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Mountains play some unique ecological roles, with diverse ecosystems that host a gamut of species that can shift from bottom to top, rainy side to dry side, sun to shade. For species on the move due to climate change, mountains can offer a refuge. But mountains often experience a higher rate of climate change than other areas. In the March/April issue of The Wildlife Professional, we explore these mountain ecosystems and the ways that species are responding to the changes taking place around them.
Our special focus looks at some unique ways that wildlife professionals are reaching out to the public, from innovative social media posts to virtual wildlife contests to involving the public in research work. John Koprowski, the 2022 Aldo Leopold Memorial Award recipient, shares how a purple bike can transform our relationship with the natural world. And TWS Member Engagement Manager Mariah Beyers shares some of the many reasons to be charmed by the 2024 Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
Watch for the issue in your mailbox, or log in and check it out online.
The Canadian Wildlife Service is considering allowing limited sandhill crane hunting in northern Ontario. The proposal would allow hunters to harvest one crane per season in the Hudson and James Bay Lowlands and allow hunting in agricultural fields in several other areas.
Sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) have been increasing in numbers in the region, but with their return has been an increase in damages to farmers’ fields. No date has been set for a decision. The earliest a hunt could take place is fall 2026.
When Mexican farmers harvest agave for tequila before the plant flowers, bats don’t have a shot at pollination.
The core of the plant, which looks something like a pineapple, is what’s used to create tequila. All the sugar needed for fermentation is concentrated there. Because agave puts all its energy into producing its towering, flower-filled spikes, farmers collect the cores before the plants bloom. Once the agave flowers, it dies.
But bats, like the Mexican long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris nivalis), need these flowers to feed.
Irene Zepata-Moran, a PhD student at the University of Wyoming, led a study published in Environmental Research Communications looking at how to balance the needs of blue agave farmers with the needs of bats and biodiversity.
Some tequila producers who cultivate their own agave do leave plants aside to benefit bats. That allows them to place special holograms on their bottles to show consumers that they are bat-friendly—and to charge more for an environmentally friendly product.
But many farmers don’t produce their own tequila. They supply their crops to tequila houses. For them, there’s no incentive to let plants flower.
To find out how farmers can be involved in more sustainable agave production, Zepata-Moran interviewed farmers and tequila producers and provided them with a choice experiment.
Known as a jimador, a Mexican farmer harvests agave plants to produce tequila. Credit: Celso FLORES
She offered them a series of hypothetical options. Would they enter into a program to leave part of their crops untouched for monetary incentives? What about nonmonetary incentives, like training to use greenhouses to grow seeds produced by bat-pollinated flowers? Would they enter into a program to increase their crop yields?
Currently, farmers grow new agave by using clone offshoots or planting a clipping from another plant. But leaving some plants untouched and letting bats do the work can increase the genetic diversity of the plants and improve the health of the crop.
“Genetic diversity in blue agave crops has decreased over time,” said Zepata-Moran, who completed the study as part of her master’s dissertation. “What happens when we don’t have genetic diversity in the population is they are more prone to diseases.”
In general, the farmers preferred monetary incentives. “They like to be compensated,” she said. In this scenario, farmers would be paid for the plants they couldn’t sell to tequila producers because they let them bloom.
They also had a willingness to let plants flower if it increased their yield. Zepata-Moran said she heard from some longtime farmers who were seeing smaller plant cores and other problems, likely due to low genetic diversity.
Before strategies like these could be put into place, Zepeta-Moran said, there needs to be more research on the role this iconic crop plays in the farmers’ heritage and how their yields could improve with more bat-friendly techniques.
“There is a cultural value that exists in terms of tequila production and agave production,” Zepata-Moran said. “It’s something that people are proud of.”
Plant green-up times are shifting, but birds’ spring migrations aren’t keeping up. In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found climate change is altering the plants’ timing, affecting birds’ ability to reach the food they need during breeding. Using satellite images, researchers compared green-up timing with bird migration data from the citizen science app eBird for 150 bird species that nest in North America.
