Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Till next season… – The Wood River Wolf Project finished its fifth season this month, having lost just 4 sheep out of 27,305 that move through the million-acre project area—a 99.99% success rate! We’ll have a full review from project manager Suzanne Stone early next week, but also check out last Friday’s write-up in the Idaho Mountain Express. To celebrate the end of the season, our field crew was invited for the first time to participate in the annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival in Sun Valley that honors the culture and heritage of raising sheep. It was an honor to take part and shows how Defenders’ efforts are slowly gaining acceptance in the community.

Don’t shoot red wolves! – Defenders took action this week with the Southern Environmental Law Center and other groups to protect red wolves in North Carolina. The state had previously agreed to allow night hunting of coyotes in areas where wolves also live, and at least one endangered red wolf has died as a result. Red wolves are small and can be very hard to distinguish from coyotes at any time of day, let alone at night. Here’s what Defenders senior staff attorney Jason Rylander had to say:

 “With fewer than 100 red wolves in the wild, we cannot afford to lose a single one to accidental shooting. Spotlight hunting of coyotes is a new and unnecessary threat to the conservation of red wolves.”

Read more in The Mountaineer.

What’s next for Washington? – Over the weekend, the Seattle Times reported on the ongoing controversy in Washington surrounding the removal of the Wedge Pack. While there’s little agreement about how to resolve future conflicts, it’s clear that no one is happy with the current direction in which wolf management is heading. Many ranchers have been reluctant to adopt proactive strategies to prevent livestock losses, while the state has been quick to blame wolves based on shoddy evidence. Our best hope is to find ways to work directly with ranchers to help provide them with the tools they need to coexist with wolves on the landscape.

First hundred wolves killed across Northern Rockies – At least 121 wolves have been killed so far this hunting season across three states: Idaho hunters have removed 65 since the end of August; Montana hunters have taken 25; Wyoming hunters have killed 23 in the trophy game area, another 2 were lost to other causes and 8 have been killed in the unregulated predator zone. With rifle season just starting in many states, those numbers are likely to rise sharply over the next couple months. Read more in the Missoulian.

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

It’s no surprise that the wolf gets a bad rap. For many of us, our first exposure to wolves was the “big, bad wolf” we heard about as children in bedtime stories. But did you know that Charles Perrault’s original printed version of Little Red Riding Hood had nothing to do with actual wolves? The story was told in the late 17th century court of King Louis XIV, at a time when the French aristocracy was concerned about beguiling men in the streets taking advantage of their daughters. It was meant as a cautionary tale regarding the corruption of young women, and the moral was to be wary of strangers, especially predatory men, not to have an irrational fear of local wildlife.

To our knowledge, real wolves have never blown down a pig’s house either, but such fairy tales designed to frighten people may have led to the demise of wolves in European cultures. Wolves were essentially eradicated from much of central and northern Europe during the 19th century, and prejudices against them followed to the New World. As a result, wolf populations up and down the East Coast were eliminated around the same time. In the early 20th century, government-sponsored eradication programs wiped out most of the remaining wolves from the West to make the land more suitable for raising livestock.

Today, wolves are back in many parts of the country, but Defenders is still fighting an uphill battle to overcome centuries of anti-wolf persecution. Fortunately, efforts like Wolf Awareness Week are helping us tell a new story about wolves—one that emphasizes their value as a keystone species. In places like Yellowstone National Park, we’ve seen the return of wolves have a positive and cascading effect on parts of the ecosystem. Wolves keep elk herds on the move and away from sensitive wetland and riparian areas, allowing streamside willow and aspen trees to recover in some areas. With more trees available, fish and songbirds are returning and beaver colonies are expanding. Wolves also keep coyote populations in check, which means more pronghorn antelope fawn survive and red foxes have less competition for food. Thus, more wolves = greater biodiversity = healthier environment.

It’s time to replace those old notions of the “big, bad wolf” with a fuller understanding of the important role that wolves play in maintaining nature’s balance. All of us can do our part to help set the record straight.

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

Wolves are capable of consuming an incredible amount of meat—up to 20 pounds in a single sitting—and sometimes they do. But they don’t always clean their plate, so to speak. Much of the time, wolves will save some for later by “caching” part of their bounty in case food becomes scarce. According to the Wolf Education & Research Center, wolves will cache as little as a single piece up to 15 pounds of meat from any given meal by burying it in the dirt. Doing so prevents ravens and other scavengers from stealing the surplus so that wolves can return and feed on it later.

Wolves hunt two bull elk in Yellowstone. Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service.

