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Recovering Condors | Earth Wise

August 12, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The California condor is the largest North American land bird. Its wingspan is nearly 10 feet and its weight of up to 26 pounds nearly equals that of the trumpet swan, the heaviest native North American bird. California condors can live up to 60 years, making them among the world’s longest-living birds as well. But California condors became extinct in the wild in 1987.

Lead poisoning is the primary threat to condors. The birds are scavengers and feeding on the carcasses of dead animals that contain fragments of lead rifle ammunition is responsible for half of all condor deaths.

Condors historically occupied California’s Sierra Nevada mountains and were known to nest in the cavities of giant sequoia trees. By 1982, the wild population was reduced to just 22 birds, and all of those were eventually trapped and brought into captivity to prevent extinction of the species.

A captive breeding program was undertaken at the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park. With the success of that program, in 1992 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began releasing condors back into the wild in the mountains of Los Padres National Forest in Southern California. That flock has grown to about 100 birds through both wild reproduction and additional release of captive-bred birds.

The Southern California flock continues to expand its range with birds in 8 California counties and even in Arizona, Utah, and Baja California in Mexico. The total wild population of condors is now estimated to be about 340 birds. Recently, condors have been spotted in Sequoia National Park, a part of its historic range where the birds have been absent for nearly 50 years.

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California Condors Spotted in Sequoia National Park, First Time in Nearly Half a Century

Photo, posted May 20, 2005, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Monitoring Wildlife For Warning Signs of the Next Pandemic | Earth Wise

July 29, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to the World Health Organization, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 likely originated in wild bats near Wuhan, China, and may have been passed to a second animal species before infecting people. Since then, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, more than 13 million people around the world have been infected by COVID-19 and about 600,000 have died.

But despite the ever-present threat of a new virus sparking the next pandemic, there is currently no global system to screen for viruses in wild animals that could eventually spill over to humans.

In an article recently published in the journal Science, a group of scientists is calling for the creation of a decentralized global system of wildlife surveillance. The establishment of this global system could help identify viruses in wild animals that have the potential to infect and sicken people before another global disease outbreak begins.

According to the scientists, coronaviruses alone have caused outbreaks in humans three times in the last 20 years: SARS (or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), MERS (or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), and COVID-19.

While it’s impossible to know today how often viruses jump from animals to humans, human activity is making such spillover events more and more likely. For instance, many continue to develop wild animal habitat to build new homes or businesses. Some catch wild animals and re-sell them either for consumption or as exotic pets. Parts from these wild animals are often shipped around the world as trinkets or as ingredients for traditional medicines.

A global system that could identify potentially harmful viruses before they jump to humans is technologically feasible, affordable, and clearly necessary.

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COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

Global wildlife surveillance could provide early warning for next pandemic

Photo, posted January 15, 2008, courtesy of Doug Beckers via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Birdseed And Weeds | Earth Wise

April 16, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

More than 55 million adult Americans feed wild birds and along the way spend more than three billion dollars a year on bird food as well as nearly a billion on bird feeders, bird baths, bird houses and other bird feeding accessories. Feeding birds is a very popular hobby in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

Researchers at the University of Missouri in Columbia Missouri investigated the content of 98 commercially available bird feed mixes. They uncovered several significant things.

The various mixes contained seeds from 29 weed species and almost all of the mixes contained seeds for pigweed, which can be a significant threat to agriculture. One in ten of the mixes contained Palmer amaranth or waterhemp seeds that demonstrated a resistance to glyphosphate. Other common weed species found in many of the mixes were kochia, common ragweed, foxtail species, and wild buckweed.

The overall collection of seed mixes contained an average of 363 amaranthus seeds in each kilogram of bird feed. Based on this, it is possible that 105 million amaranthus seeds are transported in bird feed mixes each year.

According to the researchers, it is difficult to estimate the exact role that commercial bird seed plays in spreading troublesome weed species into new regions, but it is clear that the widespread use of these seed mixes is a contributing factor to the spread of weeds.

The researchers recommend careful weed management in crop fields designated for bird feed, as well as sieving during packaging to reduce weed seed contamination. They also noted that regulatory measures adopted in Europe to limit weed seed content in bird seed have proven to be effective.

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Examination of commercially available bird feed for weed seed contaminants

Photo, posted August 18, 2013, courtesy of Emma Craig via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Exotic Pets Can Become Problems

August 26, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Each year, millions of exotic animals are sold as pets around the world. The term “exotic” lacks a set definition but is generally used to refer to an animal that’s wild or more unusual than standard pets, like cats and dogs.

The exotic pet trade is a multi-billion dollar industry, involving tens of millions of individual animals from thousands of species, including reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, and mammals.

Some of the exotic pet trade is legal, but a lot of it isn’t. Many animals are illegally captured from the wild to meet the global demand for exotic pets.

People often purchase exotic animals without completely understanding the consequences. Some exotic pets, for example, can live nearly twice as long as the average dog. Caring for exotic pets can be both expensive and risky, since they are largely undomesticated (and therefore can have unpredictable behavior).

As a result, it’s not uncommon for owners to release exotic pets intentionally. When this happens, the consequences can be catastrophic. Sometimes the animal dies from starvation or predation, but in other instances, the animal proliferates and becomes an invasive species.

Invasive species are the second largest driver of biodiversity loss worldwide, and they cost the U.S. $120 billion a year.

According to an academic review recently published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the exotic pet trade is one of the primary causes of the spread of invasive species and has fueled the establishment of hundreds of them. Tegus, Burmese pythons, and red lionfish are examples of pets-turned-pests.

The best way to combat this trend is through education, detection, and rapid response.

