Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Kylie Paul, Rockies & Plains Representative 

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YIP!

YIPPPP!!!

Walking through a healthy prairie dog colony is a noisy affair. Alarm calls from many individuals alert the colony to an invader’s presence. Three of us, Defenders’ Rockies and Plains field staff from Missoula, heard this sound often during our trip to Montana’s Milk River Basin last week, in search of the often maligned but critically important burrowing rodent known as the black-tailed prairie dog.

Fort Belknap Indian Reservation – A place of short-grass prairie beauty!

Besides the fact that they are as adorable as they are fascinating, prairie dogs happen to be important to a host of other plains-dwelling wildlife. They are a key prey species for the ferruginous hawk, the American badger, and most notably, the federally endangered black-footed ferret. Their extensive burrow systems also provide shelter for the burrowing owl, the tiger salamander, the western rattlesnake, and of course the black-footed ferret. Finally, the short-clipped vegetation in their colonies provides important habitat for the mountain plover and other grassland birds.

Prairie dogs’ invaluable role in grassland ecosystems is what brought us to Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, home to the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Tribes. Our job was to map prairie dog colonies and identify the amount of suitable habitat as part of a possible effort to reintroduce black-footed ferrets. Fort Belknap was one of the early recovery sites for black-footed ferrets, when they were reintroduced to prairie dog colonies in 1997.

Black-footed ferrets depend on prairie dog colonies for their survival. But in many areas across the West, agricultural producers have viewed prairie dogs as pests. As a result, prairie dogs have faced widespread extermination for more than a century. They also face another major problem. Prairie dog numbers have plummeted as a result of sylvatic plague (yes, plague!) outbreaks that have decimated many of the once-thriving prairie dog colonies at Fort Belknap and across the West. Plague is not endemic to North America but was brought here by rodents stowed away on ships in the early 1900s. Today, plague continues to have negative cascading effects on wildlife populations.

Sound the Alarm!

Currently, we are collaborating with tribal wildlife officials and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to identify prairie dog strongholds at Fort Belknap and take measures to protect them from future plague outbreaks. If we find enough acres of prairie dog colonies and protect them from plague, this area could once again have hope for restoring a new population of ferrets via ferret reintroduction. With another population of ferrets in the wild, the species has a better chance of recovery. Alongside WWF and students from Montana State University and Aaniiih Nakoda College, we met with the Tribes’ fish and wildlife director to plan the prairie dog mapping project. The mapping effort focused on prairie dog colonies within the Tribes’ buffalo reserve. Fort Belknap has been home to a herd of bison since the 1970s, and Defenders is working with the Tribes to restore a new herd of wild bison from Yellowstone.

Over the course of two long days, working against petulant weather and an excess of mud, Defenders helped map over 500 acres of active prairie dog colonies within the bison range on the Fort Belknap Reservation. Additional mapping is slated for later this summer. The good news is that prairie dog colonies appear to be doing relatively well at Fort Belknap. With the Tribes’ efforts and a little bit of luck, the colonies will continue to grow and Fort Belknap will see the return of a robust black-footed ferret population.

We took a camera along as we mapped – here are some photos from the trip:

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Fort Belknap Indian Reservation

A place of short-grass prairie beauty!

Working Together

We trained with tribal and conservation folks to map the prairie dog colony

Training Volunteers

Defenders' Northern Rockies Representative Jonathan Proctor (left) trains volunteers to help us map the colonies.

Baby birds!

All kinds of wildlife make their home on the prairie. These are likely McCown's longspur chicks.

Pronghorn

Pronghorn on the beautiful short-grass prairie landscape of Fort Belknap

Marbled godwit

Just one of the many bird species that make their homes in shortgrass prairie landscapes.

Mapping a prairie dog colony

Sound the Alarm!

This prairie dog saw us coming and started sounding the alarm to warn the colony of intruders.

Curious prairie dog

Eggs of a chestnut-collared longspur

Prairie dog closeup

Bison

It was great to see the new calves added to the herd.

Mapping

Defenders' employee Russ Talmo, mapping a prairie dog colony before an oncoming storm.

Prairie dogs!