“The findings “emphasize the mounting challenge migratory animals face in following en route resources in a changing climate,” the authors wrote.
Imagine a world of conservation without conflict, where landowners, state and federal agencies, and environmental organizations all got along, working toward the common goal of helping imperiled species thrive.
It’s easy to see such a notion as a pipe-dream in a world fraught with endless lawsuits and protests. But one organization believes such a step is possible—in fact, they have made great achievements in the conservation world operating on such a principle in just over five years.
Leopoldo Miranda-Castro is the executive director of Conservation Without Conflict. Credit: Conservation Without Conflict
Conservation Without Conflict, a coalition involving state and federal wildlife managers, environmentalists, energy and forestry companies, and other private stakeholders, was founded in 2017 on the principle that while stakeholders often dispute the shape and regulations surrounding at-risk species, they usually agree on the basic tenet of conserving our natural world. Rather than seeing conservation as a conflict between opposing parties, the coalition seeks to find ways to encourage collaboration. Members include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ducks Unlimited, Southern Company, the National Wildlife Federation, Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute, and many others.
Fresh from the coalition’s 2024 summit meeting in Arlington, Virginia last week, The Wildlife Society caught up with executive director of Conservation Without Conflict, Leopoldo Miranda-Castro. Our conversation below is edited for style and brevity.
How did the summit go?
The summit was really good—there was a lot of energy in the room. We had probably about 45 different organizations and individuals there. One of the things I wanted to accomplish was to reenergize the coalition. Because of COVID, we couldn’t meet for a few years, so we wanted to bring everybody back.
What progress has Conservation Without Conflict made?
Some of our biggest accomplishments so far are bringing people together to discuss potential issues, identifying barriers, and knocking down those barriers. Those could be policy barriers or disincentives. They could be on-the-ground issues—you name it.
Specifically, one of the big things that the coalition members have recently been able to accomplish was the first-ever partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and industrial timberland owners, Resource Management Service, LLC (RMS). That included a private lands agreement to voluntarily reintroduce reticulated flatwoods salamanders (Ambystoma bishopi) onto their land in the Florida panhandle. That’s the first time the USFWS’ tool for conservation partnerships has been used for those purposes. That is a deal I’m extremely happy about. It took many, many years, and finally they were able to crack that code and implement it.
What were some of the conflicts you have had to work through?
One of them is how to protect private landowners’ privacy when they enter into agreements with the government, and especially when dealing with listed and at-risk species. A lot of landowners are looking for that kind of information. How do we minimize the risk to those landowners in terms of liability or any other type of risk? When proactively sharing site-specific data with the government, that data may be available to the public, including organizations that may use it in ways that may affect these landowners. For example, environmental groups may file a lawsuit to try to force landowners to do things the way these groups want. Lowering those risks to a level that private landowners can manage them and benefit species—and keeping those working lands working—creates kind of a win-win situation. Before the RMS timber company agreement, those were concerns from the private landowner’s perspective. We hope that that model, now that there’s a precedent, could be expanded across the nation. It’s a really simple tool.
What role will Conservation Without Conflict play moving forward?
We closed out the summit by asking the participants about next steps and actions. We had short-, mid- and long-term actions. Short-term and mid-term goals include increased communication and supporting more on-the-ground conservation.
But I’m really excited about long-term ideas, like bringing up young professionals and students—people who are starting their careers right now—into the Conservation Without Conflict collaborative framework. Eventually, we’ll be able to change the culture of conservation within the NGO community, landowners, industry and agencies. Our vision is that collaborative conservation will be the default approach to conservation, instead of conflict and litigation.
Even longer term, we plan to develop some curriculum programs in academia where we can have minors and majors where Conservation Without Conflict frameworks can be applied and learned as part of an actual degree. Eventually, we’ll get there, and we’ll be able to affect long-term change.
What’s at stake if we don’t start minimizing conflict in the conservation community?
