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Indigenous people in North America have faced fragmentation of their lands as well as assimilation and the division of their culture. These challenges have affected Tribes’ ability to manage natural resources. In the July/August issue of The Wildlife Professional, we explore how Indigenous people are combatting these issues and their growing role in wildlife conservation and management.
Other articles focus on Colorado’s wolf reintroduction, inclusion in the wildlife field and a way to lower the barriers for inexperienced duck hunters.
Watch for the issue in your mailbox, or log in and check it out online.
Credit: Kyle Meadows/Pueblo of Santa Ana Department of Natural Resources
When building projects affect gopher tortoises in Florida, developers are responsible for moving the reptiles to safer locations. But those moves may not always go well for the tortoises.
Researchers found that translocated gopher tortoises—which are state listed as threatened—aren’t surviving well enough to sustain their populations at one large study site in the Florida panhandle.
An estimated 10,000 tortoises are translocated per year, with costs paid for by developers. A total of around 130,000 gopher tortoises moved around as mitigation measures since 1989.
In a study published recently in Animal Conservation, Kevin Loope, a research scientist in fish and wildlife conservation at Virginia Tech, and his colleagues tracked the survival rates of gopher tortoises translocated to Nokuse, a 55,000-acre property on the Florida Panhandle near Panama City that hosts reintroduced gopher tortoises moved as mitigation measures and conducts longleaf pine restoration and other conservation work.
From 2006 to 2022, some 2,800 adult tortoises were translocated and released on the property. Each released tortoise is uniquely marked on their shells for identification—wildlife managers on the plantation know where each came from and when it was released.
Researchers collected tortoise carcasses discovered at Nokuse. Credit: Morgan Ubbelohde
In that period, managers retrieved 503 identifiable carcasses—an indication of the tortoises’ relatively low survival numbers.
For the first five years after translocation, they only had a maximum of 93-95% yearly survival on average. While this may seem high, gopher tortoises can live for many decades, and some natural, stable populations have yearly survival rates of at least 98%, Loope said. If the 93% survival number persisted past the first five years, a population would soon be gone without additional translocations.
Gopher tortoises translocated from central Florida had the highest survival rates. Credit: Rebecca Cozad
What factors guided tortoise survival?
The researchers believed that tortoises that were translocated from farther away would have lower survival, but the data showed this wasn’t necessarily the case.
In fact, tortoises that were translocated over 300 miles away from central Florida—between Orlando and Tampa—had the lowest relative death rate. Their death rate was half that of tortoises from any other area—including those from near Nokuse.
The researchers aren’t sure why tortoises from Central Florida survived so much better. Loope speculated that it might be that those populations have healthier genetics and are more resistant to diseases that can kill gopher tortoises.
This information is useful, Loope said, because Florida has a rule that gopher tortoises can’t be translocated as a mitigation measure more than 100 miles in latitude. The thinking was that they would have poorer outcomes if moved to areas with different climate patterns and environmental conditions. But the 100-mile rule was conservative due to lack of evidence—nobody had ever done any research to determine whether this was the safest threshold.
Gopher tortoises survived less when released in higher densities. Credit: Rebecca Cozad
Density and season
The researchers also found that tortoises don’t survive as well when translocated to places in higher densities. This may be due to a higher likelihood of contracting disease when they are in closer quarters.
“Packing these tortoises in is really problematic,” Loope said.
Releasing tortoises early and late in the season also improved their survival more than releasing them in the heat of the summer.
It’s important to consider that this study was only at one translocation destination—the survival of turtles in others may vary in different ways. Loope believes that more studies like this need to be conducted to track translocated tortoise survival and shape mitigation measures for the species.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has increased its list of species threatened by extinction by 1,000. The boost brings the total number of species in this category to more than 45,300. Some of the species that have shown the biggest declines include reptiles on the Canary Islands, such as the Gran Canaria giant lizard (Gallotia stehlini), whose declines are largely due to the incursion of invasive California kingsnakes (Lampropeltis californiae). Other species also lost great numbers, including the Bornean elephant (Elephas maximus borneensis), a subspecies the IUCN now considers endangered. At the same time, species like La Gomera giant lizard (Gallotia bravoana) improved in status from critically endangered to endangered. Thanks to conservation action, the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) improved from endangered to vulnerable. “The recent update to the IUCN Red List is both encouraging and disheartening but highlights the fundamental role of scientific status assessment for informing conservation priorities and actions,” said Anne Bowser, CEO of NatureServe, in a press release.
The Inuvialuit have signed an agreement with the Canadian and Yukon governments to preserve nearly 850,000 hectares across the northern Yukon.
