It was not so much a single event that made me want to get into wildlife research, but a combination of moments.
I grew up in Idaho in a family that enjoyed hiking, fishing, boating and hunting. I remember building “daycares” in the snow for fish we had caught through the ice and spending late nights packaging meat from an elk my dad hunted in the fall.
Ellen Candler takes part in a camera trap study in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Credit: Joseph Bump
We also spent time walking around marshes looking for birds and driving through national parks trying to spot the first ungulate in order to win a milkshake.
In elementary school, my closest friend was part of a ranching family. We would occasionally ride horses and watch rodeo events. We took off school to participate in her family’s branding day along with, it seemed, the rest of the ranchers in the valley. I loved that experience and being welcomed into that community.
When I was 5, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone and central Idaho and I was surrounded by the news and controversy of that. Growing up in a hunting family, having friends in the ranching community and loving wildlife in the midst of this major event shaped my interest in wildlife biology. I wanted to learn more about wolves—not only what they need to live but what it will take for us to live with them.
These events have shaped my interest in wildlife-human interactions, specifically hunter-wildlife interactions.
Ellen Candler works as a cougar project volunteer in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Ellen Candler
Colorado has seen its first wolf pup since the species was reintroduced in the state in December.
State biologists had been gathering evidence suggesting a gray wolf (Canis lupus) pair had been denning, indicating reproduction. On June 18, they confirmed a wolf pup in Grand County.
Although only one was verified, Colorado Parks and Wildlife says other pups may be present. A typical litter consists of four to six pups.
Because the wolves have successfully reproduced, they are now considered a pack. CPW has named them the Copper Creek Pack.
“We are continuing to actively monitor this area while exercising extreme caution to avoid inadvertently disturbing the adult wolves, this pup, or other pups,” said CPW Wildlife Biologist Brenna Cassidy, in a press release.
CPW staff plan to continue to monitor the pack and work with area landowners to minimize conflict.
TWS staff worked with chapters and sections within the planning area and several TWS working groups to develop comments that highlight the best available science in managing the species and the sagebrush ecosystem it occupies. The comments emphasize the urgent need to reverse greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) declines and halt the loss of sagebrush across the American West.
The BLM is proposing a minimum standard of no net habitat loss to mitigate disturbances in sagebrush habitats. TWS’ comments emphasize that this standard will fail to prevent further loss of habitat when an estimated 1.3 million acres of sagebrush are being lost annually to threats including wildfire, invasive species and climate change. Instead, TWS proposed a net-gain mitigation standard across the planning area and offered expertise on current sagebrush restoration techniques to support the implementation of this standard.
Members of TWS chapters, sections, and working groups developed additional recommendations to the BLM based on their expertise as wildlife professionals. These included livestock grazing practices in sagebrush habitat based on best available science, prioritization of wildfire initial attack to minimize acres of sagebrush lost to wildfires, targeted predator control and minimization measures across the planning area and use of climate adaptation tools during plan implementation.
TWS has aggregated a collection of recent publications on greater sage-grouse in a virtual issue of the Wildlife Society Bulletin to support engagement with the BLM’s planning efforts. Members interested in using their expertise to support science-based policy are encouraged to participate in TWS’ Conservation Affairs Network.
Biologists have released the first comprehensive list of birds that haven’t been seen for more than a decade.
The list stemmed from the American Bird Conservancy’s Search for Lost Birds, an effort with Re:wild and BirdLife International to tally birds that have been lost to science.
Published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the list relied on the repository of media at the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and data from citizen scientist platforms from iNaturalist and xeno-canto.
Currently the list stands at 126 species, most of which are threatened with extinction.
“We looked for species not represented at all with a recent image, video or sound recording,” said lead author Cameron Rutt, a bird biologist with the American Bird Conservancy at the time of the research. “A species would be considered ‘lost’ to science if there was no media of the bird within the past 10 years or more.”
Researchers collated 42 million photos, videos and audio records. Out of all the records, 144 species—1.2% of all known bird species—qualified as lost.
Since this study was initiated, other lost birds have been rediscovered, including the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, which hadn’t been documented on a remote island of Papua New Guinea in more than 100 years.
