Tag Archives: Arizona Wildlife

Status and trends of wildlife.

Making Friends With Crows

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GR:  Here’s an excellent DIY post for all you biophiliacs.  We have ravens (also corvids) around Coldwater Farm, but they will probably respond just as the crows do.

Feeding and watching wildlife can be worthwhile, but can lead to problems. Here are two links to the laws and advice concerning wildlife in Arizona:  FAQ (covers laws),   Living With Wildlife (covers individual species).

Crow“It’s a lot of fun to feel like you have wild friends, and feeding birds is a great way to connect with nature.  I’ve been asked many times how to make friends with local corvids, crows in particular.  While this post is mostly aimed at American crows in North America, it’s applicable to most corvids.  However, please be aware of local laws regarding feeding birds.

“The best way to get on a crow’s good side is through their stomach.  Unsalted peanuts in-shell work wonders (i.e. crow crack).  The best thing you can do is put out peanuts consistently and don’t look directly at the birds when you do so (at least initially).  Be conspicuous about you being the one to drop the food, but do not throw the food toward the crows or look at them initially, but do make sure they are in the area.  Then, go back inside.  It may take them no time at all to come to your food, or it may take them a while before they trust it.  Crows are very neophobic and suspicious, and even if it’s a food they love, they will be careful simply because it came from a human.  (I suspect if you live in an area with high traffic or restaurants nearby, they will take less time to come to your offering than if you live in a quiet, low-traffic suburban area.)”  From:  The Corvid Blog By Jennifer Campbell-Smith

Blogging for the Earth

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Blogging about Nature:  Introducing Garry Rogers on the League of Bloggers for a Better World

GarryRogers

Garry Rogers

My blog posts are about nature, about wildlife and its habitat (posts). They are expressions of my concerns for natural conditions and events.

During the past year, 2015, lethal heat waves and storms, decline of the great iconic species of elephants, lions, and rhinos, whittling away of the tropical rain forests, and massive clouds of air and water pollution made it clear that humanity is changing the Earth.

More than just the great species, we are eliminating many other species hundreds or perhaps thousands of times more quickly than ever achieved by meteorites, volcanic eruptions, or natural climate change.

Total extinction of a species usually happens after decades of decline.  In 2014, the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations carried out an exhaustive analysis of more than 10,000 wildlife studies (download the report).  They wanted to know how wild plants and animals were holding up against human activities. They learned that from 1970 to 2014, just 44 years, the total number of animals on Earth declined by more than 50%!  Rates of decline vary across species groups.  Birds, for instance declined by 40%.  Other groups, especially those dependent on freshwater, have declined by 70%.

What evolution took billions of years to produce, we humans are destroying in a tick of geologic time.  We are changing the planet so quickly, that not by migration, and certainly not by natural selection, can plants and animals cope. If we continue our activities at their current rate, in only a few centuries, we will turn the Earth into a factory farm of cities, farms, feedlots, and roads with only the tiniest fraction of our native creatures surviving on the fringes.

I often write brief comments without listing my sources. I am always happy to respond to requests for explanations.

 

How climate change is spawning a new view of conservation

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“Conservation has long been about protecting communities of plants and animals where they are. But climate change is leading to a nascent form of conservation that embraces change and seeks to provide a thriving stage on which it can happen.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.csmonitor.com

GR:  This attempt to preserve nature by preserving and linking topographic sites illustrates the common failure of ideas and programs to adapt to changing conditions.  The specific flaw here is that landforms have associated microclimates that are subsets of general climate.  With global warming and general climate change, the microclimates change.  Species assemblages that fit the microclimates must also change.  Unfortunately, the current, anthropogenic, change is too rapid for the migrations and adaptations required to keep the microclimates fully populated.  Thus, species decline and extinction becomes more frequent.

The Nature Conservancy should abandon this program and redirect efforts into cutting fossil-fuel emissions.  Current (2015) national pledges fall far short of the cuts required to save nature.  Any individual or organization concerned with conserving nature should try to give a boost to the cuts.

Lawsuit Filed to Protect Canada Lynx from Trapping Deaths, Injuries in Maine

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Government natural resource managers indeed do a haphazard job even when they aren’t purposefully mismanaging for the benefit of special interests.