Chesnut-collared Longspur

We saw a variety of birds while we were out, including lark bunting, long-billed curlew, marbled godwit, grasshopper sparrow, Brewer's sparrow, vesper sparrow, McCown's longspur and more.

Lookout

A prairie dog keeps an eye on the oncoming storm

Jamie Rappaport Clark, President and CEO 

As a wildlife biologist and former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I know first-hand the harm lead can cause to condors, eagles and other species of wildlife that ingest it. These mighty birds are innocent victims that often scavenge carcasses of big game animals left by hunters. Little do they know that what they have just eaten could kill them.

The fact that lead is toxic is old news. Decades ago, we took the lead out of paint, gasoline, cans used for food storage and even pipes. I remember growing up and seeing ads warning parents about lead paint in our homes. When I sold my first home, I had to fill out a lead paint disclosure form. And, as a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, I remember the Service requiring the use of non-lead ammunition for the hunting of waterfowl throughout the United States. Clearly, our country has been serious about getting the lead out for some time.

Lead shot at a shooting range, with a quarter placed for scale. ©USGS

So even though hunters have used steel shot to hunt ducks for more than two decades, why are they still using lead bullets for hunting everything else? And why are there people stridently advocating to keep using lead ammunition for hunting? You would think they would be concerned about their own health if not for the health of our wildlife.

Fifty years of scientific research has shown that the presence of lead in the environment poses an ongoing threat to the health of the general public and the viability of our state’s wildlife, including the California condor, bald eagle and golden eagle. Dr. Don Smith, Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology at UC Santa Cruz stated, “Lead-based ammunition is likely the greatest, largely unregulated source of lead knowingly discharged into the environment in the U.S.”

Lead bullets fragment into tiny pieces when they hit an animal during hunting. These small lead fragments are then easily digested by humans as well as wildlife that eat the gut piles of dead animals. Animals also ingest lead when foraging in fields and pick up spent ammunition mistakenly. These lead fragments are highly toxic in the humans and animals that digest them. In humans, exposure to lead causes brain damage, learning problems and slowed growth. For children, no amount of lead exposure is acceptable. In wildlife, lead poisoning causes an agonizing death through paralysis and starvation.

X-ray of lead shot in the digestive tract of a young bald eagle. ©USGS

Fortunately, California has always been a forward-thinking state on environmental issues, starting the dialogue on many of the significant conservation issues of our times. And so it is again, with the state Senate’s Natural Resources Committee recent 7-1 vote in favor of Assembly Bill (AB) 711 (authored by Assemblymembers Anthony Rendon and Richard Pan), bringing California one step closer to enacting the first law in the nation that would require the use of non-lead ammunition for all hunting.

Lobbyists for the gun and lead ammo industry claim that there is insufficient science to justify requiring non-lead ammunition in the killing of wildlife. But those arguments ring hollow, especially after 30 nationally and internationally known scientists issued a strongly worded statement, “Health Risks from Lead-Based Ammunition in the Environment: A Consensus Statement of Scientists,” on March 22.

These scientists are experts in lead and environmental health from universities, hospitals and laboratories from around the United States, England and Canada. And they were unequivocal in their assessment of lead’s toxicity and their support for the reduction and elimination of the use of lead ammo in order to protect human and environmental health. Their research provides overwhelming evidence that lead is toxic; that lead ammunition in the environment poses significant health risks to humans and wildlife; that there is no level of lead exposure to children known to be without deleterious effects and that lead poisoning poses a serious and significant threat to wildlife.

Who would you trust with your health, your children’s health and that of our wildlife: world renowned scientists or lobbyists from the gun and ammo industry?

There is clearly no scientifically valid reason why wildlife and humans should continue to be threatened with lead poisoning from lead ammunition. Opponents of the bill are just ignoring the facts – just like those who fought against getting lead out of gasoline, paint and cans used for food.

AB 711 is a reasonable and common sense solution to a public health and environmental threat. Given the toxic threat from lead ammunition, there is no legitimate reason to continue to use toxic lead ammunition when non-lead alternatives are effective and comparative in price.

The elected officials of California have an opportunity to once again be environmental leaders for our country and pass this first ever requirement for the use of non-lead ammunition. Hopefully some day, the thought of using lead ammunition to hunt will seem as foreign and foolish as using lead paint in our homes is today.

