Deadline: April 24, 2015, 11:59 pm CST

As sea temperatures rise, life may no longer be a beach for green sea turtles who bask in Hawaiian sands, according to new research.

“Sea turtle basking is not common and really only happens in one species,” said Kyle Van Houtan, a research ecologist and sea turtle expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The only populations of green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) known to sunbathe are those around Hawaii, the Galapagos Islands and around Australia, he said.

Van Houtan and a team of researchers set out on to study the reasons these turtle populations behave this way, and whether climate change will influence this behavior. Their findings were published recently in Biology Letters.

“This is hauling out on a beach and just sitting there,” Van Houtan said of the turtles’ basking behavior “The question is: Why?”

The researchers found that the one of the most likely reasons the marine reptiles bask on the beach is to warm up from the cool seas. While we may not think of the seas around Hawaii or Australia as cold, the places where these turtles hang out are among the coldest waters the species is known to frequent.

“For those species it’s an extreme,” he said.None of the eight other known populations of green sea turtles bask on beaches.

The researchers also noticed that the turtles only tended to bask on Hawaiian beaches during seasons with colder water. “There was a pretty pronounced seasonality for it,” Van Houtan said.

Van Houtan also said that in many of these basking areas, the sea temperature is warming up by three times the global average. When the sea is above a temperature of around 73 degrees, the turtles no longer bask.

But this may not be good for beach-loving turtles. Van Houtan said that the basking could provide a host of other benefits to the turtles.

The added warmth could help them digest their food and extract more resources from it. “They basically have a big solar panel on their back,” he said. This, in turn, could accelerate their growth and allow them to mature faster. “They could be a more resilient population if you had earlier breeding and faster maturity.”

It also may help to kill oceanic parasites that live on their bodies and provide a solace from oceanic predators. Female turtles may hang out on the beach to escape the unwanted advances of frisky males.

“If they stop basking it could affect all of those things,” Van Houtan said, and he is concerned about what that could mean for these green sea turtle populations.

“People have always viewed this terrestrial basking by green sea turtles as curious, he said. “But it appears to have a very specific ecological function that is related to climate.”

Researchers using satellite technology to track massive vultures through the Pyrenees Mountains in Spain have shown that the endangered birds need a good overlap of predictable feeding sources and home ranges in order to lower the threat of extinction.

A bearded vulture was kitted out with a satellite transmitter and wing tags enabling long-distance monitoring.
Image Credit: Juan Antonio Gil (FCQ)

Bearded vultures (Gypaetus barbatus) are one of Spain’s most threatened carrion-feeding birds, with populations in the Pyrenees and other parts of Europe becoming nearly expurgated in the early 20^th century. The population has been recovering in more recent decades in the Pyrenees, going from 39 breeding units in 1994 to 86 in 2014 in the Spanish autonomous community of Aragon.

Researchers used satellite telemetry to follow the birds’ movements to establish a precise range.

“Nine birds of various ages were caught and marked in order to establish the relationship between supplementary feeding points — those traditionally known as ‘rubbish tips’ and specifically established sources of food throughout the Pyrenees — and these birds’ movements,” said Pascual López, a coauthor of the study published in the journal Aldeola recently.

The results showed bearded vulture range with unprecedented precision, revealing that some birds travelled as much as 8,880 square miles while others moved around as little as 695 square miles to make an average home range of 4517 square miles per bird.

“These areas were lower than described previously in other studies published on the species in South Africa, but slightly higher than those described in the Pyrenees and the Alps using conventional techniques, which did not enable the area over which they move to be determined quite as accurately,” López said.

The study also showed that the birds used a combination of specific feeding areas with supplementary rubbish tip stops.

The finding “is especially pertinent from the point of view of conservation, as it proves once again that overlap between home ranges and predictable food sources — such as feeding areas — are crucial in order to increase survival and thus diminish the risk of the species becoming extinct in this country,” López said. “It is particularly important for young, inexperienced birds and individuals belonging to the non-breeding population of the species.”

Meanwhile, the use of satellite telemetry could be an important method for tracking spatial ecology and behavior of birds like vultures.

López said that the bearded vultures and other species like it were threatened in Spain due to the European Union closing some of the raptors’ feeding areas in 2000 when a form of the mad cow disease began appearing.

“It is a key type of work for the conservation of this group of species,” he said.

