Invasive Burmese pythons in southern Florida consume even bigger prey than researchers previously thought. Scientists knew the snakes were putting a dent in populations of foxes, bobcats, raccoons and other animals. But in a new study published in Reptiles and Amphibians, researchers found that the pythons can also swallow even larger animals due to their flexible, stretchy jaws, or what scientists call their “gape.” The scientists captured Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) and determined that the largest gape circumference was more than 80 centimeters. That’s similar to a 32-inch waist on a pair of pants and is about 18% larger than what researchers had previously found. The team said this means the snakes consume much larger prey, which can help them understand better the ecological impacts the snakes may have as they move to new areas.
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Over the years, wildlife professionals have developed and perfected technology used to track species’ movements. From using color bands to track birds to GPS collars to follow ungulates, these devices have taught researchers more than they would have learned otherwise. In the Nov/Dec issue of The Wildlife Professional, we explore these changes throughout the decades and some of the ways researchers are using tracking devices to uncover information about animal migration and movement that has been used to inform management like highway crossings and purchases of land tracts.
Our special focus for this issue informs us about the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cooperative Research Unit program and how it helps facilitate partnerships and applied research.
Watch for the issue in your mailbox, or log in and check it out online.
As we near Election Day next week in uncertain times, one thing is certain—there will be a new administration and new policies that affect wildlife, their habitats and wildlifers. TWS attempted to reach both presidential campaigns with questions on key conservation issues, but received no response from either.
We reached out to Outdoor Life Hunting and Conservation editor and TWS member Andrew McKean who recently published a comprehensive three-part series on the upcoming presidential election. While the original series, which can be found here, covers a broad swath of issues related to the outdoors and opinions from several conservation leaders, TWS asked the author to compile the part of his reporting on the most salient issues to the wildlife profession.
Though not an official TWS position or product, we appreciate the extra focus that these community discussions place on wildlife and hope you find this helpful as we approach Election Day next Tuesday, Nov. 5. Regardless of who you vote for, we hope that all members get out and vote.
The following is a Guest Editorial by Andrew McKean.
As the drum-tight race for president enters its final days, campaigns are naturally focused on issues that mobilize most American voters—immigration, reproductive rights, the economy.
But in the 100 days that Democrat Kamala Harris has been campaigning and two years that Republican Donald Trump has been an announced candidate, there’s been little discussion about secondary issues, including the environment, climate change, public-land management or even priorities for Cabinet-level agencies such as Interior and Agriculture.
Given the dearth of detailed information from the campaigns, I queried conservation leaders about their expectations of how a second Trump administration or a first Harris administration might differ in three key areas: conservation policies, public-land management and administrative style.
Conservation policy priorities
The conservation community has drafted a set of recommendations circulated to both campaigns. Wildlife for the 21st Century details policy priorities from the American Wildlife Conservation Partners, a collection of 52 organizations including The Wildlife Society that outline both executive and legislative branch initiatives. According to AWCP leaders, neither presidential hopeful has incorporated its recommendations in campaign messaging.
Linear comparisons of the candidates are complicated because Vice President Harris has distanced herself from the Biden administration without offering clear guidance on how to judge many of her policy positions. Trump has the advantage of a first administration that offers some insights into his priorities, but it’s important to note that any comparisons or contrasts are speculative, and many sources have suggested that a second Trump administration, unconstrained by re-election, might pursue norm-bending policies, further frustrating clear forecasting.
But overall, sources expect a second Trump administration to favor hunting, angling and traditional uses of federal lands, to remove federal protections of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) in the Lower 48 and gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the Great Lakes region, and to remove the United States from international climate treaties. A Trump administration would likely de-emphasize both public and private conservation easements, would be unlikely to use the Antiquities Act to protect landscapes, and would likely de-emphasize tribal co-management of public land.
“I’d expect that we’ll have a return to core hunt and fish policies under a second Trump administration,” said the CEO of a wildlife-conservation organization who offered his perspectives with the agreement that his name and the name of his organization wouldn’t be disclosed. As a nonprofit, the CEO’s group is constrained from appearing to influence political candidates.
