unlike us. For instance, crows and other birds have been proven to use sticks to manipulate food and other objects in their environment.
Meanwhile, some monkey species as well as all the other species of great apes aside from chimps have shown themselves to be tool users. Orangutans fashion rain hats and build shelters out of leaves, while gorillas have been witnessed using using sticks to test the depth of streams before crossing them. [click to continue…]