The new Aullaviat/Anguniarvik Traditional Conservation Area is intended to protect wildlife across the region, including species like the Porcupine barren-ground caribou (Ranifer tarandus groenlandicus) herd, polar bears (Ursus maritimus), and migratory birds. The land helps connect a network of protected areas stretching across international borders, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
The land is one of a growing number of Indigenous-led conservation areas, where Indigenous governments have the primary role in protecting and conserving ecosystems.
Canada is contributing $10 million to support an Inuvialuit-led monitoring program in the area. Philanthropic organizations are providing $3.5 million more.
The agreement comes 40 years after the signing of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, which identified the northern Yukon as a place for the conservation of wildlife, habitat and traditional Inuvialuit use.
Wolves have roamed the Alexander Archipelago far longer than human designations such as the Tongass National Forest existed in the area. They were there before the existence of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, before Alaska became a state, and probably before humans arrived in Southeast Alaska thousands of years ago.
Knowledge from Indigenous experts, who have lived in the area for centuries, has helped the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decide to not list the Alexander Archipelago wolves under the ESA.
“It is possible to apply Indigenous knowledge to make a decision on the Endangered Species Act,” said Jeff Brooks, a social scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. “Whenever there is more than one way of knowing, you want to consider all of them.”
Petition to list
The Alexander Archipelago wolf subspecies (Canis lupus ligoni) is limited to its namesake islands and the mainland coastline of Southeast Alaska and Canada—an area isolated from other parts of the continent due to its rugged geography.
The Defenders of Wildlife and other conservation organizations petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list these wolves under the Endangered Species Act in 2020, citing “decades of intensive clear-cut logging and road-building.”
In response, the USFWS conducted a species status assessment. Part of that assessment involved working with Indigenous Alaskans to learn about their ecological and cultural knowledge of the subspecies. Brooks’ colleague, Steve Langdon, collected interviews with Tlingit and Haida hunters, trappers and others to better understand the wolves in the Tongass National Forest, which encompasses most of the archipelago and parts of the southeastern Alaska mainland. The results of their work were published recently in the Journal of Wildlife Management.
Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute and a member of the Tlingit Nation, said that staff from Sealaska—an Alaska Native Regional Corporation created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971—was involved in the paper.
“Brooks’ paper is really great in terms of recognizing Indigenous knowledge and community,” she said.
Indigenous knowledge of wolves
Wolf fur is valuable and used by Alaska Native artists and clothing makers across the state. Brooks’ team interviewed nine Alaska Native experts with hunting and trapping experience and cultural expertise to understand their beliefs and practices regarding the subspecies’ role and place in the landscape.
“In addition to their deep and long-lasting cultural connections to the animal, they hold immense knowledge about the subspecies distribution and abundance on the landscape, population dynamics, predator-prey relationships, wolf reproduction, and social structure,” Brooks said.
Since this kind of knowledge can be very specific to an expert’s locale, the team tried to speak to people from throughout the region with experience in many parts of the wolf’s range. Their knowledge wasn’t limited to wolves themselves. The Haida and Tlingit also know about the predators’ relationships with ungulates like moose (Alces alces) and Sitka black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis), and they take wolves at a level to ensure adequate numbers of moose and deer are available for the needs of communities.
“Wolf harvest for subsistence purposes is a means of management, ensuring that people are going to have venison in their freezers,” Brooks said.
A member of the Yanyeidí clan wears a headdress depicting a wolf while making an offering during a ceremonial event. The regalia is made from carved and painted wood, with wolf fur attached. Courtesy of Sealaska Heritage Institute
The Indigenous hunters work toward balance as a conservation strategy. Without wolves preying on the herds, excessive numbers of deer and moose may overbrowse the landscape and starve. Too many wolves, however, means the wolves could starve. For the Haida and Tlingit, that can affect the quality and amount of venison and wolf pelts.
For the Indigenous people of Southeast Alaska, Brooks said, “the people, wolves, and ungulates all need to be in balance, so no one is using too much. It’s a holistic approach to management and a balanced approach to conservation.”
Wolves are also deeply respected in and of themselves. “There are wolf clans, and wolf houses connected to those clans, as part of the human social structure in Southeast Alaska,” Brooks said.
The Service’s decision
In August 2023, the Service announced that listing the subspecies was not warranted under the ESA after finding the subspecies was well distributed through its range and highly adaptable to the changes on the landscape.
“This tracks well with the knowledge of the Tlingit and Haida people with whom we spoke,” Brooks said. Elders and hunters preferred to work with state wolf managers to maintain balance on their own terms without further federal regulatory constraints. If the USFWS had come to a decision to list the subspecies, “we think the local experts would have been surprised, because they didn’t provide any evidence that the species needed to be listed,” Brooks said.