The source cited the Trump administration’s first Hunt Fish Rule for recreational management of National Wildlife Refuges. The rule expanded hunting and fishing opportunities on some 2.3 million acres on 138 national wildlife refuges. While the opportunities were not always for high-priority species or landscapes, the rule showed “Trump’s orientation generally for sportsmen and access.”
Trump also signed the Great American Outdoors Act, which earmarked about $10 billion for public-land infrastructure projects. The law also permanently authorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a perennial goal of public-land advocates. Ryan Zinke, Trump’s first Interior Secretary, signed Secretarial Order 3362, which for the first time focused state and federal agency resources and attention on western big-game migration corridors.
But conservation gains in the Trump administration were largely offset by policies that commodified natural resources and industrialized landscapes. While Zinke’s secretarial order aimed to identify and conserve big-game winter range and the ancestral routes that wildlife travel to reach it, the first Trump administration ramped up the pace and scale of energy development, especially on public lands in the West. America’s oil and gas output hit historic highs during Trump’s first administration, as he pursued a policy of “energy dominance.”
Some critics think he went too far, and that a subsequent Trump administration would favor energy development over other multiple uses of public land, including recreation. His “drill-baby-drill” drumbeat combined with rollbacks of environmental standards and dismantling regulations ignored market preferences for renewable energy and electric vehicles and public support for world-leading environmental standards, especially those that reduce the impacts of climate change.
While Harris has been consistent about not being judged by the policies of the Biden administration, it’s hard to imagine that her administration would deviate from some of its core conservation directions, including the idea that public lands are engines for climate recovery and resiliency and social-justice reconciliation.
One source outlined the differences between the first Trump administration and the Biden administration.
Under Biden, “we got climate policy instead of hunting-and-fishing policy, we got tribal co-management of public lands instead of reinvesting in infrastructure of the BLM and the National Wildlife Refuge System, and we got policies built around biodiversity and social justice instead of wildlife habitat and public access.”
With just three weeks remaining in the campaign, and maybe recognizing the electoral power of hunters and anglers in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the Harris-Walz campaign launched Hunters & Anglers for Harris-Walz. The specific priorities articulated on the coalition’s website include “conserving our wild places, expanding outdoor opportunities, and protecting the Second Amendment.”
But those are pretty thin and unsurprising policy prescriptions that don’t give much guidance to how conservationists might expect Harris to govern. Most observers expect a Harris administration to retain America’s enrollment in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and to continue the Biden administration’s pursuit of the goals of the 30×30 initiative, which aims to protect biodiversity on 30% of cooperating nations’ land by the year 2030 in order to preserve and promote biodiversity. Under Biden’s Interior Department, those goals were delivered under the America the Beautiful initiative that focused restoration and conservation grants to restore and connect habitats.
Energy policy is likely to influence either administration’s conservation policy. Trump has aggressively pursued fossil-fuel extraction as an antidote to spiking inflation, while either denying or minimizing the link between human-caused greenhouse gases and climate vagaries. Meanwhile, Harris has broadly supported investments in clean energy, including stricter regulations on power plants. But neither candidate has articulated a post-oil future, and given the global trends toward electric vehicles, renewable energy and digital technology—and the searing weather events attributed to climate change—that seems an oversight.
Under a second Trump administration, programs like conservation easements might slow or stop. The first Trump administration, “did not want to do anything on private-lands conservation as they wanted as many acres in crop production as they could get,” said a conservation leader active in agricultural policy. “Farmers are experiencing some of the toughest market conditions we’ve seen in decades, and a Farm Bill is critical to providing some degree of certainty to producers, and it will be interesting to see how various conservation programs, such as CRP, would be implemented in a second Trump administration.”
Public land management
There’s a narrative that another President Trump administration would drill, mine and sell our national estate. That’s probably too extreme. Trump’s administration would likely also make federal lands more accessible for recreationists, expanding roaded areas and opposing protections for critical landscapes that tend to limit multiple use. Sources cite Wyoming’s Rock Springs Resource Management Plan as an example of a Biden-administration plan that balances either conservation or development in its alternatives that is likely to be killed by an extraction-oriented Trump administration.
