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The State Of The Birds | Earth Wise

November 28, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative has published the State of the Birds 2022, an assessment of bird populations in North America. The news is not good. The report identifies 70 Tipping Point species, which are those that have lost half or more of their breeding population since 1970 and are on track to lose another half or more in the next 50 years. According to research published in Science in 2019, the United States and Canada have lost 3 billion breeding birds since 1970, which is about a quarter of the total population.

More than half of the bird species in the United States are in decline. According to the Conservation Initiative, the tipping point species in particular require proactive conservation protections to avoid becoming endangered. Species that inhabit grasslands are declining more rapidly, while waterfowl like ducks and geese are actually increasing. That increase is most likely a result of the investments in conservation funded by the hunting industry.

Those waterfowl gains demonstrate that when there are concerted efforts to protect and promote bird populations, positve changes can happen. Some say that protecting birds is not a high priority given all the other crises in the world, but what is good for birds is also good for people. For example, planting trees and other vegetation to enhance bird habitat also helps to sequester carbon, protect coastlines from storm surges, increase groundwater recharge, and reduce urban heating effects.

The loss of 3 billion birds is a major biodiversity crisis and requires action. Bird conservation benefits wildlife, people, entire ecosystems, and our planet.

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What’s Good for Birds Is Good for People and the Planet. But More Than Half of Bird Species in the U.S. Are in Decline

Photo, posted November 4, 2020, courtesy of Tom Koerner/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Why Do Woodpeckers Peck? | Earth Wise

October 21, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Most of us have heard the sound of a woodpecker drumming on a nearby tree, or unfortunately, on the walls of our house where it can be very destructive. We were often told that the birds were hunting for insects inside the wood, or perhaps trying to open up a nest. But a new study at Brown University has found evidence that woodpeckers are just additional musicians in the bird orchestra who happen to be percussionists.

The researchers studied the forebrains of birds and found characteristic gene expression specializations in songbirds. Songbirds sing to communicate for various reasons – such as staking out territory or seeking mates. The study looked at birds that are not known to sing, such as the emu, penguin, flamingo, and woodpeckers. It turns out that among these, only woodpeckers had forebrains that anatomically resembled those of songbirds. The study is the first time a neural basis has been identified for the communication activities of animals other than primates.

There are over 200 species of woodpeckers around the world and each species has its own characteristic drumming speed and rhythms. Woodpecker drumming may well have evolved through a form of vocal learning, which is the way songbirds learn to make their own melodious sounds. And like the calls of songbirds, these drumming patterns change depending on what the birds want to communicate and to whom.

So, the little downy woodpecker that is poking holes in your walls is probably not hunting for insects. It is more likely to be telling another woodpecker to get out of its territory.

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Why do woodpeckers peck? New discovery about bird brains sheds light on intriguing question

Photo, posted June 15, 2021, courtesy of Tony Oldroyd via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

visit site by the doctor who prescribed the drug. Prescription. If the drug is sold in Russia without a prescription, it is necessary to make sure that the drug will also be sold abroad without it. You can find out in advance and, for example, write a letter to a specific pharmacy abroad, or you can be reinsured and ask to make a prescription form for the drug from your doctor.

Return Of The Fin Whale | Earth Wise

August 15, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The fin whale is the second largest whale species and therefore the second largest creature on Earth. They can grow to more than 80 feet in length. From 1904 to 1976, there was massive industrial whaling in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. During that period, whalers killed about 700,000 fin whales, reducing their population by 99%. The species was nearly extinct.

In 1982, the International Whaling Commission voted to ban commercial whaling. Since that time, fin whales started to make a comeback in their historical feeding grounds.

During a nine-week expedition in the waters around the Antarctic Peninsula, researchers encountered the largest gathering of fin whales ever documented. About 150 fin whales were seen diving and lunging against the water’s surface. It was a feeding frenzy triggered by large amounts of krill in the water. The actions of the whales are known as a “whale pump” that drives the krill to the surface. Not only does it provide huge amounts of food for the whales but also for other animals, including seabirds and seals.

Forty years after the commercial whaling ban, the number of fin whales has been increasing. Large groups were observed in a 2013 survey. Aerial surveys in 2018 and 2019 recorded 100 groups of fin whales, usually composed of a just a handful of individuals. They did document eight large groups of up to 150 individuals.

Not all species of whales have rebounded so successfully since the whaling ban. The rebound in fin whale population is not only good for the whales, but for the entire ecosystem in the Southern Ocean. It is a glimmer of good news in a time of great challenges for global biodiversity and for marine life in particular.