He hopes that Indigenous knowledge becomes a fixture in future listing decisions like this—this is one of the first formalized applications of Indigenous knowledge in a federal ESA decision document, he said. “Some of these folks who have been trapping wolves for 60 years can fill in many knowledge gaps while at the same time, sharing important aspects of their cultures and ways of life.”
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State biologists in Texas have found evidence of white-nose syndrome in tricolored bats. It’s the first known case of the fungal disease in tricolored bats (Perimyotis subflavus) in Texas and the southernmost confirmation of white-nose syndrome in the species.
The fungus that causes white-nose syndrome—P. destructans—was also found on three new species of bats in the state—fringed myotis (Myotis thysanodes), long-legged myotis (Myotis Volans) and canyon bats (Parastrellus hesperus). Texas Parks and Wildlife officials say this marks the first time that canyon bats have tested positive for the fungus anywhere in the U.S.
Since P. destructans is considered a cold-loving fungus, the impacts of white-nose syndrome on southern populations of susceptible species are uncertain. In cooler areas, it has devastated some bat populations.
“While the detections are a concerning development, the severity of the disease in this region and for this species remains unknown and requires continued surveillance,” said Jonah Evans, nongame and rare species program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife.
Climate change is likely to wipe out two polar bear populations on northern Canada’s Hudson Bay as warming temperatures usher in more ice-free days than the bears can survive.
Limiting global warming could help the bears endure, researchers wrote in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, but with longer ice-free periods already affecting the western and southern Hudson Bay bears, “extirpation for polar bears in this region may already be inevitable.”
Between 2030 and 2060, the researchers concluded, the bears may no longer be able to hang on.
Located below the Arctic Circle, the Hudson Bay offers polar bears (Ursus maritimus) their most southerly habitats. Seasonally covered with ice, the region hosts some 1,700 polar bears, which use the ice to hunt seals—their primary prey. When the ice melts, the bears mostly fast until frigid temperatures usher frozen water back in the fall.
Over the past three decades, however, the Hudson Bay area has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius, extending the ice-free period from 120 days to 150 days. That has already affected the bears’ fitness and their ability to reproduce, researchers say. As temperatures continue to climb, biologists believe the ice-free period will be too long for the bears to survive without food.
Researchers believe polar bears can safely fast through an ice-free period lasting between 183 and 218 days. If warming exceeds 2.1 degrees west of the bay and 2.6 degrees to the north, researchers estimate the ice-free period could stretch beyond 183 days, putting the bears—particularly females and young bears— at risk. Earlier ice melt in the spring will reduce critical hunting days for polar bears, straining their ability to successfully fast until the sea ice returns at the end of the year.
Grimm future
In some ways, it may be an invisible decline. Solitary adult bears may persist but pregnant females may fail to reproduce. Recently weaned bears may die off. In search of food, bears are likely to become a growing presence around people. “We’re seeing more bears on shore for longer periods of time,” said Geoffrey York, senior director for science and policy at Polar Bears International and a co-author of the study. “It’s more likely these bears will be seen by people, so the perception that there are more bears is understandable.”
Limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels may help many bear populations survive, researchers found, but it may be too late for these southernmost populations.
“To be honest, I’m getting tired of us not telling people the real situation,” said Julienne Stroeve, a professor at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Earth Observation Science, and the study’s lead author.
“They’ll be gone under the current rate,” Stroeve said. “Either we slow the warming, or we do some geoengineering. I don’t see how else they’ll survive.”
Polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt seals. Credit: Kt Miller/Polar Bears International
Stroeve and her colleagues analyzed climate models to estimate future ice-free periods around the Hudson Bay. Their work resulted in what they called an “alarming outlook for polar bear survival.”
While the bears may occasionally catch a caribou (Rangifer tarandus), happen upon a whale carcass, scare up snow goose eggs (Anser caerulescens) or raid trash from nearby communities, the bears typically rely on fat reserves to get them through warmer months. As temperatures climbed in recent decades, though, ice-free periods have lengthened and these populations began to fall in number.
Researchers first noted declines in the 1990s as conflicts with people in the nearby town of Churchill began to rise. “Because western Hudson Bay is near the southern limit of the species’ range,” researchers wrote in the Journal of Wildlife Management, “our findings may foreshadow the demographic responses and management challenges that more northerly polar bear populations will experience if climatic warming in the Arctic continues as projected.”
Since then, population declines have accelerated. Between 2016 and 2021, the Hudson Bay populations fell 27%. Today, the region probably hosts about half as many polar bears as it did in 1987, the researchers wrote.