Under a Trump Interior Department, “I think some of the first actions will be gutting the [BLM’s] Public Lands Rule, the Rock Springs RMP, potentially allowing old-growth [timber harvest], [easing angler restrictions around] right whales, and cutting the lead bans and phase-outs,” observed a conservation leader who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Under a Harris administration, public-land management would lean heavily toward biodiversity, climate change and tribal co-management in pursuit of engineering social justice.
“I think you’d see continued expansion of solar and wild development, potentially in unfragmented sage-steppe and grassland ecosystems,” on public land, said the conservation leader. “I think you’d see additional closures of BLM and Forest Service lands for recreational shooting. But, depending on the makeup of Congress, there could be significant investments in conservation.”
Credit: Ed Arnett/TWS
Whether there might be another once-in-a-generation funding effort like that culminated in the Inflation Reduction Act and Biden-administration Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is anyone’s guess. But both those acts, while they drained the federal Treasury, invested heavily in habitat, stewardship, and public-resource infrastructure.
Well beyond public-land management philosophy, the candidates differ on the very ownership of federal land.
Both candidates have suggested one remedy for the nation’s affordable housing crisis is to sell parcels of federal land for housing development. But to public-land advocates, one of the most troubling recent trends in the West is a resurgent effort to transfer federal lands to state management.
Many western Republicans have called for wholesale transfer of federal lands in their states. While the Trump campaign has distanced itself from this resurgent Sagebrush Rebel, the GOP’s party platform in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho are clear: they would get rid of federal land in their states. And in the West, the Republican Party is squarely the party of Trump, giving these platforms added emphasis. Adding to the emergence of this issue, the Supreme Court in its next term may agree to hear a landmark case on who owns western public lands.
But federal lands would likely be developed under a Harris administration, too, though Democrats haven’t articulated or supported plans to sell federal lands in the West.
The Biden administration aggressively pursued policies that promoted renewable energy development on public land, especially large tracts in the American’s Southwest. The BLMs Western Solar Plan details a “roadmap” for renewable energy development on fragile lands, mainly in the Great Basin. While most of the Biden administration’s wind-energy plans have been for off-short coastal sites, it developed a detailed plan for terrestrial wind energy, including installations that can have the same impact on wildlife and habitat that oil-drilling rigs do.
Administrative style
Many election-watchers have wondered: Who would populate either administration’s departments, bureaus and field stations. It’s a good question, according to the governmental-affairs liaison of a conservation organization.
For voters who are vapor-locked on whether to support Trump on gun policies and market-based economics, and those who support Harris for her defense of environmental regulations and investments in climate resiliency, consider how each candidate might govern.
Instead of focusing on the titular head of each party, perhaps voters should look at who might do the granular work of governing, from the director, department head and administrative ranks. But the real impact of an administration isn’t at the top, but rather down the ranks, deep in the civil service that implements executive-branch priorities
“Most of the good work that’s done on the ground is done by career civil servants,” said another conservation leader who also asked not to be named. “Politicos come and go, but a large portion of the actual work gets done by people whose names you’ll never know. And those people down the ranks are worried about a Trump 2.0 administration, because of budget cuts and layoffs and political-patronage appointments. On the other hand, they’re worried that a Harris administration might think they have a mandate from the election to go in some pretty crazy directions” including full tribal management of public lands and all-in climate-resiliency policies on public lands.”
“I don’t think there are many traditional hunters or anglers in the Harris camp, and unless they reach out to our community, I worry that animal-rights activists, social-justice activists, and environmental extremists could take important roles,” in natural-resource agencies.
Another worry for federal employees lies in Project 2025, a briefing book prepared by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which calls forconverting potentially tens of thousands of civil service jobs to “at will” appointments. While Trump has distanced himself from the document and said it doesn’t represent his viewpoints, more than half its authors served in his first administration or campaigns.
But beyond lofty policy-level ambitions, the next administration will be defined by more granular governance decisions.
“I don’t think either campaign really knows the reduced state of our agencies,” said the CEO of another wildlife-conservation group. “We are asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do more with less every year. That agency is down 800 to 900 FTEs [full-time equivalent employees]. We have national wildlife refuges all around the country that are ‘complexed,’ meaning that a number of different refuges that might span tens of thousands of acres are being managed by a single complex manager. This at a time when the National Refuge System is increasingly important for hunting access and species management. It’s a slow-motion car crash.”