Most of the undocumented species are concentrated in Asia, Africa and Oceania. Only three species made the lost list in the continental United States: the Eskimo curlew (Numenius borealis), Bachman’s warbler (Vermivora bachmanii) and the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis). Six native species are on the list from Hawaii.
As climate change brings grizzly bears into the Arctic, some are interbreeding with polar bears. Conservationists worry their hybrids could decrease genetic diversity among polar bears and be unfit for the frigid environment. While that’s a growing concern, a team of researchers says, it isn’t a significant issue yet.
In a study published in Conservation Genetics Resources, scientists developed a special chip to look for signs of hybridization in polar bear (Ursus maritimus) genes. After examining the genetics of 819 polar bears, they found no signs of hybrids with grizzlies (U. arctos horribilis) and no evidence of ancestral interbreeding between the two.
Hunters and biologists say the number of hybrid bears are on the rise in the Canadian Arctic. That’s likely to continue, the researchers found, and it raises conservation concerns for polar bears, a species of special concern under the Canadian Species at Risk Act.
The biologists hope their work can help “the species to persist in the face of changing environmental conditions.”
TWS member Rhys Evans has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Military Fish and Wildlife Association. Evans was honored for his career of over 30 years, including work with the Peace Corps, 29 Palms and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, where he has worked since 2007.
Evans has received multiple awards throughout his career for his work recovering 17 species listed under the Endangered Species Act.
He served on the association’s board for seven years, including serving as president, helped establish the professional certification program and served on multiple working groups.
At The Wildlife Society, Evans helped establish the Military Lands Working Group, served as Western Section president and has been the force behind the popular Quiz Bowl competitions at the Annual Conference.
Evans was also recognized for his work to conserve the western monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), identifying the most Pacific winter resting locations on federal property.
Wolverine densities on Alaska’s North Slope are far lower than the last survey revealed 40 years ago, raising concerns about what roles climate change, industrial development and human access may play in altering the remote Arctic tundra.
Seen from the air, wolverine (Gulo gulo) tracks crisscross the remote terrain, as do the tracks of their primary prey—caribou (Rangifer tarandus). “Traveling around the landscape, you get the impression that wolverines are all around,” said Tom Glass, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. But as Glass investigated, he found a different story.
“This whole ecosystem has the potential to unravel if we encroach too much on the refugia that currently support wildlife,” said Martin Robards, regional director of the Arctic Beringia program for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He and Glass are co-authors on a study published recently in the Journal of Wildlife Management looking at wolverine densities and home ranges on the North Slope.
The region is undergoing dramatic changes. Due to climate change, snow is melting earlier, boreal wildlife is moving northward and willows are encroaching on the landscape. The human footprint is also growing, with expanding oil fields, new roads and increasing mining interest.
But while species of conservation concern like caribou and bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) are well researched in the North Slope, “to me, one of the species that stood out as understudied was the wolverine,” Robards said.
The disappearance of wolverines elsewhere in North America has brought a lot of attention. The species was listed as threatened in November in the Lower 48, and Colorado is laying plans to reintroduce wolverines in the hope that the Rockies can offer them a climate refuge. But their status in the north was less clear.
“In the Arctic, western scientists knew almost nothing about them—what they do, where they breed,” Robards said.
In a separate study in the July issue of JWM, another team of WCS biologists examined wolverines at two boreal forest sites in Canada—one in Red Lake, Ontario, and another in Rainbow Lake, Alberta. Considering the two sites together, they found the species was declining, due largely to fur trapping and vehicle strikes.
Wolverines are not considered threatened in Alaska, but they are of cultural importance. Alaska Natives line parka hoods with frost-resistant wolverine fur, and the mustelids remain widely hunted and trapped by both Alaska natives and others.
Previous research had found a range from extremely low densities to high densities at some locations in the Arctic. On the North Slope, wolverine space use hadn’t been studied since the early 1980s, when Audrey Magoun, then a PhD candidate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, studied their home ranges and behavior. At the time, she found a robust 20 wolverines per 1,000 square kilometers in the Utukok Uplands, a similar landscape west of the current study. But had things changed? Was there a now conservation concern for these wolverines, too?