While earlier studies looked at the extent of sea ice, the latest study looks at sea ice thickness, suggesting that at least 10 centimeters are needed to support the bears as they hunt. That estimate is likely conservative, York said. Despite its dire scenario, “this is a best-case scenario in some regards.”
Even with international climate agreements, the pace of warming will likely be too much for the bears to withstand, Stroeve said. “I just think it’s such a delicate balance,” she said. “These species evolved in a space where it is cold and there’s a lot of ice, and they’re having to adapt quite quickly.”
The warming is also affecting other parts of the ecosystem. Less snow is expected to affect polar bear denning and birth lairs of ringed seals (Pusa hispida), whose populations also seem to decline with the loss of sea ice.
While it’s hard to say how long the Hudson Bay bears may hold on, researchers said, “confronted with these threats, proactive measures are imperative.”
By targeting a few key areas, avoiding an extinction crisis may not be as hard as it seems.
An international coalition of conservationists laid out a plan to protect some of the world’s most threatened species by focusing on a few biodiversity havens that host rare wildlife.
“Most species on Earth are rare,” said researcher Eric Dinerstein, lead author of the paper published in Frontiers in Science, and conservation actions can pinpoint specific areas where most rare species are located.
“We found that we need only about 1.2% of the Earth’s surface to head off the sixth great extinction of life on Earth,” Dinerstein said.
The authors targeted over 16,000 “Conservation Imperatives” around the world—mostly in tropical areas.
“Our analysis estimated that protecting the Conservation Imperatives in the tropics would cost approximately $34 billion per year over the next five years,” said coauthor Andy Lee, with the NGO Resolve.
The mountain soundscape of Yellowstone can be idyllic, with nothing but the chirps of bluebirds and belted kingfishers cutting through the winter silence. That is, until the chainsaw-like buzz of a snowmobile rips through the acoustic tapestry.
Researchers are finding that snowmobile noise may be killing the winter song of birds in times of the year typically characterized by their silence.
“We found that there was a negative correlation between snowmobile passing and vocalizations from birds,” said Benjamin Cretois, a researcher with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.
Conservationists are increasingly finding that noise pollution causes significant effects to wildlife populations around the world, whether it means masking the sounds of approaching predators to the detriment of their prey, or making it hard to vocalize in search of a mate.
This new research on snowmobiles reveals an additional source of human-generated noise that may affect birds in areas that would be pretty quiet without the snowmobiles.
In previous research, Cretois and his colleagues from SINTEF, an independent research organization in Europe, had developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that could identify snowmobile sounds from large acoustic sound files. He and other colleagues in the U.S. tested that model on a large acoustic dataset to study the impact of winter motor noise on wildlife in a study published recently in the Journal of Applied Ecology. They acquired a set of acoustic recordings taken from 20 sites in Yellowstone National Park from 2009 to 2017—each for different lengths of time—for another project on snowmobile noise.
They ran their snowmobile algorithm on this acoustic dataset, as well as the BirdNET sound ID, an algorithm developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that identifies bird species based on calls. But since BirdNET isn’t 100% accurate in its identification, Cretois and his colleagues only used that algorithm to get the presence or absence of bird calls.
A mountain bluebird (Sialia currucoides) sitting on a lichen covered rock. Credit: NPS/Jacob W. Frank
They then compared the two models, to see if the snowmobile noise affected bird calls at the recording sites. They found that it did.
“When a snowmobile is passing, the number of calls from birds decreases significantly,” Cretois said.
But this effect didn’t last for too long. On average, bird songs began to pick up again between 30 seconds and five minutes after the passing of the snowmobile.
“The recovery doesn’t happen immediately, but it happens pretty fast,” Cretois said.
That could mean that the sound of passing snowmobiles doesn’t have a huge effect on winter bird songs. But Cretois said it’s possible that reducing bird calls during key times—such as dawn and dusk when birds are searching for mates or establishing territory—might have a negative effect, especially if there are a lot of snowmobiles passing through at these times.
He hopes that future research can track any population level effects that snowmobile noise could be causing on reproduction or other behavior.
Insecticide use is a major factor causing a decrease in the size and diversity of butterfly populations across the Midwestern U.S., researchers found.
In a recent study published in PLOS ONE, researchers analyzed 17 years of data on land use, climate, pesticide application and butterfly populations across 81 counties in five Midwestern states to identify the biggest factors impacting butterfly populations in the region.
They found that insecticide use was most strongly linked not only to declines in the size of butterfly populations, but also to the number of species, causing an 8% drop in diversity. Crop seeds treated with neonicotinoid insecticides appeared to have the largest impact, including on the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), whose decline has raised significant conservation concerns.
While climate change and land use changes are affecting butterfly populations, the researchers found, insecticides are having a greater impact.