Another conservation leader notes that neither candidate, Harris and Trump, is a hunter or a conservationist. “Given that, whoever they select in their administration for Interior Secretary or Agriculture Secretary will be the true decision makers. And we generally have no idea who those people will be.”
Links to complete Outdoor Life profiles on both campaigns:
TWS members Andrea Litt, the associate editor of the Journal of Wildlife Management, and Lucas Hall, the associate editor of the Wildlife Society Bulletin, will each receive the W.L. McAtee and G.V. Burger Award for Outstanding Service as an Associate Editor at The Wildlife Society’s 2024 conference in Baltimore.
Paul Krausman, the editor in chief of the Journal of Wildlife Management (JWM), and Bret Collier, editor of the Wildlife Society Bulletin (WSB) nominated each recipient respectively.
Litt has served as associate editor for JWM since 2020. In his nomination letter for Litt, Krausman said that she is a consistent example of professionalism and hard work, having never turned down as assignment while still meeting every deadline.
Notably, Litt often takes time to work alongside authors—especially junior authors—when their manuscripts contain solid data but need written improvements to meet the standards of JWM. She holds herself—and the journal—to a high standard, ensuring that all articles are thorough and well-written, and will often recommend other outlets for submitted works when they do not make the cut.
“Andrea is a kind and helpful associate editor that has the well-being of the JWM staff and authors at heart when she works on manuscripts,” Krausman continued in his nomination letter. “She is a solid ambassador for JWM and TWS.”
Lucas Hall will receive the W.L. McAtee and G.V. Burger Award for Outstanding Service as an Associate Editor for his work with the Wildlife Society Bulletin. Courtesy of Lucas Hall
Hall has been the associate editor for the Wildlife Society Bulletin since 2021. He has also dedicated much of his own time and effort to supporting authors, conducting detailed reviews, and helping them develop their diverse manuscripts. In his nomination letter, Collier said that Hall’s manuscript recommendations are always complete and extensive, highlighting positive and negative aspects of each chosen piece.
“Luke’s investment in the Wildlife Society Bulletin is clear when one assesses the rigor and quality of manuscripts that he recommends for publication,” Collier said. “Luke’s work represents the qualities of an outstanding associate editor, and readers of the Wildlife Society Bulletin regularly benefit from his commitment.”
Litt and Hall was recognized at TWS’ 2024 Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland in October.
Researchers are attempting to sort out the blurry understanding of which animals are endemic to the Alexander Archipelago in southeastern Alaska.
Their results can help inform the management of the Tongass National Forest, which is currently conducting a management plan.
“We’re hoping that this is a timely study for the revision of the Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan,” said Antonia Androski, the collections manager for mammals at Louisiana State University’s Museum of Natural Science.
The Alexander Archipelago sits off the coast of southeastern Alaska. Most of the islands rest within the Tongass National Forest. Until recently, much of what scientists currently know about the taxonomy of mammals in the area hasn’t been updated since the early 1900s, when researchers surveyed and described the species. With over 1,000 named islands, this archipelago presents substantial ecological and evolutionary complexity.
But Androski and her colleagues wanted to summarize new studies and update this information since Tongass National Forest was preparing a new mandated Land and Resource Management Plan, which includes a draft environmental impact statement. Various studies had been conducted on the genetics of different mammal species, but all the knowledge on genetic endemism in the Alexander Archipelago has not been assembled in over a decade.
In a study published recently in the Journal of Wildlife Management, Androski, who was a PhD student at the University of New Mexico at the time, and her colleagues summarized the various studies on the genetic characteristics of mammal species in southeastern Alaska published since 2000.
Genetic conundrum
They discovered a mixed bag when it came to information and sample availability for the mammal species of southeastern Alaska. Some mammals formerly considered endemic to the archipelago weren’t that different from their mainland counterparts, while others that appeared the same as their mainland counterparts at a glance were genetically distinct. There also appeared to be signatures of past hybridization in some species.
With regards to newly discovered endemic species, the Haida ermine (Mustela haidarum) was once believed to be a species but then dropped down to a subspecies of the Beringian ermine (M. erminea) in 1951. But more recent research found that the Haida ermine was indeed a species and found on several more islands in the Alexander Archipelago than scientists initially thought.
