Defenders of Wildlife Blog

© William R. Curtsinger / National Geographic Stock

Juan Carlos Cantu, Mexico Program Manager

Humans can regularly be seen on Mexico’s beaches, umbrella drink in hand. But we’re not the only ones who regularly hit the country’s beautiful sandy coastline. Literally, every sea turtle species on earth nests on Mexico’s beaches, save one that is only found in Australia. That’s why we’re known as the sea turtle capital of the world, and that’s why the way Mexico protects its sea turtles matters on a global scale.

Current Mexican law classifies all sea turtle species as endangered. But unfortunately this really only means turtles are protected from direct harvest—meaning they can’t be killed for their meat, skin, shell or eggs. Yet other factors pose serious dangers, including damage to and destruction of sea turtle habitat. Even nesting habitat, which is particularly important to the survival of these species, was not legally protected.

An endangered Olive Ridley sea turtle comes ashore to lay her eggs. (© Steven Price)

But not anymore, because in February, a new Mexican law (known as Official Norm-162) took effect, and it offers a whole slate of new protections for sea turtle nesting grounds in Mexico.

Previously, only the most important sea turtle nesting sites have been designated as sanctuaries and natural reserves, which allowed them some level of protection but left the majority of nesting habitat vulnerable.  But now, the new regulation extends habitat protections to all turtle nesting sites. Here are just some of the things that this new and unprecedented regulation has accomplished for sea turtle nesting habitat:

Protecting Native Habitat
The new regulation forbids the removal of native vegetation in the nesting habitat. When coastal vegetation is removed, especially from sand dunes, it allows increased erosion that could eventually destroy nesting beaches. In addition, some turtles like the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle even prefer to crawl up the beach all the way up to the vegetation to nest.

Loggerhead Sea Turtle Hatchling (NPS)

Putting Out Artificial Lights
The regulation also addresses one of the main factors that disrupt nesting turtles: artificial lights from houses, hotels and roads. These light sources can not only disorient nesting females, but they can be lethal to emerging hatchlings. As they climb their way up from their sandy nest, newly-hatched turtles look for the subtle light reflecting off the surf and waves to orient themselves towards the sea. Artificial lighting can point them in the wrong direction and when you are that young, one wrong turn can force you to use up your limited energy stores, leading to an almost certain death. Even those that eventually make their way to the surf can be too exhausted to swim away, becoming easy pickings for fish and marine birds. For the first time in Mexico, this new regulation calls for moving, changing or eliminating any light sources that illuminates a nesting beach or creates a glow that could disorient the females or hatchlings. These changes won’t happen overnight, but authorities are already informing beachside homeowners and hotels of the new rules.

Off-Road Vehicles
The new regulation also helps address the use of heavy vehicles on the beach. Heavy vehicles may compact sand, destroy nests and eggs, create deep ruts that can become traps for nestlings and basically tear up nesting beaches. No more. From now on, vehicles on nesting beaches have to be less than 300 kg in weight and can only be used for patrolling and management of the nesting site.

In the U.S., sea turtle nesting grounds are often carefully protected. (© Robert S. Donovan)

Spectators
A less obviously threatening activity also outlawed by the new regulation is the release of newly hatched sea turtles. Many hotels near nesting beaches offer guests the opportunity to be part of the release of hatchlings into the sea. The problem is that they keep the hatchlings in confinement for many days until enough people sign up for the activity. So when they are released after being held in captivity, they are too weak to handle the surf or avoid predators. Hatchlings need to get into the water as soon as possible after hatching so they can use their limited energy to swim away. This tourism practice is now forbidden, and hatchlings have to be released immediately. Also for the first time, those who want to watch sea turtles laying their eggs during nesting season will have to follow strict rules.

All of these and many more regulations will help protect beaches, nests, female sea turtles, their eggs and hatchlings from now on. I am proud to say that Defenders of Wildlife played a key role in making this happen. We worked on this regulation for many years; in fact we were the ones who proposed its creation back in 2002. It took a decade of lobbying before we got the Environment Ministry to develop it, and Defenders is one of only four non-governmental organizations credited with helping to make these new protections a reality. It took a long time to get these regulations adopted but now when sea turtles hit Mexico’s beaches to nest, they will find it a safer place than ever.

Sierra Weaver, Senior Staff Attorney

Sea otters rest wrapped in kelp beds along the Pacific Ocean during California Spring (Credit: Bruce J. Lichenberger)

Like many animals under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the southern sea otter has had a long and bumpy road to recovery. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this population of otters was hunted to near extinction, bringing a population of approximately 16,000 down to an estimated 50 individuals, and struggling to rebound to today’s estimated to 2,800. Though the population’s historic range once stretched from Alaska all the way down the Pacific coast to Baja California, it now spans only a fraction of the distance. And even after hunting ended, otters have remained threatened by other human activities like oil drilling and commercial fishing. Clearly, this was a species that needed protection from humans. The question was how.