We will continue to be too polarized. At the end of the day, it will affect working lands because we will eliminate incentives to have healthy economies and healthy human communities. And also, the species will suffer because they will be caught in the middle of conflict. We’re going to have a lot of regulations and paperwork. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still important to have good regulations. But we need to have regulations that actually make sense and that provide incentives to everybody, including private landowners on working lands, to do the right thing, because they are already doing it—that’s why the species are still there.
As encounters between humans and mountain lions grow on the Front Range, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is drafting a new management plan for the cats. The proposed plan would streamline 13 units into two, and rather than seeking to suppress mountain lion (Puma concolor) populations in some areas and stabilize them in others, it would seek to stabilize them across the region.
The plan follows a similar update to mountain lion management for western Colorado completed in 2020.
As climate change increases, the time polar bears spend off the ice and on land in many parts of their range has increased. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) rely on sea ice to reach their primary prey—seals. With longer summers, the bears are enduing more time on land, where food has lower energy content.
“We know that polar bears are increasingly relying on summer land use across many parts of their range due to climate warming,” said Anthony Pagano, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “The modeling work that’s been done indicates that there’s going to be even more bears relying on summer land use in the future with forecasted climate warming and declines in Arctic sea ice.
Those models indicate that bears’ periods on land near Hudson Bay, Canada, are likely to increase by about five to 10 days per decade with future warming.
But scientists weren’t sure what polar bears (Ursus maritimus) were actually doing with their time on land. Some suspected polar bears were probably resting to conserve their energy while waiting for the sea ice to return. Other observations showed the bears were feeding on a range of prey, from duck eggs to caribou (Rangifer tarandus), to survive. Some bears are also known to feed on vegetation like berries, seaweed and grasses.
Polar bears lost about 1 kilogram per day while on land. Credit: David McGeachy
Along the Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada, polar bears are spending about 130 days on land—some three weeks longer than they spent in the 1980s. Using GPS-enabled video collars and accelerometers on 20 polar bears during a three-week period, Pagano led a study in Nature Communications to determine what they did to survive the summer. He and his colleagues also looked at carbon dioxide production to determine how much energy the bears were expending.
In particular, they wanted to know if the land offered enough food to hold them over until the sea ice returned and they could access seals again.
The collars showed the researchers whether the bears were active or inactive, what they were eating and how much they were consuming. When it was dark and the bears didn’t show up on video, the accelerometers helped the researchers know what the bears were doing. The team also measured the bears’ energy expenditure and changes in their body mass.
“We found that the bears are using a variety of behavioral strategies when they’re on land,” Pagano said. Some bears were sedentary, resting up to 90% of the time and mostly fasting. They had low energy expenditure, similar to bears that are hibernating.
But most of the bears—about 70%—were active, feeding on birds and caribou carcasses. Most adult females were primarily feeding on berries. Some bears chewed on caribou antlers and bones, grasses, seaweed and other vegetation. “They’re really eating almost anything that they came across that was edible,” he said.
Whether they were resting or finding food, however, they were all losing body mass at similar rates—about 1 kilogram a day.
Three bears made long swims in search for food. Two of them found marine mammal carcasses, but they couldn’t carry them back to shore or eat them while swimming. One was lucky. It found a carcass—either a seal or beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas)—and bulked up 30 kilograms. But that was a rare find, Pagano said.
The changing conditions are already taking their toll. The population has faced a 30% decrease—from about 1,200 bears in the late 1980s to about 800 bears around 2010. Fewer young appear to be reaching adulthood, and the outlook for them is growing worse.
“Those bears aren’t going to be able to accumulate as much body fat in preparation for coming on land,” Pagano said. “If they’re trying to survive these increasing periods on land, it’s going to be particularly challenging for them.”
Estella Leopold, a scientist and conservationist and the last surviving child of wildlife management pioneer Aldo Leopold, has died at the age of 97.
Leopold was a paleoecologist who continued her father’s conservation ethic throughout her lifetime. The youngest of five children, all of whom pursued careers in the natural sciences, she helped establish Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado and Mount St. Helens National Monument in Washington.