Like many young people, she had to find ways to adapt to modern times. She grew up around the Schaumburg, Ill. suburb near the Chicago O’Hare International Airport in the 1990s, working long hours often into the night and often moving from home to home. As she got older, she decided to move near downtown Chicago where it was harder to make a living and competition was fiercer, but she proved to be ahead of the pack: an alpha female, if you will. She had a strong and independent survival instinct, but she stayed with the same mate for most of her life.

This map depicts GPS locations of an adult male coyote monitored during summer 2014. It is a downtown animal that used Lakeshore Drive, going up to the Field Museum and Soldier Field, and passing under the shadow of Sears Tower.
Image Credit: Stanley Gehrt

“They were an amazing couple,” said Stanley Gehrt, an associate professor of wildlife at the Ohio State University and a Wildlife Society member. Gehrt knew them both for most of their life after meeting the female one day in the park 15 years ago and can contest that despite a sometimes shaky reputation passed down from some of her ancestors, he never observed her to cause any kind of serious conflict with people.

Thirteen years after Gehrt had first captured her and attached a radio collar to track her movements through urban areas and with a little whiter hair, “the Schaumburg female” died of natural causes — not an easy achievement since coyotes living in urban areas often meet their end from cars or other vehicles.

She was the first coyote that Gehrt trapped in 2000 as part of what was then supposed to be a short project looking at the relatively new development of coyotes moving into cities.

“We initially caught her in this large, natural park, which is where we thought was the only place they could live,” he said. But the day after she was tagged and released, the Schaumburg female took Gerhrt on a wild goose chase through very urban areas. “In one night, I immediately realized that the coyotes were not restricted to these natural habitats,” he said. “These animals were living a lot closer to people than we realized.”

Researcher and TWS member Stanley Gehrt with the Schaumburg female coyote in 2011. The researchers tracked this coyote and others for the past 15 years to see the ways they adapted to urban settings.
Image Credit: Stanley Gehrt

Gerhrt tracked that coyote, her loyal, lifelong mate nicknamed “Melon Head” by the researchers and many others down through several generations with the use of GPS and radio collars over the next 15 years.

“We have multiple generations of coyotes that have been born and raised near people,” he said. “Our earliest ones are old geezers now.” They found some of the things that coyotes ate using scat analysis and the ways in which they marked territory in the suburbs. But the principle reason for the research was to watch the way the growing population interacted with humans and pets and to see whether the coyotes would lose their fear of people.

“The stakes are getting higher and higher as far as conflict, but so far we haven’t noticed any increase in conflict,” Gehrt said. “The fact that they’ve been able to move into every metropolitan area across North America is one of the most fascinating wildlife stories underway right now.”

Coyote 748 — named for being the 748th coyote captured by researcher Stanley Gehrt — on the top of a parking garage in downtown Chicago with the Soldier Field football stadium behind.
Image Credit: Stanley Gehrt

More recently he’s been involved with studies making use of so-called Crittercams provided by National Geographic, as seen on a recent news feature on NBC Nightly News, to get a coyote-eye view of what they do from day to day. Using these technologies, Gehrt said they have found that in heavy urban areas like downtown Chicago, the animals are picky about crossing roads and sometimes do so in pairs. They also avoid eating dead opossums, which apparently don’t cater to the coyote palate, but will spend an hour pulling the feathers off dead songbirds before digging in. and sleep in small bushes or on top of carparks often right under the noses of human city-dwellers. However, Gehrt hasn’t seen footage of coyotes attacking domestic pets — an observation that correlates well with the more traditional data his team has gathered.

“You can’t have preconceived notions of what makes suitable habitat for these animals,” he said. “We didn’t think that coyotes would be able to penetrate or colonize certain parts of the Chicago area because it would just be too urban, but apparently there’s no part that they can’t colonize.”

Coyote 748 on the top of a downtown parking garage.
Image Credit: Stanley Gehrt

He’s also trying to tell how the downtown dwellers mark their territory as they don’t tend to howl or leave scat the way suburban coyotes do. In another project, the team is studying coyote genetics to see if individual personality types such as boldness or shyness are better suited for close living with humans from the coyotes’ point of view.

“This is a great unplanned experiment that was started by the coyotes, so we don’t know when the end of the experiment is going to come,” Gehrt said of the animals moving into urban areas. “We don’t know what the final outcome is going to be with these animals living completely immersed among people.”