Research also revealed that historic hybridization between Beringian ermines and the American ermine (M. richardsonii) “resulted in M. haidarum through hybrid speciation that was reinforced through island isolation,” Androski said.
To date, the Haida ermine is the only mammal endemic to the region, the authors said, and it may be divided into two subspecies: the Suemez Island ermine (M. h. seclusa) found only on that island, and the Prince of Wales Island ermine (M. h. celenda) found on their namesake island and on four islands in the nearby Haida Gwaii Archipelago in British Columbia.
Subspecies no more
The researchers also summarized how some subspecies likely don’t quite qualify as subspecies—what was formerly considered the Revillagigedo Island red-backed vole (Clethrionomys gapperi solus) and the Wrangell Island red-backed vole (C. g. wrangeli), for example, which weren’t that different from other red-backed voles (C. gapperi) found across the continent.
Another subspecies of vole, the long-tailed vole (Microtus longicaudus coronarius), was found on three islands rather than just the one that it was originally described from.
Finally, the researchers concluded that limited sample availability means that there is not yet enough information to determine whether Alexander Archipelago wolves (Canis lupus ligoni), recently rejected for federal listing, were genetically distinct from mainland wolves, or whether they were similar to nearby mainland wolves but distinct from gray wolves (Canis lupus) elsewhere on the continent.
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.
As the environment warms, polar bears are more likely to contract several pathogens than they were three decades ago. In a study published in PLOS ONE, researchers looked for antibodies for six pathogens in blood samples taken from polar bears in the Chukchi Sea from 1987-1994 and from 2008-2017. They found that five of the pathogens were more prevalent in the samples taken in the later years. These included the parasites that cause toxoplasmosis and neosporosis, the bacteria that causes rabbit fever and brucellosis, and the canine distemper virus. The team also found that exposure varied with diet and was higher in females than males. They suspect the higher risk in females is due to pregnant bears denning on land to raise cubs, where they’re exposed to more pathogens.
Removing wild pigs can help boost turkey population numbers, according to management experiments in central Alabama, where numbers of the birds have been dropping.
“We found that both detection and relative abundance of turkeys increased as we were removing these pigs,” said Matthew McDonough, a PhD student at Auburn University in Alabama.
Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) have been known to prey on eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) nests. “We know that pigs eat eggs,” McDonough said. They also might outcompete turkeys for food and scare them off in some cases.
In a study published recently in the Journal of Wildlife Management, McDonough, a master’s student at Auburn at the time, and his colleagues set up an experiment to see how pig removal might affect turkey populations in collaboration with the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Wildlife Services.
They used trail cameras in central Alabama to conduct baseline surveys of the turkey and wild pig populations in the summer of 2018. They repeated the surveys during the spring of 2019. With this data, they created a census of pig sounders as well as the minimum known pig population.
Starting in 2019, the researchers began removing pigs at three sites—quite a bit more than they originally intended due to the relatively fast reproduction rate of pigs. “We were removing pigs that were being produced after we started our study,” McDonough said.
The team treated a fourth site as a control and didn’t remove pigs at all.
In all areas, the researchers put trail cameras at established turkey feeding sites, as well as random sites. They then observed these trail cameras to see how turkeys responded to pig removal.
Do wild pigs reduce wild turkey numbers?
Once the number of pigs removed from a site was equal to the baseline estimate, the team detected turkeys twice as much as when pigs were there. Relative turkey abundance was also 1.5 times higher in the removal areas than it was at baseline levels and compared to the control site where no pigs had been removed.
But they also found that there was some difference between the sites in terms of turkey presence. For example, the control site cameras captured photos of poults, while the treatment sites didn’t have any until after pigs were being removed. McDonough said this highlights that researchers still need to understand more about what appeals to turkeys at these sites in terms of nesting, whether pigs are there or not.
Wild pigs may outcompete turkeys, and occasionally prey on nests. Credit: Matthew McDonough
This finding also reveals that turkeys may not necessarily be reproducing more in the areas where pigs have been controlled—they are just recruiting more turkeys from surrounding areas.