Wolves are known for their skilled hunting of larger prey, but they’re also opportunistic scavengers. It takes a lot less effort for a wolf to feast on the cached remains of a dead animal than it does to try to take down a live one that’s five to ten times its size. Further, food is often scarce during certain times of the year and in certain places, so it pays to keep a stash hidden for those lean times. If you’ve ever seen a dog burying a bone in the backyard, they’re following the same instinctual behavior from their canid ancestors, the wolves.

Because of their incredible sense of smell, wolves can easily detect old meat that’s been buried in order to locate their food caches. Unfortunately, this behavior can also get them into trouble. Livestock producers will often maintain open carcass pits of animals that die from a variety of causes—bad weather, disease, birthing complications, fatal injuries—and these pits can attract wolves from miles away. Some pits are fenced off or buried deep underground, but many of them are not protected at all. Once a wolf gets wind of an open carcass pit, they will often return again and again, treating it as their own personal food cache. As a result, ranchers greatly increase the likelihood that wolves will eventually come into conflict with any other livestock using the area.

One of the most important wolf coexistence strategies Defenders employs is helping ranchers identify major attractants like carcass pits and cleaning them up. By properly disposing of dead animals off-site or burying them deeper underground, ranchers can greatly reduce the chances of wolves becoming routine visitors to their livestock operation. These actions have been critically important in the Northern Rockies and adjacent states like Oregon and California where wolves have only recently returned. We’ve been able to help ranchers avoid disaster by cleaning up old carcass pits before wolves discover them, increasing the odds that wolves can share the landscape with livestock without turning them into dinner.

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

What’s the key to a wolf’s survival in the wild? The answer is right under its nose.

Wolves have a very acute sense of smell that they use to detect other animals more than a mile away. A huge part of a wolf’s brain is used to process smell, just as a huge part of our brain is used to process visual information. The olfactory centers in a wolf’s brain are about the size of a fist, while in humans they’re about the size of a pea.[1] There’s even evidence to suggest that wolves dream in smell!

Part of the reason wolves have such a finely tuned nose is that it helps them keep track of other wolves. Wolves have special scent glands near their tails that emit a smell unique to each wolf. They use the scent as their personal calling card, making it easier for wolves to identify their pack mates and any potential rival wolves from another pack. Dogs have the same scent glands since they’re descended from wolves. So next time you see dogs sniffing each other’s rear ends, you’ll know what they’re up to. That’s just their way of getting acquainted, similar to how we introduce ourselves by shaking hands, looking someone in the eye and saying our names to improve the chances of recognizing someone the next time we see them.

A female wolf follows her nose through the Wood River Valley of central Idaho.

A wolf’s strong sense of smell can also be used as a nonlethal deterrent–a way to keep wolves away from livestock without placing them in danger. Wolves can pick up the scent of a human upwind, and that is often enough to keep wolves away. Our field technicians on the Wood River Wolf Project use this to their advantage by camping upwind of a band of sheep, so any wolf that approaches will know a person is there too.

Researchers have started to experiment with using scent as a deterrent in other ways as well. In theory, the scat or urine of other animals, or even other wolves, can be used to create a “bio-fence” to keep wolves away by marking a territory with an unfamiliar scent. However, as with many deterrents, wolves can become habituated to the smell unless it is coupled with negative reinforcement. The smell of a human, or another wolf, will only discourage wolves if they perceive the source as a threat to their safety.

That’s why Defenders is working with ranchers and herders to make sure they’re implementing nonlethal deterrents effectively and remaining vigilant. A wolf’s nose can detect danger, but ultimately it’s boots on the ground that prevent conflict.

Come back on Wednesday for another Wolf Awareness Week fact, and more on how we work with ranchers to protect them.

by Daniel Thornhill

Ever gone to Google maps and used the “street view” feature to check out a new restaurant?  Or to see which side of the road an address was on?  Well, get ready to use Google maps in a whole new way.  Now you can view some of the most beautiful underwater landscapes on Earth, see fish species you never knew existed, and catch sea turtles napping amid beautiful corals.

Google has launched a new virtual photo tour of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the Seven Wonders of the World and the largest coral reef on the planet, as well as reefs in Hawaii and the Philippines.  The images were gathered for the Caitlin Seaview Survey, a global study of ocean and coral reef health.  There are currently 15,000 images, and by the time the mapping project ends in December, there’ll be about 50,000 available to view!

It used to be that only researchers like me had the opportunity to view and learn about so many different coral habitats and the species that depend on them.  Not anymore: now anyone with an internet connection can go to Google maps for an up-close and personal look at reef life in a growing collection of 360-degree panoramas. This is an unprecedented opportunity for conservation organizations like Defenders of Wildlife, to bring coral reef issues to the fore.