Leopold earned a Ph.D. in botany from Yale University in 1955 and worked for the United States Geological Survey in Denver for 20 years. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974. In 1976, she moved to Seattle and spent most of her career at the University of Washington, studying ancient pollen deposits. In 1982, she joined with her siblings to establish the Aldo Leopold Foundation, serving for several years as president and board chair.
Over the course of her lifetime, Leopold published more than 100 scientific papers, even after her retirement in 2000. In her 80s, she directed her writing to a more general audience. Her 2016 book, Stories from the Leopold Shack, provides tales behind of some of the essays in her father’s iconic A Sand County Almanac. Last January, family and friends joined her to celebrate the release of her latest book, Aldo’s Wife, Estella Bergere: My Remarkable Mother.
At the end of her life, she was hoping to publish a revised edition of that book. “She was really not ready to go,” Dee Boersma, a colleague at the University of Washington, told KUOW.
Leopold died Feb. 25. A private memorial was scheduled for March 3 in Seattle.
Recreational restriction periods in some parts of Yellowstone National Park may not match up with the times grizzly bears use the areas.
Researchers looking at how bears use resources on the landscape found ways the National Park Service may improve a system intended to reduce human-bear conflict that was developed decades ago.
“It’s helpful for managers to continually assess [management restrictions] and continue to explore these questions,” said TWS Elise Loggers, a graduate student at Montana State University.
In the 1980s, Yellowstone park managers restricted recreational activity in some parts of the park at times when they typically had heavy bear activity. These restrictions varied depending on the area, since grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) tend to move around throughout the year searching for the best available food.
Researchers have been tracking grizzly bears in Yellowstone using GPS collars for the past two decades. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team has collected GPS locational data for decades. Loggers led a study published recently in the Journal of Wildlife Management, tapping into this data and comparing it to the restriction zones.
Grizzlies seem to prefer using bear management areas. Credit: NPS/A. Falgoust
The data revealed that overall, during certain times of the year, the bears spent more time inside these bear management areas with recreational restrictions than outside of them.
But Loggers and her colleagues found the sex of the bear made a difference regarding when the bears used these zones. While females typically stayed in the area whether or not it was during periods when recreation was restricted, male grizzlies actually spent more time in bear management areas when there were no restrictions on human recreation.
Loggers said that this discrepancy might reflect changes within the park. Over the past century, wildfire has burned about 60% of Yellowstone. In addition, some tree species, like whitebark pine, have decreased in the park. Meanwhile, food resources for bears like cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii) have become scarcer. Predator-prey dynamics have shifted since gray wolves (Canis lupus) were reintroduced and altered. These predators altered the time and place ungulate prey is available for bears in some cases.
Any or all of these factors may have contributed to changing the places where bears forage for resources at different times of the year.
“There’s probably a mismatch in when bears are using their food resources that are in bear management areas now versus in the 1980s,” Loggers said.
This mismatch has implications for the way the National Park Service organizes the bear management areas, since there is a greater chance for human-bear conflict in areas used more densely by bears.
She hopes that park managers will be able to use the results of this study to inform restriction planning in the future that would benefit bears while still providing people with as many opportunities for recreation in the park as possible.
This article features research that was published in a TWS peer-reviewed journal. Individual online access to all TWS journal articles is a benefit of membership. Join TWS now to read the latest in wildlife research.
Decades ago, a trove of Cold War spy satellite images was declassified, offering unique glimpses into the past in key sites around the world.
Scientists have tapped into these images from a wide range of disciplines, including archeologists and civil engineers. Their use in conservation and ecology have been limited, researchers say, but it may be time for that to change.
In a recent paper published in BioScience, researchers considered how these spy images could be used to study changes in ecosystems, species populations and land use since the 1960s. A 2020 study by the same scientists looked at how these images revealed unexpected declines in bobak marmots (Marmota bobak) in Eurasia.
But using the images will mean overcoming some challenges in accessing and sharing them, the researchers say.
“Our few prior studies have revealed that without considering the past, we may draw erroneous conclusions about the current state of the environment,” said lead author Catalina Munteanu, of the University of Freiburg in Germany.