Originally published in The Huffington Post

Big brown bats shelter under the eaves of a house (©Jim Conrad)

Nina Fascione, Vice President of Development

I was watching TV with my family last Saturday evening at our house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore when we heard a scratching noise in the wood stove. Another bat had come down the chimney and was stuck in the stove pipe. My husband Steve put on gloves and fetched it out. It was a big brown bat – Eptesicus fuscus – one of the larger of the Maryland bat species. It was beautiful. And pissed off, refusing to hold still for a decent photo. We released it outside and went back to the (bad) movie we were watching.

The fact that we regularly find bats in our second home doesn’t bother us. Steve and I are both wildlife professionals and fully appreciate the myriad ecological benefits that bats provide. Anyone who has spent time on Maryland’s Eastern Shore has experienced aggravating swarms of mosquitoes and other disagreeable pests that insectivorous bats help to control with their voracious appetites. And bats aren’t just helping us out with the annoying bugs (although I’m delighted that they eat stinkbugs). Bats help control insect pests that cause billions of dollars in agricultural damage in North America each year. From pecan growers in the southeastern U.S., who have bats to thank for their consumption of the damaging pecan nut casebearer, to the Texas cotton farmers whose crops are safer because millions of Mexican free-tailed bats love to dine on corn earworm moths, bats provide tremendous ecological services. A study in the journal Science estimated that the value of bats to the U.S. agriculture industry ranges from $3.7 billion to $53 billion per year. For these services, we are happy to share our home with these visitors from time to time.

What does worry us is that although this most recent visitor was a big brown bat, we are not finding little brown bats in our house, as we did several years ago. We are concerned that this might be due to white-nose syndrome, the devastating bat disease that is ravaging populations of hibernating bats in as many as 22 states and five Canadian provinces. Populations of the little brown bat – Myotis lucifigus – have crashed in recent years; by more than 90% in some states and known hibernation caves.

Little brown bat with white-nose syndrome
(Photo courtesy Ryan von Linden/New York Department of Environmental Conservation)

White-nose syndrome is named for the fungus Geomyces destructans, which looks like a white power on the bat’s nose, ears and other body parts. Ten North American bat species have been infected with the fungus to date, and more are potentially vulnerable. The disease has killed upwards of 5.7 million insectivorous bats, and so far scientists have not found a cure. Most frightening is that losses are so severe that researchers are predicting regional extinctions of the little brown bat – previously one of America’s most common mammals – in northeastern states within 15 years.

For the past few years, Defenders has been engaged with a coalition of groups working to secure federal funds for white-nose syndrome research and management. Our coalition successfully obtained four million dollars in the 2012 fiscal year budget to go toward research into treatments, surveying caves and educating the public about this problem. Now we are working to stop budget cuts to wildlife funding that would impact bats and other wildlife. While all wildlife programs are important, and those that deal with imperiled species particularly need to be fully funded, bats are in an especially dangerous position and we can’t afford not to do everything we can to help them. We will continue to raise the issue of white-nose syndrome on Capitol Hill so that our elected leaders understand the need to halt this disease. One hopeful note is that white-nose syndrome is a non-partisan issue. I have met with congressional leaders of both parties who understand the impacts of white-nose syndrome and want to help (I even had two Republican congressional offices ask me how to put up bat houses!).

Staff from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey bat caves to find where the disease has spread. In this cave in Missouri, the bats are healthy. (©Ann Froschauer/USFWS)

Everyone can take steps to help bats. First and foremost is to stay out of caves and mines where bats are known or suspected to roost. This is especially important during winter months when bats are hibernating. Bats have limited fat reserves to keep them alive during the long winter – and bug-free – months. Once aroused, their metabolism speeds up and they burn vital calories. One of the main causes of death from white-nose syndrome is starvation, as the fungus wakes bats and they have no food available. Human disturbance only adds to this lethal problem.

Another way to help is by spreading the word about the importance of bats and the threat of white-nose syndrome. Urge your federal representative and Senators to support adequate funding for endangered species recovery efforts. This would benefit the listed Indiana bat and gray bat, both of which have been heavily impacted by the white-nose syndrome fungus, as well as other critically imperiled wildlife species.

