Category Archives: arizona-wildlife

California drought may exacerbate wildlife-human encounters – Sacramento Bee

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The scarcity of food in the wild has been blamed for unusual animal activity during California’s drought including a recent bear attack, mountain lion sightings and an uptick in orphaned animals.  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.sacbee.com

GR:  We are seeing more deer and javelina at Coldwater Farm.  A general drought and a local groundwater decline are probably responsible.  Our ponds are shrinking every year now, and have new stains this year.  If the upstream town and farm keep pumping the water and adding wastes, the refuge we offer will eventually be lost.

Lobster population is shifting north; ocean warming blamed

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In 2013, the number of adult lobsters in New England south of Cape Cod slid to about 10 million, just one-fifth the total in the late 1990s, according to a report issued this month by regulators. The lobster catch in the region sank to about 3.3 million pounds in 2013, from a peak of about 22 million in 1997.

“The declines are “largely in response to adverse environmental conditions, including increasing water temperatures over the last 15 years,” along with continued fishing, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said in a summary of the report.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: news.yahoo.com

Toxic threat of cyanobacteria may be growing worldwide

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This is a serious threat to wildlife.

Bob Berwyn's avatarSummit County Citizens Voice

Study calls for better monitoring, more warnings

Staff Report

FRISCO — Dammed rivers, global warming and increased agricultural runoff all contribute to the growing threat of toxic cyanobacteria, scientists said after taking a far-reaching look at the issue of blue-green algae blooms in fresh water.

The study, conducted by researchers with Oregon State University and the University of North Carolina, found that the threat is poorly monitored and represents an under-appreciated risk to recreational and drinking water quality in the United States. More testing and monitoring is needed to track potential threats to human health, the scientists concluded.

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Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole Toward a Second Great Dying? World Ocean Shows a Face Now Shadowed With the Early Signs of Extinction.

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The last time Earth experienced a Great Dying was during a dangerous transition from glaciation and to hothouse. We’re doing the same thing by burning fossil fuels today. And if we are sensitive to the lessons of our geological past, we’ll put a stop to it soon. Or else doesn’t even begin to characterize this necessary, moral choice.

The Great Dying of 200 million years ago began, as it does today, with a great burning and release of ancient crabon. The Siberian flood basalts erupted. Spilling lava over ancient coal beds, they dumped carbon into the air at a rate of around 1-2 billion tons per year. Greenhouse gasses built in the atmosphere and the world warmed. Glacier melt and episodes of increasingly violent rainfall over the single land mass — Pangaea — generated an ocean in which large volumes of fresh water pooled at the top. Because fresh water is less dense than salt water, it floats at the surface — creating a layer that is resistant to mixing with water at other levels.  Sourced through Scoop.it from: robertscribbler.com

GR:  Excellent post by Robert Scribbler comparing today’s mass extinction with the great Permian-Triassic episode 200 million years ago.  That one eliminated more than 99% of all life on Earth.  Recovery was slow; on land, ecosystems took 30M years to recover. Today, fossil fuel burning is quickly taking us toward the same conditions that prevailed over life during the great Permian-Triassic event.

Study quantifies natural gas development impacts on mule deer

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A new study by Colorado State University and Colorado Parks and Wildlife found that natural gas development could be adversely impacting large areas of critical winter range for mule deer.  Source: phys.org

GR:  So, if we have the proof (from the study), how long will it take to stop  development of natural gas in the mule deer winter range?

Will Yellowstone be safer if this bear is killed?

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With over half of all animals on Earth gone now, it’s time to carefully consider every act that will reduce them further. The time when casual killing of animals for human convenience had no impact on the vast numbers of wild creatures out there is long past.

Exposing the Big Game's avatarExposing the Big Game

http://www.cougarfund.org/will-yellowstone-be-safer-if-this-bear-is-killed/

Agonizing, there is no other word to describe the decisions that must be made at the highest level in Yellowstone National Park. Authorities are doing everything they can to be sure they correctly identify the bear that killed a hiker. Superintendent Dan Wenk has already said the female grizzly trapped in the area where Lance Crosby’s body was found will be euthanized if there is irrefutable evidence that she is the culprit. Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Mr. Crosby and also to the dedicated park staff who responded to the scene and must now investigate and make those hard decisions. There are so many layers of consideration-it is never simple. However, there is one question that we would like to be part of the deliberations and that is for the authorities to think very deeply about what they hope to achieve as far as public perception if they…

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Has the Amazon rainforest been saved, or should I still worry?

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Deforestation

Lucy Siegle:  “Peak deforestation angst didn’t actually coincide with peak deforestation. While the wearing of “Save the Rainforest” T-shirts was de rigueur in the late 80s, the worst destruction came in 2004, a year when we (as in humankind) chopped down 27,000km2 of Amazon rainforest. By that point there wasn’t much left to play with: the Brazilian Amazon region (the largest continuous tropical rainforest in the world) had shrunk from four million kilometres (close to half the size of continental Europe) to just 18% of that size.

“Brazil is still home to 40% of global rainforest, despite so much of it being destroyed to supply a range of products from toothpaste and face creams (tallow from cattle) to leather for football boots. It was in the 80s that agronomists first recognised that agricultural markets were behind runaway deforestation. In 2009, the Greenpeace report Slaughter of the Amazon showed the international leather and beef trades as the primary drivers of deforestation in the region.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.theguardian.com

Deforestation and Human Population

GR:  Deforestation continues.  As long as the human population grows, the destruction of natural vegetation is inevitable.  This article describes some of the steps that can mitigate the impacts.  A glance at the Groene Woud photo will tell you that the mitigation is no substitute for native vegetation. I’ve even seen arguments that the replacement of native vegetation with human-built environments isn’t such a disaster, because cities themselves provide habitat for wild animals.  That’s true, but the habitat is not the one that fits the adaptations of most of the species of a region. Native plants and plant communities support native animals that, in turn, thin, pollinate, and connect native plants.  From experience, I can report that the vegetation of cities, roadsides, and power transmission corridors are composed primarily of nonnative species.  Replacing natural plant communities with urban plant communities reduces biodiversity and productivity.

Wildlife Weekly Wrap-Up

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Idaho Says It Won’t Kill Wolves in the Frank Church this Winter: Yesterday, the Forest Service announced that Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) will not engage in any wolf killing in the federally-protected Frank Church-River of No Return…  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.defendersblog.org

Energy-saving street lights might be bad news for bugs

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Wildlife managers and conservationists are often faced with dilemmas in which they are forced to choose the less bad of two bad choices. For example, some might argue that limited trophy hunting is preferable to habitat loss, if it encourages landowners to maintain ecosystems in their natural state (or something close to it). Here’s another dilemma: is it better to swap older street lights for LED lamps, even if the new energy-saving bulbs are detrimental for declining wildlife? These are not easy decisions to make, but in order to make them it helps to know exactly what the stakes are.  Sourced through Scoop.it from: conservationmagazine.org

GR:  No one stops to think about the possible nature impacts of new technology.  And even when managers know about impacts and establish mitigation procedures, they rarely perform follow-up measurements to test mitigation success.