Back in the 1980s, oil spills were considered the greatest threat to sea otters on California’s central coast. The small marine mammals depend on their thick fur to keep them warm in cold ocean water, and contact with even a small amount of oil can cause death by hypothermia. In an attempt to guard against this threat to the southern sea otters, a plan was hatched to create a second colony of otters in a safer location offshore, on California’s Channel Islands. The plan involved a couple of elements. First, move a number of otters out to San Nicolas Island to try to start a population that policymakers believed could help guard against a mass die-off in the event of a catastrophic oil spill. Second, because otters were being moved closer to the lucrative fishing grounds of Southern California, the plan also created a “no otter zone” from which the otters would be removed if they were discovered there. Quite simply, the decision was made to encourage otters to inhabit some places, but keep them out of others.

Between 1987 and 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) moved 140 sea otters from the coast of California out to San Nicolas Island. Unfortunately, many of the otters did not survive the initial move, and many others left San Nicolas to return to the mainland. Not only did the otters not take well to being moved to the island in the first place, but they fared similarly badly when moved out of the “no otter zone.”

A southern sea otter yawns.

Because of the harm to otters caused by a program that was supposed to help them, FWS stopped moving otters in the early 1990s to reevaluate the program. For several years, only a few otters were reported in the “no otter zone.” However, by 1998 the numbers began to increase — the otters had found their way back. In 2000, FWS determined that continuing to remove otters from the “no otter zone” was not only causing harm to individual otters that didn’t survive the move, but also likely to put the entire species at risk. These scientists determined — a decade after the translocation program was initiated — that the most important thing to sea otter recovery was range expansion, and that the “no otter zone” originally included in the translocation program was fundamentally inconsistent with the needs of the species. The otter moving stopped, but the regulations making most of Southern California technically “off limits” to sea otters stayed on the books, continuing to threaten otters with the specter of forced relocation.

For years, FWS has consistently found that otters need to move and expand their range if the species is to recover from its threatened status and find its way off the endangered species list. Despite this scientific knowledge, however, the policy response has been excruciatingly slow. But yesterday, FWS finally took action, signing a final rule that formally puts an end to the “no otter zone,” ending the experiment in active management of otters on California’s coast, and truly allowing natural range expansion to occur. And you deserve some of the credit too: during the public comment period for the policy change, Defenders’ supporters sent more than 11,600 comments to FWS to show their support for the repeal of the “no otter zone.” This is a fantastic, if long- awaited outcome from FWS, and one that we hope will allow southern sea otters to inch closer to recovery.

A few weeks ago we told you about the record numbers of sea turtle nests in Florida.  Well, it looks like Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina is also enjoying a banner  year!  And not just for sea turtles, but for shorebirds, tourism and the local economy as well.

Sea turtles nested at Cape Hatteras National Seashore in record numbers this season. The beach driving rule helps ensure that mother turtles can lay their eggs and return to the water safely.

A National Park Service rule that manages beach driving on the National Seashore in order to protect wildlife was implemented in February of this year.  The final rule was developed after Defenders and the Audubon Society sued the National Park Service for failing for more than 30 years to regulate ORV use at the seashore.

It was a big source of concern for some in the region, who feared it would discourage visitors and kill profit for businesses that depend on tourism dollars.  Instead, it appears the opposite is true:  the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau reported that visitor gross occupancy of Dare County during the bird and turtle nesting season (the months of April, May and June 2012) was the highest on record.  The National Park Service has also sold over 23,000 off-road vehicle (ORV) permits as of August 26.

While business was booming, sea turtles were thriving, with turtle nest counts exceeding all previous records at Cape Hatteras. As of August 29th, 222 nests were recorded and that number may increase through September as the sea turtle nesting season continues.

Piping plovers, a rare shorebird species that nests at Cape Hatteras, have also had a banner year: eleven rare piping plover chicks  survived to fledge from nests laid on the seashore’s beaches.

Responsible beach management helps piping plovers thrive at Cape Hatteras.

And all this happened with only a few beach miles closed for  protection.

Indeed, the National Park Service reported this week that 63.1 miles of Cape Hatteras Seashore ocean and inlet shoreline were open to the public, with only 1.8 miles temporarily closed for resource protection. Of those 63.1 miles, 46.1 miles were open to pedestrians only with another 17 miles open to pedestrians and ORV traffic.

What’s great about this news is that it shows how conservation can be a win-win for both wildlife and people.  The National Park Service rule balances visitor enjoyment of its beaches with the needs of the animals that depend on them to raise their young.  This rule and its positive outcome set a fantastic example for future wildlife protection decisions in the US and beyond.

