The bird with the world’s longest known migration route, a tiny minnow that inhabits Texan rivers, and the wolves that once roamed over wide stretches of the continent are among the animals listed in 2014 under the Endangered Species Act.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had a busy year, with 61 new listed species, 44 of which have received classification. The remaining 17 have been listed by the National Marine Fisheries Service but haven’t yet been given a classification by the FWS.

For this end-of-the-year roundup, we’ve decided to look at some of the most important — and sometimes controversial — new ESA listings as well as changes in listing status.

Gray Wolf

The gray wolf (Canis lupus) has been all over the map in terms of listings, with judges overturning delistings for the entire western Great Lakes Distinct Population as well as in states such as Wyoming. Meanwhile, California listed the wolves under their state ESA after a popular wolf dubbed OR-7 was confirmed in the state’s northeast corner between Sept. 2011 and March 2012. Another wolf was recently spotted at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Island Night Lizard

The Island Night Lizard (Xantusia riversiana) was the only animal delisted in 2014. The removal of the long-lived lizard — some of which have known to survive up to 30 years — is due to the restoration and conservation of its habitat on the three Channel Islands off the Southern California coast.

Wood Stork

The only animal downlisted in 2014, the wood stork (Mycteria americana), lives in the U.S Southeast. The species was dropped from endangered status to threatened due to sustained populations of the birds over a three-year span and an expanded range where the bird is found, according to the FWS. The decision was controversial, with some conservation groups calling it premature, but the bird’s change in status won’t result in a change in the federal protections it receives.

The island night lizard inhabits three of the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. Copyright: U.S. Navy The wood stork was the only species to get downlisted from endangered to threatened in 2014. Copyright: Mary Ellen Urbanski A lesser prairie-chicken, listed as threatened, has a range believed to be limited to Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas and numbers are decreasing. Copyright: R. Douglas Holt A tagged red knot at Mispillion Harbor, Delaware during a stopover. Image Credit: Gregory Breese, USFWS Two distinct population of the scalloped hammerhead shark were listed as endangered and another two were listed as threatened under the ESA on Sept. 2. The sharks face threats from targeting fishing industries who often harvest them for use in shark fin soup. Image Credit: NOAA Gray wolves saw court battles that cancelled species delistings as well as sightings in previously extirpated areas such as northern Arizona and northern California. Image Credit: Gary Kramer, USFWS

Lesser prairie chicken

While the lesser prairie chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) was listed as threatened, it was done so with a special provision that allows for oil and gas development, ranching, or other activities from landowners. The provision allows the landowners to be unfettered by regulation as long as they continue current conservation activities they provide for the bird.

Gunnison sage-grouse

While not quite as controversial as the battle over the potential listing of the greater sage-grouse, the Gunnison sage-grouse’s (Centrocercus minimus) threatened listing is important as it represents a kind of parallel study for the some of the same problems and conflicting interests in ranching and oil and gas development. The FWS also plans to list the Gunnison sage-grouse under special provisions similar to those given to the lesser prairie chicken’s listing.

Red knot

The FWS deemed that climate change was having a negative effect on the timing of the bird’s migration habits when it listed the rufa red knot (Calidris canutus rufa) as threatened in early December. To read more about the decision, check out the recent Wildlife Society article here.

Free-roaming domestic cats (Felis catus) are widely understood to have substantial negative impacts on wildlife. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists cats among the world’s worst non-native invasive species, and cats on islands worldwide have contributed to 33 species extinctions (Lowe et al. 2000, Medina et al. 2011). In the United States free-roaming cats are the top source of direct anthropogenic mortality to birds and mammals, killing approximately 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals each year (Loss et al. 2013).

The indirect impacts of cats on wildlife are less obvious, but one of the greatest emerging threats from free-roaming cats is infection with Toxoplasma gondii. T. gondii is a parasitic protozoan that can infect all warm-blooded species but relies on felids to complete its life cycle. According to a new study published in EcoHealth, feral cats are likely driving white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) infections in northeastern Ohio (Ballash et al. 2014). Cats that host T. gondii excrete oocysts into the environment in their feces, and a single cat can deposit hundreds of millions of oocysts, which may remain infectious for up to 18 months (Tenter et al. 2000).

The study’s authors collected white-tailed deer samples at the Cleveland Metroparks as part of a deer management program. Cat serum samples were collected from cats in a trap, neuter, release (TNR) program in the Greater Cleveland area. TNR programs spay/neuter feral cats and then release them into the environment. Nearly 60% of white-tailed deer and 52% of feral cats tested positive for T. gondii. Older deer and deer in urban environments were more likely to be infected, suggesting horizontal transmission from environmental exposure.

The study’s findings have implications for people as well. Widespread environmental contamination increases the likelihood of human infections. In people, infection has been linked to schizophrenia and can lead to miscarriages, blindness, memory loss, and death (Torrey and Yolken 2013, Gajewski et al. 2014). Due to the creation of tissue cysts in infected deer, people that consume undercooked venison can also acquire T. gondii and the subsequent disease, toxoplasmosis.

The Wildlife Society actively supports the humane removal of feral cats from native ecosystems. See our position statement and fact sheet for more information on how feral and free-ranging domestic cats impact wildlife.

This article was written in cooperation with the American Bird Conservancy.

Flying dragons in Borneo adopt Christmas colors to mimic the red and green hues of falling leaves in an effort to hide from predatory birds, according to new research. But the red and green colors of different Draco populations have nothing to do with a festive spirit.

“It’s a cool finding because these gliding lizards are matching the colors of falling leaves and not the leaves that are still attached to the tree,” said Danielle Klomp, a researcher at the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales and the lead author of the study released today in Biology Letters. “In the mangrove population the leaves on the trees are bright green, but turn red shortly before falling to the ground, and it is this red color that the lizards mimic in their gliding membranes. This allows them to mimic a moving part of the environment—falling leaves—when they are gliding.”

The wing-like membranes of gliding Dracos match the colors of falling leaves in their habitat.
Image Credit: Danielle Klomp

The gliding lizard Draco cornutus uses extendable membranes to escape from predators in the treetops by letting them glide through the forest—the only lizard genus known to fly in the world. The lizards typically only come down to the ground when the females lay eggs in the dirt.

Klomp and a team of others working on the project observed two different populations of flying dragons on the island and found that each had a distinct set of colors that matched their respective habitats.

While the coastal mangrove population matched the red color of falling leaves, a population of flying lizards in the lowland rainforest took on more of a dark brown and green color to match local leaves in that area.

“Perhaps these populations may have originally had the same gliding membrane colors. But as they have moved into different forest types their colors have adapted to closely resemble the colors of falling leaves in the different forests,” Klomp said, adding that the phenomenon was known as divergent evolution.

She said that birds can perceive the same colors humans can as well as ultraviolet light, so the colors on lizard membranes could confuse them.

The researchers spent hours filming lizard flights in an attempt to determine whether they also used these colors to communicate the same way other reptiles do but they found it was strictly used for camouflage.