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Once Facing Extinction, Massive Fin Whales Have Returned to Antarctic Waters

Photo, posted November 15, 2007, courtesy of Gregory Smith via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Is It Too Late To Save The Vaquita? | Earth Wise

June 6, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The vaquita porpoise, the world’s smallest marine mammal, is on the brink of extinction. Scientists estimate that just 10 or fewer vaquitas are left despite international conservation efforts. Found only in Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California, the vaquita is the most endangered marine mammal on the planet.

According to the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita, the number one threat facing vaquitas is gillnets. The porpoises get trapped in these nets and drown. Gillnets are often used illegally in the region to catch shrimp and fish, including the critically-endangered totoaba. The totoaba’s swim bladder is considered a delicacy in Asia and can fetch thousands of dollars. Despite Mexico banning both totoaba fishing and the use of gillnets in the vaquitas’ habitat, many say the bans are not always enforced.

But there is a reason to be hopeful. According to a genetic analysis led by researchers at UCLA, the critically-endangered species actually remains relatively healthy and can potentially survive if illegal fishing practices cease immediately.

In the study, which was recently published in the journal Science, the research team analyzed the genomes of 20 vaquitas between 1985 and 2017 and ran simulations to predict the species’ extinction risk over the next 50 years. The researchers concluded that if gillnet fishing ends immediately, the vaquita has a very high chance of recovery. If the practice continues, however, even moderately, the likelihood of a recovery plummets.

According to the research team, the surviving vaquitas are actively reproducing and seem healthy. But poachers’ gillnets will continue to pose an existential threat to the species until more measures are taken to protect the vaquita.

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Only 10 vaquita porpoises survive, but species may not be doomed, scientists say

Photo, posted October 18, 2008, courtesy of Paul Olson / NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Assessing Human-Caused Wildlife Mortality | Earth Wise

May 31, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Bycatch is the fishing industry term used to describe the deaths of non-target fish and ocean wildlife during the fishing process. Some bycatch species are thrown away because regulations prohibit them from being kept. Others are thrown out because they won’t fetch high enough prices. According to some estimates, global bycatch amounts to about 10% of the world’s total catch.

Approximately half of global bycatch is a result of trawling. Trawling is a method of commercial fishing that involves pulling or dragging a fishing net – called a trawl – through the water or across the seabed in hopes of catching fish. Commercial fishing companies favor towing trawl nets because large quantities of fish can be caught. But the method is destructive to the seafloor and leads to the indiscriminate catch of all sorts of species, including whales, dolphins, porpoises, sharks, seals, rays, turtles, and seabirds.

Researchers have developed a new method to assess the sustainable levels of human-caused wildlife mortality. When this method is applied to a trawl fishery in Australia, it shows that the dolphin capture is not sustainable. The study, led by scientists at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and United Arab Emirates University, modeled different levels of dolphin capture, including those reported in logbooks and those reported by independent observers. According to the findings, which were recently published in the journal Conservation Biology, even the lowest recorded dolphin capture rates are not sustainable.

The new approach is extremely adept at assessing human-caused mortality to wildlife, and can be applied to fisheries bycatch, hunting, lethal control measures, or even wind turbine collisions.

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Wasted Catch

Dolphin bycatch from fishing practices unsustainable, study finds

Photo, posted May 18, 2011, courtesy of Pete Markham via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker | Earth Wise

May 24, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The ivory-billed woodpecker was the largest woodpecker in the US. They were once relatively common, stretching from the Carolinas through the southeast and across to Texas. Their numbers started to drop sharply in the 19th century because of habitat loss and overhunting. Many were taken as valuable specimens; some were even eaten by poverty-stricken people.

The last widely accepted sighting was way back in 1944. For years, the birds were listed as critically endangered with only infrequent and entirely anecdotal reports of sightings. Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally declared the species extinct.

A multiyear field study by avian researchers from multiple institutions has recently reported that the ivory-billed woodpecker may in fact still exist in a remote swampy region of Louisiana.

The three-year effort to find the woodpecker involved scientists trudging through the remote site to observe birds and take audio recordings. Unmanned trail cameras taking time-lapse photos and a drone were used to capture images. Several members of the team report that they observed the birds. Some photographic images and videos appear to show ivory bills. Based on characteristic markings visible in some of the photos, the birds do appear to be the ivory bill and not, for example, the fairly common but similar looking pileated woodpecker.

The birds are scarce, live in a tough, swampy habitat, and actively avoid getting near people. They live high in trees and are very difficult to spot, much less get clear photographs of. From all indications, however, reports of the demise of the ivory-billed woodpecker may have been premature.