But one thing is certain for now — the Schaumburg female has left a huge legacy behind her. She was prodigiously fertile, having 60-70 offspring, according to Gehrt. Many of them moved into suburbs not too far from where they were born and one male even inherited a portion of her former territory.

“They learned to live in that landscape pretty well,” he said. Perhaps it is all in the genes.

The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) released its Comprehensive Conservation Plan and final environmental impact statement for the 19 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. The preferred plan for the ANWR proposes wilderness designation for the Brooks Range, Porcupine Plateau, and Coastal Plain Wilderness Study Areas and to include four rivers as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

Currently, about 7 million acres are designated as wilderness in the Refuge. The proposed plan covers an additional 12.28 million acres, designating 98% of the ANWR as wilderness. Some groups are critical of the plan as it would prevent oil and gas development on Alaska’s coastal plains, which have been estimated by the U.S. Geological Service to contain 10.4 billion barrels of oil. Opportunities for recreational, scientific, and subsistence uses are still available on wilderness lands and were considered when determining the preferred management alternative.

FWS states the plan contributes to the overall ecological health and biological integrity of the Refuge, which supports numerous species, including polar bears, grizzly bears, gray wolves, and caribou.

The preferred management plan offers more permanent protection for the area, as congress must approve all designations of and changes to areas managed under Wilderness Management and the National Wild and Scenic River Systems. Currently, the land is managed under Minimal Management, which offers similar protection but can be more easily changed by a plan amendment.

The plan is currently available for public review but is not accepting comments. President Obama has announced that he plans to make a formal recommendation to Congress to designate the area as wilderness, but the request may face opposition. House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) both expressed resistance to the plan, stating it would hinder economic development for the state. If approved, this would be the single largest wilderness designation since the Wilderness Act was approved in 1964.

Source: Energy & Environment Daily (January 26, 2015), Fish and Wildlife Service (January 26, 2015)

A new neighbor moved into a Seminole County neighborhood in Tallahassee, Florida earlier this month, but he was far from welcome — likely because he was a 740-pound black bear (Ursus americanus floridanus), the largest of its kind recorded in Florida. On Jan.18, five wildlife officials trapped and killed the bear, according to an Associated Press report, putting an end to weeks of complaints from county residents.

Although black bears have historically been a threatened species in Florida, their population has increased from several hundred in the 1970s to over 3,000 today. In 2012, the FWC approved the removal of black bears from the list of state-threatened species. Now, black bears are not only growing in physical size, but their population is growing as well.

Unfortunately, this population growth has caused problems. According to the FWC, complaint calls have gone up substantially from just 99 calls in 1990 to 6,667 calls in 2013. The majority of the complaints concerned bear sightings in people’s yards, trees or even garbage.

Though the black bear population is prosperous, there has not been a significant change in the amount of bear attacks. In the last decade, there have been about 14 incidents in which a bear has injured a person in Florida, and only two incidents were serious. Still, the FWC proposed conducting a bear hunt to control the population, which hasn’t been done since 1994. They will discuss their proposal in two weeks at their meeting in Jacksonville.

Black bear’s eating habits are also a cause for concern. Black bears are food conditioned, according to the FWC, which means that if there is garbage left out for them they will come back expecting more. A recent study published in Ecology Letters showed that bear’s eating habits affect the entire ecosystem, and eating garbage does nothing but damage. “My research shows that bears can have indirect effects on plants by consuming ants, which may be important for maintaining plant populations,” said Josh Grinath, a Florida State University researcher and author of the study. “If bears consume fewer ants and more trash, then these effects on plants could weaken and potentially have community-wide consequences.”

As a result, keeping bears away from trash will not only help the ecosystem thrive, but will also reduce the risk of human-wildlife conflict.

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Wildlife Services (WS) program in Montana recently co-sponsored a workshop, Non-lethal Predator Damage Management, in Dillon, Montana. Bringing producers together during this season was an efficient way to reach a large audience with information about locally appropriate protection methods.   WS is committed to resolving predation problems in a way that supports the program’s public trust responsibilities while assisting farmers and ranchers.