Click here to read the Southern Environmental Law Center press release on this great news out of North Carolina.

Coast to Coast” is a summer blog series highlighting some of America’s most imperiled wildlife. By using the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s new state-by-state endangered species map, we will tell stories about native plants and animals in unique landscapes where Defenders will be focusing its conservation efforts in coming years.

Imagine that you’re trudging through the heavy Colorado snow, hiking close to 10,000 feet. You suddenly spot what appears to be an overgrown house cat. You stop in your tracks, careful not to make a sound, peer closer and see it’s a Canada lynx. The lean grey form bounds through the snow on long legs after a snowshoe hare, the lynx’s favorite food. Its large paws keep the cat from sinking into the snow, while it listens with tufted ears to track the hare’s path.

Canada lynx are highly elusive forest cats that prey on snowshoe hares in remote alpine reaches of the Rockies.

A scene like this may be relatively common throughout Canada or Alaska, but it’s a rarity in the southern Rockies where life has been pretty rough for this mid-sized carnivore. Originally pursued by fur trappers, these critters nearly vanished from the southernmost portion of their range by the 1970s. However, in 2000 lynx were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and as a result lynx populations have started to recover. After a successful reintroduction program in Colorado (more on that later), an estimated 1,000 lynx are now spread across the U.S. from Washington to Colorado. But the Canada lynx is still threatened by habitat loss and other human activities including logging, collisions with vehicles, and trapping.

This species is famous in biology classes for its population cycles. If the snowshoe hare population goes up, a few years later the lynx population follows. Then more lynx eat more snowshoe hares, depleting the population and leaving less food for future generations. Thus the cat’s population goes down, and the cycle repeats itself. This cycle goes back and forth for each generation and keeps the populations in check. Unfortunately, for the last century or more, man has had his thumb on the scale, making it harder for lynx to rebound.

The cat’s population is spread thin, putting an already imperiled species at great risk. The lynx need higher elevation forests, filled with spruce, fir, or lodgepole pine, to survive. Unfortunately these forests are often depleted by excessive logging, mining, energy exploration, and even backcountry recreation. Lynx are relatively reclusive animals, so even the occasional thrill-seeking heli-skiier or seasonal mountain chalet may be enough to scare lynx away from vital habitat they might otherwise use for hunting, denning or finding a mate. And as the forest diminishes, so do the snowshoe hares, leaving lynx with little to eat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service explains the threats the lynx is facing in this podcast:

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Thankfully, there have been some positive steps forward for the lynx in the past few years. In 1999 an initiative was launched to reintroduce the cat to Colorado. While this population followed the species’ typical ups and downs, overall it has been a huge success. In the past decade, more than 200 animals were released and 103 kittens were born. In 2009, the Forest Service added an amendment to eight regional management plans to soften human impacts of logging and other resource extraction and recreation on lynx.

While these are certainly steps in the right direction, sadly, this cold-loving critter could face more serious challenges as a result of climate change. The changing climate affects the type of snow that falls in its habitat, which could allow other predators to reduce snowshoe hare populations. Jeff Corwin explains in this video how climate change hurts these elusive cats:

For decades, Defenders of Wildlife has pushed for federal actions on key predators like the Canada lynx. Defenders recognizes that by preserving habitat and securing connectivity between vital areas, sparse populations will have more room to roam and a better shot at maintaining a healthy gene pool. The next step for lynx recovery is to secure a nationwide recovery plan that will allow these important predators to make a strong comeback in more places.

But we can only do so much. The American public barely knows about the Canada lynx or the trouble it’s in. That’s why raising awareness for this rare carnivore is a top priority–the more people that know about this cool cat, the brighter its future will be!

Saturday may have been another quiet day at the remote Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana, but it also marked another historic moment for the return of pure wild bison to the Great Plains. For the second time in four months, I got to see genetically pure bison from Yellowstone National Park gain new ground at Fort Peck.

The first time was in March, when 61 bison came storming off half a dozen trailers into a two-acre temporary surveillance corral. Since then, 21 calves were born to this small herd of pioneers – the first bison of Yellowstone descent to be born on the Great Plains, the heart of their historic range. Many of these bison had never tasted freedom, as they had lived in a quarantine facility on the edge of Yellowstone for up to five years prior to this move to eradicate a disease called brucellosis.

On Saturday, all 82 bison stampeded out of the corral into a 2,100-acre pasture that will be part of their new home. See my photos below:

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Leaving the corral

Two acres isn't much room for 61 bison and their 21 calves, but keeping them in this temporary surveillance corral helped the animals adjust to their new surroundings at Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana.

Looking on

Robert Magnan with Fort Peck Fish & Game and several community members watch as the bison exit the corral and head into the 2,100-acre pasture.

First steps

This calf takes its first steps ever outside of the two-acre corral where it was born.