And Steve and I will continue to provide a home for bats in our attic. Let’s hope we see some little browns this summer.

Delisting decried nationwide – While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tried to paint last week’s announcement as a resounding success, many newspapers saw the national delisting proposal quite differently. An editorial from Oregon’s Register-Guard, for example, noted that leading wildlife biologists say that wolf numbers have not reached sustainable levels in key parts of the species historic range. The paper also criticized Northern Rockies states for killing more than 1,000 wolves only two years after Endangered Species Act protections were removed in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Never before has an imperiled species gone from being fully protected one day, to being aggressively hunted the next.

The Salt Lake Tribune picked up on a similar theme, saying that delisting is premature, especially when the wolf still faces such hatred out West. For many wolf opponents, wolf “management” means killing as many wolves as possible. But treating wolves like unwanted vermin completely ignores the vital ecological role they play in maintaining healthy, balanced ecosystems.

In a New York Times op-ed, Jim, Jamie and Garrick Dutcher contrast the rush to strip federal protection for gray wolves with the more measured approach taken with the recovery of iconic species like the bald eagle and American alligator. Those species were not delisted until stable populations had recovered across a greater portion of available habitat. Bald eagles were soaring in the skies from coast to coast before protections were removed. And alligators were swimming not just in the Florida Everglades, but in Louisiana bayous and halfway up the Atlantic sea board by the time states took over management. More importantly, neither species has been persecuted like wolves have been.

But there’s more at stake than just poor state management. As our top wolf expert Suzanne Stone points out, stripping federal protection likely means that wolves will never even make it to places like Colorado, where there is excellent habitat but no wolves. (Listen to the full story on Northwest Public Radio)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially published its proposal this week and will be taking public comments for the next 90 days. Make sure you tell the Service as well as Interior Secretary Sally Jewell not to give up on wolf recovery!
Click here to submit your comments!

Don’t blame wolves for elk decline — Wyoming researchers are uncovering new information that may cause all of us to revisit our understanding of how elk and wolves interact. In a recent three-year study, biologists with the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit found that elk do not dramatically change their behavior in the presence of wolves, as previously thought. Specifically, the study team found that elk that encountered wolves more often were just as likely to retain fat and get pregnant as those that had fewer wolf encounters.

These findings directly undermine the claims of anti-wolf extremists who have blamed wolves for declining elk herds in select areas. Many wolf opponents have claimed that wolves frighten elk and prevent them from eating enough food to maintain weight and get pregnant, but the current study would seem to contradict that argument. The bigger influence may come from direct predation by grizzly bears as well as other factors like drought and climate change.

It also appears, however, that wolves may not be the primary or only driver of “trophic cascades” that have restored native vegetation in certain parts of Yellowstone National Park. Many biologists provide compelling evidence that wolves help keep elk and other ungulates on the move, thus preventing them from destroying communities of young willow and aspen trees.  This study indicates that the effect of wolves may be far more subtle in certain landscapes.  Another paper released this week from Poland indicates that the trophic cascade benefits of wolf predation may have greater influence in woody habitat as opposed to open range.

Cape Hatteras is on a roll: tourism is up, wildlife is thriving, and visitors have balanced access to the beach.  So why are North Carolina Senators Hagan and Burr backing a bill that would take all that away?

Two words: special interests.  A small, vocal group of off-road vehicle (ORV) owners are pushing a disastrous agenda: they want to overturn the National Park Service’s final rule for Cape Hatteras, a set of sensible protocols designed to protect wildlife and provide for pedestrian and ORV visitors at the same time.  This would have serious consequences for endangered sea turtles, piping plovers and other wildlife that depend on the beach to raise their young.  That’s because in place of the Final Rule, Senate bill 486 calls for returning Cape Hatteras to an interim strategy that was deadly for wildlife.

The final rule was created after Defenders of Wildlife sued the National Park Service because they had not put in place an ORV plan for the park.  Instead, they had an interim strategy, which was never meant to be a long-term management plan for the seashore.  Incredibly weak and ineffective, it lacked the vital protections of the final rule and opened up a huge percentage of the beach to ORV drivers.  And that’s exactly why ORV groups want to bring it back.