Image Credit: USDA Wildlife Services, John Steuber

Wildlife is a valued natural resource collectively owned by the people and managed in trust for them by a variety of government agencies. Predation management is a shared responsibility among producers and government agencies, with WS tasked with resolving damage issues.

WS often provides information to individual producers, who typically employ nonlethal strategies such as fencing and protection animals to reduce livestock vulnerability. Dillon and the surrounding area are known for large-scale cattle production in a predator-rich environment. Local predators include wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, mountain lions, and coyotes. Thus, producers were especially interested in sessions on carcass composting and methods to establish that service. Discussions of different range-rider programs, depending on size of the herds and properties, were also valuable.

Federal and State wildlife agencies, including Wildlife Services, manage wolf and grizzly bear damage in the Northern Rocky Mountain region. Wildlife Services typically is asked to conduct predator removal when necessary and when nonlethal methods are ineffective or inapplicable. Relationships among various agencies, stakeholders and producers are, and will continue to be, critical as predation-related problems continue to increase along with expanding gray wolf and grizzly bear populations.

Image Credit: USDA Wildlife Services

Workshops, such as this one, help the realization that an integrated wildlife damage management approach, which employs a variety of methods, is typically the most successful. Appreciating there is no single protection strategy, producers and other stakeholders can maintain a tolerance for the challenges faced in developing a landscape that allows for coexistence of predators and livestock.

Montana State University Cooperative Extension in Beaverhead County co-sponsored this workshop. Additional sessions are being planned with adjusted topics depending on the area’s agricultural resources and predators.

Wildlife Services, through the National Wildlife Research Center, continues to research and develop non-lethal strategies for varied wildlife damage situations. Forums like this workshop can share information on the effectiveness and limitations of non-lethal management resources with producers and other stakeholders as they are developed.

Pennsylvania residents are concerned about the management and conservation of nongame wildlife species and support a variety of funding sources, according to a new survey conducted for the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

Provided by Responsive Management

“This survey was conducted to assess the public’s interest in nongame wildlife and the management of species of greatest conservation need, particularly threatened and endangered species,” said Catherine Haffner, the project lead and a wildlife biologist with the state’s game commission.

It has long been known that some residents favor the conservation of larger, well-known game species. But this study shows that a majority of residents in Pennsylvania also believe the conservation of amphibians, reptiles and other species they can often find near their homes is also important.

Another study conducted by the two commissions in 2005 shows that these nongame species including birds, small mammals and other species, account for 75 percent of the wildlife species in Pennsylvania.

Survey respondents had to indicate how important different functions of the commissions were. Residents were most concerned about the conservation and management of threatened or endangered species and the availability of fishing opportunities. Further, managing and conserving nongame wildlife was somewhat or very important for 87 percent of respondents and very important for 67 percent. In 1996 a similar survey found that only 49 percent of respondents found nongame conservation and management very important.

Provided by Responsive Management

The survey also asked residents about the importance of more detailed functions of management and conservation and found that addressing wildlife diseases and enforcing wildlife laws were the two most important things for respondents out of a number of more specific categories that also included categories like educating the public about the state’s nongame wildlife. Of these, reintroducing nongame species that once existed in the state found the least support.

In terms of funding for the conservation of nongame wildlife, a majority of respondents supported every source of money except a federal excise tax on outdoor equipment related to nongame wildlife-related recreation. The funding source that the highest number of respondents supported was a collector’s conservation stamp with 81 percent, followed by funds from fishing license fees and a small percentage of revenue from gaming, each at 74 percent. Only 49 percent of respondents supported the excise tax on outdoor equipment related to nongame wildlife-related recreation.

Provided by Responsive Management

The study, conducted by Responsive Management for the state commissions, was done through telephone surveys of 3,660 residents and spread over all 18 of the Pennsylvania’s congressional districts. The margin of sampling error is a maximum plus or minus 1.62 percentage points.

Haffner said that the survey will go to inform the ongoing revision of Pennsylvania’s State Wildlife Action Plan, “a comprehensive conservation blueprint” to conserve or improve the situation of species of greatest concern and their habitats.

She said the results of the survey will be reflected in the 2015 State Wildlife Action Plan, and that the commission will “strive to increase the public’s awareness of the critical concerns for wildlife through conservation agencies and partners.”

“Wildlife’s future is tied directly to the actions of resource managers and the public. Awareness, education, and public involvement and participation have never been more important.”