This reef at Dry Tortugas in the Florida Keys includes many different coral species and supports a myriad of fish, invertebrates and other animals. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

As a coral reef biologist, I’ve often needed to present the problems reefs face in an engaging way.  Visually documenting reefs is crucial to connecting them to the public.  While national parks and forests are accessible to everyone, coral reefs usually can only be seen in person by scuba divers.  The photos of the Great Barrier Reef and others are a “time-capsule” of the reef’s health.  Coral advocates can use them to educate people around the world, hopefully inspiring them to learn and care about coral reefs.

And coral conservation is more important than ever: climate change, pollution and other stressors are taking a toll on our planet’s reefs, as shown in these incredible “then and now” shots from Double Exposure, a photography site dedicated to showing how climate change alters our environment.  All too often, coral gardens that were vibrant and thriving 20 or 30 years ago are now pale and sparse.  Images are attention-grabbers, drawing viewers in and prompting the questions we researchers ask through our work every day: “how did this happen?” and “how can it be stopped?”

United States reefs in particular are suffering from major issues like overfishing, climate change, and nutrient pollution, which occurs when excess nutrients from waste water or agricultural runoff cause out-of-control algae growth, turning reefs into fields of seaweeds.  I saw first-hand how extreme frigid water temperatures in the winter of 2010 decimated reefs in the Florida Keys, killing corals that had survived for 300 years.  Lionfish, an invasive species that has made its way to the Atlantic coast, voraciously gobble reef-dwelling fish vital to coral ecosystems.  And the international coral trade for aquariums and curios has degraded reefs around the world, including our own.

The challenges that face our coral reefs are great.  But this project is a valuable new gateway to raising awareness about the plight of global coral reefs, and educating the public about how to stop the damage.

Defenders conservation scientist Dan Thornhill was the lead author of a study examining the effects of climate change on coral reefs in the Florida Keys last year- you can read it here.

by Haley McKey

When you think of climate change, you think of more heat waves and droughts, extreme weather, and melting ice caps.  But there’s another problem caused by carbon dioxide emissions, one which is less familiar to us, but no less catastrophic for our planet: ocean acidification.

How it happens:

Carbon dioxide (or CO₂, its chemical formula) is released by the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests and natural areas.  Most CO₂ goes into the earth’s atmosphere, but some is absorbed by our oceans; in fact, about a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted every year.  That comes to at least 5 million tons of CO₂ absorbed every day.

Algae and marine plants take up some of this CO₂ for photosynthesis, just as land plants do.  But a large amount of CO₂ simply dissolves into surface seawater.  This is what causes ocean acidification.  When CO₂ in the air is absorbed by the ocean, it bonds with water to form carbonic acid, the same stuff that gives an acidic bite to carbonated water and soda pop.  Like all acids, it releases positively charged hydrogen atoms, leaving behind the bicarbonate ion. The problem is that many marine creatures make their shells from a substance with a slightly different chemical composition – calcium carbonate – and the bicarbonate formed by the extra acidity is useless at best, and downright dangerous at worst.

Crustaceans like this sargassum crab need calcium carbonate to fortify their shells. Photo credit David S. Lee

How it threatens wildlife:

When the oceans have more bicarbonate and less carbonate, this interferes with the healthy growth of a variety of organisms, like mollusks (oysters and clams) and crustaceans (crabs, shrimp, lobsters and tiny krill, which are very important to the whole marine food web).  Mollusks take in calcium carbonate, a molecule in ocean water, and excrete it over their bodies to form hard, protective shells.  Crustaceans also use calcium carbonate to fortify their exoskeletons.  But human activities have increased the acidity of the ocean by almost 30% making it more difficult it is for these creatures to create their natural armor. Even tiny zooplankton, the building blocks of marine food chains, need calcium carbonate and cannot grow properly in acidic seawater.

Coral reefs may be in even more trouble.  Corals secrete calcium carbonate skeletons over their bodies to protect them, just like mollusks and crustaceans do.  Ocean acidification can cause corals to grow more slowly, and it is estimated that at current rates of increasing acidity, corals will no longer be able to lay down skeletons by 2150.

 Profound Effects:

The animals directly harmed by acidification may be small, but the effects are far-flung.  Baleen whales like the endangered Atlantic right whale depend on krill and plankton as a food source.  We humans have built whole economies around shellfish, not to mention the hundreds of fish species we eat that depend on them for food, too.  And as coral reefs die, the diverse and unique ecosystems they support can collapse.

Ocean acidification pulls the rug out from under marine food chains and coastal economies.  The only way to stop it is to make serious cuts to carbon emissions worldwide.  If not, it won’t be long before species begin to disappear and many ocean systems collapse completely in their absence.