They don’t care that tourism numbers and sea turtle nest counts both set records under the final rule last summer.  They don’t care that in 2012, eleven piping plover chicks fledged successfully, compared to just four back in 2007 before protections were in place.  And they don’t care that before the final rule, piping plover and other shorebird species were nearly extirpated from the seashore.

And unfortunately, these vital considerations appear lost on Senators Hagan and Burr as well.  Their bill, S.486, essentially says that it’s okay to put the demands of a small group before balancing the needs of wildlife, pedestrians and drivers together.

Well, we didn’t work so hard to protect wildlife from reckless ORV use to sit and watch this legislation whisk the final rule away.  Defenders of Wildlife is taking a stand: we called North Carolinians who know and love Cape Hatteras and asked them what they thought of Senate bill 486.  They told Senator Hagan and Senator Burr that Cape Hatteras National Seashore is for everyone: people and wildlife, tourists and locals, drivers and pedestrians.  Their voices are in our radio below:

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Defenders of Wildlife has also collaborated with the Audubon Society of North Carolina and Southern Environmental Law Center to send out a print ad that appeared in the June 12, 2013 issue of the Independent Weekly newspaper.

Defenders is fighting S.486 and working hard to make sure wildlife at Cape Hatteras have a safe place to live and raise their young for generations to come.

Defenders’ president and CEO, Jamie Rappaport Clark

Jamie Rappaport Clark, President and CEO

When federal wolf recovery efforts began more than 25 years ago, I had very high hopes. I was working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an endangered species biologist at the time and remember thinking what an incredibly ambitious and inspiring project it was.

A decade later, I was honored to release three Mexican gray wolves into Arizona’s Apache National Forest as director of the Service. I’ll never forget looking into the crate and seeing in the wolf’s eyes the fierce green fire that inspired Aldo Leopold to develop his famous land ethic. Carrying those wolves into their new wild home, I felt a deep connection with both the animals and the great conservation leaders who came before me. It was thrilling to think that someday gray wolves would thrive once again across much of the West — a direct result of our collective efforts to bring them back.

Restoring a native predator to the American landscape represented a grand vision for the future of wildlife conservation. Not only was the federal government fighting to save imperiled species from extinction, it was also working hard to reintroduce animals that had been ruthlessly and foolishly eliminated decades earlier. I could think of no nobler and more worthy set of conservation values than those set forth in the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Fast forward to today. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced recently that it plans to prematurely delist wolves under the ESA and abandon their restoration efforts for gray wolves everywhere except for the Southwest. With wolves struggling to gain a toehold in the Northwest and still nonexistent in places with excellent suitable habitat like California, Utah and Colorado, the federal government is giving up on the dream of full gray wolf recovery. Put simply, they are quitting before their work is done.

Some 5,000 wolves currently inhabit six states in the lower 48. This is a marked improvement since the late ’80s when there were only a few hundred left in northern Minnesota. Yet, the reality is that the recovery of the species throughout key areas in the West remains as uncertain as ever. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have already started to drive their wolf populations down. Anti-wolf legislation has cropped up in Oregon and Washington, where there are presently only about 100 wolves. Utah’s legislature passed a bill several years ago banning wolves altogether. And without continued federal protection, we’re as likely to see sustainable populations of unicorns in five years in Colorado and California as we are to see sustainable populations of wolves.

By walking off the job before the task is done, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is redefining what it means to recover imperiled species…and not in a good way. The agency has adopted a shrunken vision of what wolf conservation is all about, failing to stick with the program until full recovery is achieved. We didn’t take this easy way out in recovering the bald eagle or the American alligator, and we shouldn’t do it now for wolves.

But this isn’t just about wolves or eagles. Sadly, what’s happening with wolves could become the new normal for federal endangered species recovery work nationwide. The premature national wolf delisting proposal signals a major shift in the conservation vision and philosophy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Optimism seems to be disappearing, and settling for second best seems to be settling in.

Wolf recovery was on the path to become one of our nation’s greatest conservation successes, but now that success is threatened because the federal government wants to wash its hands of the wolf. It’s a disappointing, far cry from the vision and boldness — the commitment to conserving our wildlife and natural resources — that used to characterize our nation’s stewardship goals.

Originally published in The Huffington Post