Deep in the remote mountain crags and valleys of the eastern Korean Peninsula, an imperiled goatish herbivore called the long-tailed goral (Naemorhedus caudatus) persists despite the pressures of development and agriculture. This elusive species remains a bit of a mystery to scientists, but new sample collection methods could help shed light on its few, fragmented populations and inform its conservation.

“We would like to identify the number of individuals, so we tried to develop methods like hair trapping because it is very difficult to get information of the goral,” said Sungwon Hong, corresponding author on a paper published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin comparing some of these techniques.

A doctoral candidate at South Korea’s Pusan National University, Hong and his fellow researchers deployed noninvasive barbed and hooked hair traps in the Wangpi River Basin between 2008 and 2010 to obtain genetic material from gorals for population analyses. They lured the animals to the traps, which have been commonly used on carnivores, at 15 locations with mineral blocks that the gorals lick to acquire salt. The team ended up gathering hundreds of hairs.

“The hairs from the traps show high genetic information,” Hong said.

The hair traps replaced previous methods that relied on presence data from carcasses, often animals that died from vehicle collisions or severe snowfall, to learn about the gorals’ population size and genetic diversity.

The long-tailed goral is classified as vulnerable on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species owing to population declines of more than 30 percent over recent decades. It also inhabits North Korea, Russia and China.

In South Korea, Hong said, conditions for the ungulate have advanced since the 1970s, and its population may have surpassed 1,000 thanks to better wildlife research, protection and reintroduction to parts of the country where it once roamed. “There are societies for the conservation of the goral,” Hong said.

Even so, he said, the gorals’ population growth is slow because they only reproduce every few years and give birth to just one or two offspring at a time. While older threats like subsistence hunting have waned, Hong said, he and his colleagues are investigating the intensifying impacts of climate change on the mortality of the species.

The House Natural Resources Committee met in Alpena, Michigan for a field hearing on double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) management.

Cormorants are migratory birds and are therefore regulated under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. However, recreational and commercial fishermen around the Great Lakes say growing populations have negatively impacted local fisheries.

Previously, managers were allowed to use lethal force to reduce the bird population in the Great Lakes. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service extended the Public Resource Depredation Order for five years. In 2016, a federal judge vacated the order, saying it violated the National Environmental Policy Act, and ordered the USFWS to complete a new environmental assessment.

Soon after the assessment was released in November 2017, Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Michigan, introduced a bill (H.R. 4429) that would direct the Interior secretary to reissue the depredation order.

“Without the ability to effectively manage cormorant populations the livelihood of our recreational and commercial fishing industries is seriously threatened,” Bergman said during the hearing. “These industries are critical to our local economies.”

Tom Cooper, the USFWS Migratory Bird Program Chief for the Midwest Region, said that the 2017 assessment did not address the effects of cormorants on free-swimming fish due to a lack of scientific information. USFWS is currently collecting information from state and local stakeholders.

“Until this evaluation and potential NEPA review process is complete, the [Interior] Department supports legislation authorizing the take of problem birds through a temporary, short-term reinstatement of the depredation orders,” Cooper said.

Daniel Eichinger, executive director of Michigan United Conservation Clubs, said cormorants prefer fish around six inches or smaller. Primarily feeding on small or juvenile fish can affect annual recruitment for fish populations. Lack of recruitment has long-term effects on fisheries, and managers may not see the effects for more than a year.

Bergman’s bill was considered in a hearing with the House Federal Lands Subcommittee in February but has not been reported to the full House for consideration.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has recognized three staff members for their extraordinary work by awarding them the Service’s 2017 Science Awards.

The Science Awards were established to recognize that effective wildlife management and conservation is founded on innovative scientific inquiry and principles. They are awarded to recognize the outstanding efforts of the agency’s scientists and technical staff.

Biometrician Matthew Butler received the 2017 Rachel Carson Award for Exemplary Scientific Accomplishment, which recognizes scientific excellence through the rigorous practice of science applied to a conservation problem. He received the award for his work for whooping cranes and lesser prairie-chickens, helping ensure that the most appropriate, best available, high-quality scientific and scholarly information is available to advance stewardship for these species.

Butler led the development of an improved and peer-reviewed survey protocol for whooping cranes. He also conducted a population viability analysis, determined that juvenile recruitment most His contributions are steering management toward habitat protection along the Texas Gulf Coast and refocusing research toward understanding the declines of whooping crane recruitment on breeding areas in Canada.

For lesser prairie-chickens, Butler led a team that developed aerial survey techniques that have provided population estimates, new lek locations and areas to target for monitoring and conservation. This information informs on-the-ground conservation by identifying how energy development can be steered away from places favorable to lesser prairie-chickens.

Bill Uihlein, Region 4 assistant regional director, science applications, received the Sam D. Hamilton Award for Transformational Conservation Science, which recognizes innovative application of science. By stressing collaboration, Uihlein has been working to ensure landscapes in the Southeast can sustain populations of fish and wildlife range-wide at desired levels in the Southeast.

He helped unite conservation leaders from 15 state and 13 federal agencies in the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy, which has helped federal, state, nonprofit and private organizations focus on common goals by using science to design and achieve a connected network of habitats and waters.

Region 5 Division of Endangered Species Chief Martin Miller received the Science Leadership Award, which recognizes supervisors who champion science in conservation decision making and empower their staff to accomplish scientific work and engage in the scientific community.

Miller was recognized for demanding the highest quality scientific work from himself and his team and for his dedication to ensuring the best science is appropriately applied to Endangered Species Act decisions, whether it is a listing determination, a habitat conservation plan or an ESA consultation with another federal agency. Colleagues lauded him for empowering his team to “be science leaders” and participate in the scientific community through collaborating with other scientists, serving as peer reviewers, serving on graduate committees, presenting at scientific conferences and authoring scientific publications.

The Service received 35 nominations for the awards.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is a Strategic Partner of The Wildlife Society.

Conservationists tend to focus on safeguarding species that are ecologically or economically beneficial, limited in number or suffering severe population decline. But are they leaving out other important values?

A team of researchers in the United Kingdom suggests that some species play vital roles in human culture, and conservation efforts ought to expand to protect these as well.

“Different species bring different things to the table, have different functions or are different in other respects we might value,” said Matthew Hiron, lead author on the paper published in Scientific Reports. It looked specifically at farmland birds and their value based on a range of criteria.

“The focus of this study was to quantify that different species of birds are culturally valuable,” Hiron said. “How many species in a community are important from different societal perspectives? Are the same species important for different values?”

A landscape ecologist with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Hiron and his team scored 38 farmland bird species according to various criteria of value, such as rarity, population decline and their economic significance due to pest control and other services they perform. But the researchers also ranked the birds’ cultural status based on the number of times they appeared in poetry by searching more than a million poems.

“Biodiversity has a greater role the more values you look at,” Hiron said. “Different species were important for different values.”

While the stone-curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus) came out on top in terms of rarity and the turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur) in terms of decline, the chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) ended up first for economic contributions and the crow (Corvus spp.) for cultural mentions.

Conservationists often aren’t interested in common species, Hiron said, but they provide important services, including pollination, and many are declining. But they also hold cultural importance that ought to be taken into consideration, he said.

“Cultural ecosystem services are so important to motivate conservation,” Hiron said. “At the same time, they’re hard to quantify. Our job as ecologists is to quantify these things, take them to policymakers and say these species are important for this.”