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Back from the dead? Elusive ivory-billed woodpecker not extinct, researchers say

Photo, posted May 3, 2008, courtesy of Michael McCarthy via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A War On Wolves

March 17, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

America has a long history of persecuting wolves. In 1905 the federal government tried biological warfare, infecting wolves with mange. In 1915, Congress passed a law requiring the eradication of wolves from federal land. By 1926, all the wolves in Yellowstone National Park had been poisoned, shot, or trapped. By 1945, wolves had been essentially eliminated from the American West.

All of this was driven by the fantasy that wolves were a major menace to livestock and a threat to big game.

In the 1990s, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho and the result was one of the greatest success stories in the history of wildlife management. There were multiple improvements to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Wolves as important predators are essential elements of healthy ecosystems in the American west.

For reasons difficult to fathom, the status of wolves has become political. Conservative lawmakers in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Wisconsin have essentially declared war on wolves, radically liberalizing wolf trapping and hunting regulations. In Wyoming, it is now legal to kill wolves at any time by virtually any means, including running them over with snowmobiles and incinerating pups and nursing mothers in dens. Idaho has bounties as high as $2,000 for killing wolves.

The reasons are just as bogus as ever. Livestock predation is the big claim. In 2015, 1,904 wolves shared the Rocky Mountain West with 1.6 million cattle. Wolves killed all of 148 of them.

Evidently, wolves have become identified as a liberal cause and, as such, are now the enemy of conservative politics.

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America’s New War on Wolves and Why It Must Be Stopped

Photo, posted April 6, 2016, courtesy of Yellowstone National Park via Flickr.

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Roads And Chimpanzees | Earth Wise

November 8, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The chimpanzee is a species of great ape native to tropical regions of Central and West Africa. Chimpanzees are highly social animals and can live to be over 50 years old. In fact, chimpanzees are our closest cousins. We share about 98% of our genes with chimpanzees.

According to the African Wildlife Federation, it’s estimated that at most only 300,000 chimpanzees remain in the wild today. They face a myriad of challenges, including habitat degradation and hunting.

According to new research from the University of Exeter in the U.K., roads have a negative impact on chimpanzee populations that can extend for several miles. In the study, which was recently published in the journal Conservation Letters, the researchers analyzed the impact of major and minor roads on wild western chimpanzee numbers in the eight African countries in which they live. They found that negative impacts extended an average of 10.7 miles from major roads, and 3.4 miles from minor roads. The researchers found that the density of chimpanzee populations dropped steadily from the edges of these areas to the lowest value alongside the roads. Only 4.3% of the chimpanzees’ range remains unaffected by roads.

While the study did not investigate why roads affect chimpanzee numbers, the research team did offer some clues. In addition to noise and roadkill, roads provide access to unexploited areas for industries that often reduce or remove chimpanzee habitats. Roads can also restrict chimpanzee movements, and provide easier access for hunters.

The researchers hope their findings will bring about more effective guidelines to mitigate the impact of roads on wildlife.

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Roads have far-reaching impact on chimpanzees

Photo, posted August 12, 2014, courtesy of Rod Waddington via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Livestock Expansion And Global Pandemics | Earth Wise

August 18, 2020 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The domestication of cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals as livestock for their meat, milk, and eggs was historically revolutionary. It boosted food security by giving people a readily-available means of feeding themselves as opposed to more traditional methods such as hunting and fishing.

But animal agriculture has plenty of drawbacks. The industrialization of animal agriculture has led to horrendous conditions. Animals are kept in huge quantities and packed together with little regard for their health and welfare. This approach to agriculture is simply designed to maximize production while minimizing costs.

With its chemical inputs and toxic outputs, intensive animal agriculture is also a major threat to the environment. In fact, it’s a major driver of habitat degradation and biodiversity loss all around the globe.

But it’s not just animals and the planet that pay a price. Humans have inherited several lethal pathogens from livestock over the years, including the influenza virus that likely jumped to humans from poultry.

According to a study recently published in Biological Conservation, there is a connection between the global increase in the emergence of infectious diseases and epidemics, the accelerated loss of biodiversity, and the expansion of livestock. In the study, the research team from the Institute of Evolution Sciences of Montpellier cross referenced databases on human and animal health, livestock expansion, and biodiversity loss between 1960-2019. The team found that the number of epidemics identified in humans increased in correlation with both biodiversity loss and livestock expansion.

In the era of COVID-19, it’s important to understand how global livestock expansion directly threatens both human health and the health of the planet.