Overall, McDonough said that researchers don’t necessarily believe that wild pigs are the sole or driving cause of turkey decline in Alabama and the U.S. Southeast due to their long history in the area. Factors like habitat change and overharvesting by humans may also play a role, McDonough said. But this study shows that managers may be able to help boost turkey numbers by controlling pig populations in a given area.
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.
Bacteria and fungi found on bat wings could potentially help save them from white-nose syndrome. White-nose syndrome has devastated bat populations across North America. Researchers recently studied bats in Lillooet, British Columbia, where there is a biodiverse bat population but no signs of white-nose syndrome.“If there is a new frontier for preserving bat species, it will likely be found in western North America, yet we know very little about the wing microbiome of these bats,” said Jianping Xu, a professor in the Department of Biology at McMaster University in Ontario. Xu led a study in Microbiology Spectrum, where she and her colleagues captured and tested 76 bats. They identified thousands of bacteria and fungi on their wings. Over a dozen of those strains appeared to fight off the fungus responsible for white-nose syndrome. Some strains were even more effective at fighting the fungus when they were combined. The research team has administered these types of cocktails to roosts in British Columbia and Washington state in the past with promising results. “This kind of information will allow us to refine potentially region-specific probiotic cocktails and manipulate the microbiome to help the survival of bats,” Xu said.
A small vial of water collected two kilometers downstream is enough to reveal the presence of beavers in a waterway.
“It’s pretty promising that they are very easy to detect,” said Jesse Burgher, a PhD candidate at Washington State University Vancouver.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife had been translocating beavers around the state, either for conservation reasons to boost numbers in some regions or to remove problem beavers in others. But they didn’t have a good way of tracking whether beavers stayed in the places where they were translocated. VHF tracking devices attached to their tails didn’t stay on for very long, so they didn’t give a great picture of where translocated beavers were going.
Tracking collars attached to beaver tails don’t typically stay attached very long. Credit: Jesse Burgher
In a study published recently in Animal Conservation, Burgher and his colleagues turned to environmental DNA—or eDNA—techniques, to track the presence and absence of creatures in the wild.
Environmental DNA, which wildlife researchers are using in an increasing number of situations, involves taking environmental samples from soil, water or even air in some cases. Researchers then analyze these samples in the lab using DNA detection methods to determine the presence of the species they are looking for.
Can eDNA analysis find beavers?
In this case, the team used water to sample for the presence of 10 beavers that they released, split between 2020, 2021 and 2022. Before releasing VHF-tagged beavers in Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in the Washington state Cascades near Leavenworth, the researchers first took water samples downstream from the planned release sites to make sure there weren’t any beavers there already.
They sampled the water again the day after each release, the following week, and after a month at various distances from the release site, up to 2 kilometers away. They continued to take samples for two subsequent months after the first month, as well.
In almost all cases, the researchers were able to detect beavers in the water samples the day after they were released. Regardless of the time and distance from the release site, they detected beaver presence 93% of the time. “[Environmental DNA] was fairly reliable at detecting them if they were upstream,” Burgher said.
A wildlife manager collects a water sample for DNA analysis. Credit: Jonah Piovia-Scott
Given the 93% detectability by one sample alone, Burgher said that with two water samples within 3 kilometers, he would be confident that the method would be accurate for detecting beavers.
This method would be useful for a landscape-scale inventory of beaver occupancy in a region, he added.
The team also found that the quantity of DNA in samples reduced in a fairly predictable, linear fashion the further away they were taken. In the future, Burgher said this means wildlife managers might be able to use the technique to determine how far a beaver is upstream just by using a water sample.
But even the beavers that left the release sites, as revealed by the VHF tracking data, were still detectable months later. “More work is needed to understand how long beaver eDNA signals remain detectable after animals leave a stream,” Burgher said.
Managed honey bee apiaries may cause a decline in native bee diversity in the United States. While ubiquitous in the Americas, western honey bees (Apis mellifera) are native to Europe. In a study published recently in Science of the Total Environment, researchers examined how the presence of apiaries affected native bee populations under different conditions. Their analysis revealed that six of the 33 wild bee genera examined had reduced numbers in urban areas when honey bee apiaries were around. Honey bee apiaries or land development most significantly affected ground-nesting bees. But people can help boost native bee populations in cities by leaving bare ground available for nesting and planting more plants that bloom in the fall.