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Why you should never release exotic pets into the wild

Photo, posted September 19, 2010, courtesy of Mike Baird via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Bees And Plastic

July 17, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Wild bees in Argentina have recently been found to be constructing nests entirely made of flimsy plastic material left on farms and scientists don’t know why.

In 2017 and 2018, researchers at Argentina’s National Agricultural Technology Institute built wooden, artificial nests for wild bees. These bee species burrow into nests to individually lay larvae rather than having a large hive with queens and workers. The artificial nests provide hollow openings that bees generally fill with cut leaves, twigs, and mud.

Sixty-three wooden nests were constructed and three were found lined entirely with plastic. The bees carefully cut bits of plastic in the shape and size of fingernails and arranged them in an overlapping pattern in their nests. The plastic seems to have come from plastic bags or films, which have a similar texture to the leaves bees ordinarily use to line their nests. And, in fact, leaves were readily available to the bees making use of plastic.

This is the first time that bees have been seen making nests entirely out of plastic, but for years scientists have known bees were incorporating plastic into their building materials. Research is needed to determine the potential impact plastic might have on bees, but the nest building shows that bees are highly adaptive to changing environments.

Plastic often forms a threat to wildlife in the form of microplastics that can be consumed. But there is no evidence that bees are consuming plastic. Some researchers have speculated that the plastic in bees’ nests may form a barrier against common nest issues like mold and parasites.

At this point, it is not clear whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that some bees are choosing plastic over natural materials, but it is certainly interesting.

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Wild bees are building their homes from plastic—and scientists aren’t sure why

Photo, posted December 12, 2014, courtesy of Judy Gallagher via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Extreme Botany

December 17, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The threat of extinction of many animal species is something that makes headlines. But there are also thousands of critically endangered plants in the world and that situation has not generated nearly the same sense of urgency. Some biologists have used the term “plant blindness” to describe humanity’s inability to appreciate the ecological and economic importance of plants.

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Bring The Wild Back Into Farmlands

December 4, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A recent study published in Science looks at the effects of maintaining at least a little bit of the wild on working lands including farmland, rangeland and forests. The study concludes that doing so may be a key to preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change.

Saving Wheat

July 3, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Rising temperatures, drought, pests and diseases are moving north into the U.S. heartland and are increasingly posing a threat to the wheat crop. An insect called the Hessian fly is reducing crop yields by 10% a year in the Midwest. Average temperatures in the Midwest have risen by 2 degrees since 2000, and periods of time between rainfalls is lengthening. Conditions in some areas of the Midwest are getting to be more like those in the Middle East.

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Pollinators With Backbones

May 25, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There is a great deal of concern about the status of pollinators like bees and butterflies. They play a crucial role for many important food crops. But it turns out that lizards, mice, bats and other vertebrates are important pollinators too.

Endangered Orangutans

March 20, 2018 By EarthWise 1 Comment

Orangutans are some of the planet’s most intelligent animals. In fact, orangutans and human beings share 97% of their DNA sequence. Orangutans can only be found in the wild in Southeast Asia on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the island of Borneo, which is a landmass shared by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. And while all orangutans are endangered, the critically-endangered Bornean orangutans are under exceptional duress.

Saving The Siberian Tiger

March 13, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The northeastern part of China, wedged between North Korea to the south and Russia to the northeast, is home to two highly endangered big cats: the Siberian tiger and the Amur leopard. Siberian tigers, which can weigh over 600 pounds and grow to more than 10 feet in length, now number only about 500 in the wild, mostly in Russia. Amur leopards, weighing more than 100 pounds and growing to more than four feet in length, number only about 80 in the wild. While both species are right on the edge of extinction, both are slowly rebounding.

Climate Change Threatens the U.S. Military

February 20, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study from the Pentagon, nearly half of United States military sites are threatened by wild weather linked to climate change. The U.S. Department of Defense states that drought, wind, and flooding that occur due to reasons other than storms topped the list of natural disasters that endanger 1,700 military sites around the world – everything from outposts to large bases.

A New Orangutan Species

November 29, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Orangutans are some of the planet’s most intelligent animals. In fact, orangutans and human beings share 97% of their DNA sequence. Orangutans can only be found in the wild on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the island of Borneo, which is a land mass shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

A Big Problem For The Giant Panda

November 10, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The giant panda, a national icon of China, has been the focus of an intensive, high-profile conservation campaign since the 1970s. In an update to the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species last year, the giant panda had its designation changed from “endangered” to “vulnerable” following a nationwide census that revealed its population was improving. But it appears as though this conservation success may be short-lived.

Elephant Tourism

September 6, 2017 By EarthWise

Elephant tourism is an activity through which tourists can observe and interact with the stately mammals. A quick online search reveals all sorts of elephant pictures and selfies – patting, washing, riding, and the like. But this popularity comes at a great cost to elephants.

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Wildlife Rediscoveries

March 30, 2017 By EarthWise

We recently brought you the rediscovery story of cave squeakers. These tiny frogs, known for their high-pitched whistling calls, were native to the mountainous region of eastern Zimbabwe but had not been seen since 1962. That all changed in late 2016, when researchers found four cave squeakers, confirming that after 58 years the species was not extinct. Cave squeakers remain critically endangered according to the IUCN’s Red List of Endangered Species.

Restoring The Taste Of Tomatoes

March 1, 2017 By EarthWise

Over the years, tomatoes have been selectively bred for qualities such as size and firmness for shipping purposes and appearance, but selection for flavor has generally been overlooked. Many of us find that the tomatoes we buy in the grocery store just don’t taste like they used to. In fact, often they don’t taste like much of anything. Comparing them to the delicious local-grown varieties we can find during the summer provides evidence for this conclusion.