Big Sky country

Three adult bison spread out on a hillside in their native habitat.

Herding up

Bison herds, once a familiar sight all across the Great Plains, are making a triumphant return at Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Powwow

Tribal members at Fort Belknap Indian Reservation celebrate during a summer powwow.

The bison now have free reign of this area. Once they’re settled, an additional 5,000 acres will be added to their home this fall, giving them more than 7,000 acres of grassland to graze and grow their numbers. Additional expansions are very likely, as we look to help the tribes acquire enough land to support at least 1,000 bison—the number scientists estimate is necessary to maintain genetic diversity.

Though it may be a long time before bison are truly “free roaming”, our hope is that these bison will be “wide ranging” enough to once again fulfill their essential ecological role in the Great Plains, while also helping to restore the culture of the people of the region. Tribal elder Iris Greybull was on hand to witness the event and said:

“We have always been known as buffalo people because we followed them, they fed us, they gave us clothes, they gave us our homes, they took care of us… Now the buffalo nations are coming back.”

At Defenders, our hope is that the people of Fort Peck Reservation are just the first of many landowners to offer bison a large home on the plains. The people of Fort Belknap Indian Reservation are also planning to start a new conservation herd of Yellowstone bison, and they have plenty of land to do it.

I attended a powwow at Fort Belknap on Sunday with Mark Azure, the tribes’ bison manager, and – along with two friends from World Wildlife Fund – helped him map the condition of the existing fence around their 22,000-acre area that will one day be home to wild Yellowstone bison. Defenders is assisting with a plan to upgrade the fence where necessary prior to the arrival of the Yellowstone bison, as required by the state of Montana prior to the bison’s return.

Beyond tribal lands, both Montana and federal agencies are looking to restore bison on some of our public lands as well. We look forward to partnering with them to make these plans a reality and see that more wild bison are returned to the Great Plains.

To learn more visit www.defenders.org/bisonhome.

In case it somehow slipped off your calendar…today is Endangered Species Day! Last year we celebrated by launching a blog series called “Can’t Live Without ‘Em” to highlight critters small and large that contribute to keeping our planet healthy. This year, we’d like to take a quick trip down memory lane to look at five incredible victories that YOU–our members and supporters–helped us achieve over the last year to protect America’s endangered species.

1. Defeat of Extinction Rider

Last summer, anti-environmentalists in Congress made a sneak attack on more than 260  imperiled plants and animals. A provision was initially included in the FY2012 House Interior Appropriations Bill that would have prevented species awaiting listing from being protected under the Endangered Species Act. Fortunately, the so-called “Extinction Rider” was eventually stripped from the bill thanks to an amendment led by environmental stalwart Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) along with cosponsors Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.) and Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii). The Dicks amendment received solid bipartisan support, demonstrating that Americans from both political parties continue to support strong protections for all our nation’s endangered species.

2. Sharks

Each year, tens of millions of sharks are killed for their fins and tossed back into the ocean. Shark-finning has exacerbated the global decline of shark populations, decimating some species by as much as 90%. Luckily, the state of California passed new legislation last fall to ban the sale, possession, and trade of shark fins. The ban will help raise awareness of the plight of sharks in the United States and help put a stop to the gruesome practice of shark-finning worldwide.

3. A wolf in California?!?

Speaking of California…if you had told us last year that a wolf would soon be living in California, we would have thought you were crazy. But reality is often stranger than fiction. OR-7, the now infamous lone male wolf from Oregon, began his long journey away from home last fall and before the end of year had made it into California. It’s been more than 80 years since wolves were eradicated in California, so the return of OR-7 is a testament to the successful restoration of wolves over the last two decades made possible by the Endangered Species Act.

4. Florida panthers get a brake

Scientists estimate that only 100 to 160 Florida panthers survive in the wild, and each year a dozen or more are killed in vehicle collisions. That’s why Defenders has been working hard to protect the big cats in key corridors where roads criss-cross panther habitat. This spring we scored major victories when Hendry County adopted a lower nighttime speed limit through a state forest to reduce the chance of harming panthers, and a high-tech Roadside Animal Detection System was installed on a dangerous segment of US 41 in the Big Cypress National Preserve to increase panther and motorist safety.

5. More Mexican wolves

The struggling Mexican wolf population in the Southwest increased for the second year in a row, taking recovery another step in the right direction. Mexican gray wolves are some of the most endangered animals on the planet with only 58 surviving in the wild in New Mexico and Arizona. But that’s an improvement from just 50 wolves the year before and only 42 at the end of 2009. With a science-based recovery plan in the works and ever-increasing tolerance from local community members, we’re hoping the population is finally on a path toward long-term sustainability.

Thanks for helping us fight to protect all these endangered animals and countless others!

Click here to see more wildlife success stories.