Biologists Tom Glass and Matt Kynoch replace a wolverine in the trap after fitting a collar, where it will recover from anesthesia prior to release. Credit: Peter Mather
Robards and Glass set out to find out. They placed bait to capture, collar and photograph wolverines to better understand their movements, ranges and densities across the Alaskan tundra.
“The main difficulty is the working conditions,” Glass said. The two went out in the winter, when wolverines are easier to find and the North Slope—a vast, treeless expanse between the mountains of the Brooks Range and the Arctic Ocean to the north—is more accessible by snow machines.
“Wolverines call pretty much that whole expanse home,” Glass said.
What they found surprised them. Despite the tracks across the landscape, wolverine densities were 10 times lower than those reported for the Utukok Uplands in 1984. They found roughly two wolverines per 1,000 square kilometers—among the lowest wolverine densities ever documented.
A male wolverine leaves the trap after being collared. Credit: Peter Mather
Researchers are left wondering why their densities are so low. “What was different between Audrey’s study and our study 40 years later?” Glass asked.
While their study doesn’t explore the causes, possibilities include climate-induced changes in vegetation and prey, increased industrial development, greater access for hunters on new roads or snow melting two weeks earlier than it did historically.
“That potentially means the kits are having to come out of their dens when they’re 10 or 11 weeks old rather than 12 or 13 weeks old,” Glass said. “These are the kinds of things nobody has studied.”
The population does not seem to be at risk yet, the researchers concluded, but the wolverine’s future in the region may be more precarious than conservationists once thought.
“We shouldn’t assume they’re totally safe,” Robards said. “One of the take-homes for me is, there’s maybe not a big window of safety for this species, particularly if they lose those large areas of refugia.”
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Thousands of the world’s most threatened species may lack adequate conservation measures.
In a recent study in Nature, researchers analyzed nearly 6,000 threatened species to see how many benefited from conservation programs. They found that just 9% of species threatened by habitat loss have adequate land protections and just 24% of those threatened by invasive species—including rats, cats and fungal diseases—benefit from control programs. The research showed that birds receive far more conservation attention than less amphibians and other less charismatic species.
“Conservation can and does work, but only if we try,” said Rebecca Senior, a researcher at Durham University and the led author of the study. “Our findings are so concerning because they highlight that we’re not really trying for most of the species at the greatest risk of extinction.”
When applied correctly, the researchers found, conservation efforts can pay off. Species that were downlisted to lower threat categories on the IUCN Red List between 2006 and 2020 were more likely to have documented conservation interventions in place compared to those that deteriorated in status.
“For 58% of the world’s threatened terrestrial species, we find conservation interventions to be notably insufficient or absent,” the authors concluded.
The Wildlife Society Bulletin is an open-access journal of The Wildlife Society. Published four times annually, it is one of the world’s leading scientific journals covering wildlife science, management and conservation, focusing on aspects of wildlife that can assist management and conservation.
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Using photos to identify individual animals can be challenging. In a study in the June issue of the Wildlife Society Bulletin, researchers studying leopard seals compared three photo ID programs to see how well they performed. Other articles look at agency trust after the arrival of chronic wasting disease in North Dakota, using drone surveys for ungulates, and more.
Biologists in Hawaii are fighting one pest with another in an effort to save endangered honeycreepers from extinction. The native birds are disappearing due to the spread of avian malaria by mosquitoes, which were accidentally introduced to the islands in the 1800s. As the climate changes, mosquitoes are able to survive in higher elevations. That has put more honeycreepers at risk in areas that used to be mosquito-free refuges.
To combat these invasive mosquitoes, conservationists are bringing in millions of other mosquitoes—modified with a bacteria that prevents them from reproducing. Borrowed from human health initiatives to reduce the spread of malaria, the technique drives down mosquito populations in the wild.
The coalition Birds Not Mosquitoes—made up of organizations including the National Park Service, the state of Hawaii and nonprofits like the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project—is hoping the effort can stave off extinctions. Out of 50 honeycreeper species that once resided in Hawaii, only 17 remain, and some are expected to vanish from the wild this year.
“We are in an ongoing extinction crisis,” Chris Warren, forest bird program coordinator at Haleakalā National Park in Maui, told NPR. “The only thing more tragic than these things going extinct would be them going extinct and we didn’t try to stop it.”