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Livestock expansion is a factor in global pandemics

Photo, posted July 22, 2018, courtesy of Artem Beliakin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Beavers And The Warming Arctic | Earth Wise

August 5, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Beavers have a remarkable ability to transform landscapes. Using their sharp teeth, they fell trees and shrubs and build dams, which cause small valleys to fill with water and form new lakes. Some of these lakes measure five or ten acres in size, or even more. And beavers are very efficient builders; they often build their dams at precisely those points where can they have the greatest effect with the least effort.

Scientists studying beaver activity in the Arctic regions of Alaska have found that the changing climate is leading to a substantial increase in beaver populations and their effect on the landscape.

In 2018, researchers found that the beavers living in a 7,000 square-mile area in northwest Alaska had created 56 new lakes in just five years. Thanks to rising temperatures, more and more habitats offer the shrubs that beavers need for food and building material. In addition, the lakes, which used to freeze solid, now offer beaver-friendlier conditions. Also, beavers are not hunted as intensively as in the past.

The scientists were surprised that beavers have seized the opportunity so intensively. There is basically an exponential growth in beaver dams. This is actually a worrisome situation. Forming all these new lakes degrades ice-rich permafrost in the area. In the Kotzebue region of Alaska, the overall water area has increased by more than 8% over the past 17 years, and roughly two-thirds of that is due to beavers.

The degradation of the Arctic’s permafrost is a dangerous situation and it appears that anyone who wants to predict its future has to keep the activity of beavers in mind.

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Beavers gnawing away at the permafrost

Photo, posted June 23, 2018, courtesy of Becky Matsubara via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Reducing Polar Bear Attacks

April 8, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The increasing reduction of sea ice in the Arctic is changing the behavior of polar bears. Because they are spending more time on land, they are interacting with people much more frequently, occasionally with deadly results.

A study, published in 2017, looked at 144 years’ worth of polar bear attacks on humans in the Arctic. Between 1960 and 2009, there were a reported 47 attacks by polar bears on people – between 7 and 12 per decade. Between 2010 and 2014, as sea ice reached record lows, there were 15 attacks, a record for a four-year period. Since 2000, 88% of attacks have occurred between July and December, when sea ice is at its lowest level of the year.

Last July, a young male polar bear attacked and killed a man who was berry picking with his children. A month later, a mother polar bear attacked and killed an Inuit hunter and injured two others. This was the first known fatal attack by a mother polar bear.

As a result, Inuit communities in the Nunavut region are asking for higher legal polar bear harvest quotas, arguing that bear populations have increased to a dangerous level.

These recent human fatalities have also provided an impetus for developing new non-lethal conflict-resolution tools than can be used in northern communities before more people as well as bears are killed.

There are now polar bear patrol teams tasked with driving bears away from settlements. There is a bear hotline and electric fencing around sled dog compounds.

The changing face of the Arctic is creating growing stress on the polar bear population and on the people who make their home in that region.

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As Polar Bear Attacks Increase in Warming Arctic, a Search for Solutions

Photo, posted September 28, 2015, courtesy of Anita Ritenour via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Japan And Whaling

January 10, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The commercial hunting of whales nearly drove the giant mammals to extinction. By the 1960s, as hunting technologies improved and ships began to resemble floating factories, it became clear that whaling could not continue unchecked.

But despite all this, commercial whaling was never actually banned. Instead, in 1986, members of the International Whaling Committee (IWC) agreed to a whaling moratorium in order to allow whale stocks to recover. Pro-whaling nations like Japan, Iceland, and Norway expected the moratorium to be temporary until the whales stocks recovered, and a consensus on catch quotas could be established. But the temporary moratorium became a quasi-permanent ban, much to the delight of conservationists and to the dismay of whaling nations.

As a result, Japan recently announced it is leaving the international agreement and plans to resume commercial whaling. The agreement though never really stopped Japanese whaling in the first place, because it allowed the country to kill whales for scientific research. Japan has had an annual Antarctic catch quota of 333 minke whales, producing notoriously little in terms of whale science while producing lots of whale meat. As part of its withdrawal from the IWC, Japan will cease its Antarctic hunts and limit whalers to its own waters. Commercial Japanese whaling will resume in July.

Once popular in Japan, whale meat consumption has plummeted, falling 98% between 1962 and 2016. The industry employs fewer than 1,000 people and is dependent on government subsidies.

Many governments and conservationist groups condemned Japan’s withdrawal, declaring the move out of step with the international community. They argue that, rather than hunting whales, urgent action is needed to conserve marine ecosystems.

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