Exposing the Big Game's avatarExposing the Big Game

https://awionline.org/content/lawsuit-filed-protect-canada-lynx-trapping-deaths-injuries-maine

Monday, August 17, 2015

Lawsuit Filed to Protect Canada Lynx from Trapping Deaths, Injuries in Maine . Photo by Carl Robidoux.AUGUSTA, ME—Wildlife conservation and animal welfare organizations filed a lawsuit today against the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) for allowing trappers in Maine to seriously injure and kill Canada lynx, a federally protected cat. Plaintiffs include the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Wildlife Alliance of Maine (WAM).

Each year Maine trappers targeting coyotes, foxes, mink and other furbearing wildlife seriously injure and kill Canada lynx, one of the rarest wild cats in the United States. Because lynx are protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the state cannot authorize such “incidental” harm to lynx without an incidental take permit issued by the USFWS. Today’s lawsuit challenges the USFWS’ permit issued to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife last year, which was intended to cover the state’s trapping programs.

“I’m outraged that endangered lynx continue…

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Wildlife groups say 41 tigers have died in India in seven months

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Conservationists say India is not doing enough to protect tigers.  Six months after India boasted that its tiger population was growing fast, conservationists on Wednesday said 41 big…    Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.theguardian.com

GR:  The prospects for wild tigers in India are not good.  The human population is the only one that is growing.  India was once the nation that was most concerned with curbing human population growth.  But during the period from 1960 to today, the country’s population grew from 400 million to over one billion.  What happened?  Were the programs ineffective, or did they not receive enough support?

Hothouse Mass Casualties Strike Egypt, Heatwave Hospitalizes Thousands in Japan

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#Global Warming–#Weather Extremes

Back in May, official temperatures soared to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) as humidity levels spiked in Cairo, Egypt. The early high heat and humidity sparked anxiety among residents worrying over the coming summer. Public complaints about official temperatures being lower than actual measures were widespread among a populace vulnerable to heat exposure in a notoriously hot region of the world suffering the ongoing impacts of human-forced warming. The below video captures some of the sentiment of a few months ago, when concern that record global temperatures in the range of 1 degree Celsius above 1880s averages might result in harm to Egypt’s populace was widespread and growing.”   Sourced through Scoop.it from: robertscribbler.com GR:  This summer’s deaths are sad harbingers of escalating weather extremes as the planet warms and ocean evaporation increases.  Urban heat islands intensify the extremes.  This bad for humans, pets, and factory-farmed animals, but for now, wild animals outside cities will not suffer as much.  Of course, other human impacts are killing wild animals and plants.  Increased transpiration during heat waves will hurry our innocent fellow creatures along the road to extinction.

Upcoming Watchable Wildlife Events by the Arizona Game and Fish Department

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Elk Workshop (August)
Arizona Game and Fish and Mormon Lake Lodge will host the elk workshop at Mormon Lake Lodge. Come learn more about Arizona’s largest wildlife species. Free to the public. Flagstaff, Arizona. For more information, contact the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Flagstaff regional office at (928) 774-5045 or visit the Region II Facebook page at Arizona Game and Fish Flagstaff Region.  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.azgfd.gov

GR:  Provided free by the Arizona Game and Fish Department–these are the BEST opportunities to view Arizona wildlife.  If you appreciate the Department’s efforts and want to give support, you can buy a hunting license.  License fees support the Department.  You could even pay the fee for a chance to be drawn to hunt one of Arizona’s large species, and if you win, you can feel the satisfaction that comes from knowing that you might have saved an animal from being shot and killed.

See on Scoop.it – GarryRogers NatCon News

Arizona’s new water rush raising tensions

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BOWIE — Farmers from California and Arizona are pushing to drill wells and pump unregulated water in Cochise County, triggering intense rivalries and calls for a crackdown.

Some farmers from the drought-parched, increasingly regulated Central Valley of California want to plant pistachios and other crops here, largely to feed China’s growing demand for tree nuts. But others who are already here and pumping water want the state to limit new irrigation.  Sourced through Scoop.it from: azdailysun.com

GR:  Everyone acknowledges that groundwater is a limited resource that will all be gone one day, but no one acknowledges that the riparian habitats along streams and springs fed by groundwater have either already disappeared or will disappear over the next few years. Such blind ambition is destroying our wildlife.  Arizona farmers, “Wealth isn’t just bank balances, it’s also the beauty of our surroundings.”