"New findings further reinforce what many of us suburbanites already know-- that black bears can adjust from living in more natural areas to living in areas with some human development"................"Factors such as the distribution of bears in an area and the availability of open territories may affect their willingness to settle near humans"..............."Directly connected to territory considerations is a cost-benefit analysis that each Bear makes regarding the trade off of obtaining high-calorie human food(garbage, bird seed, etc) versus the risk of a deadly encounter with humans"......"Black Bears are increasing their nocturnal activity in response to development and other human activities, such as hiking, biking and farming"..........."Understanding how, when and why these nocturnal shifts occur can help prevent wildlife-human conflict and keep both people and animals safe"..........."For example, most human-bear conflict arises from people inadvertently making calorie-rich foods, like bird seed, garbage and pet food, available to bears"..............."Knowing that bears seek out these foods more often at night and in areas with certain housing densities can help managers educate people in avoiding conflict"............"People who are scared of bears may be comforted to know that most of the time, black bears are just as scared of them"

https://phys.org/news/2019-07-black-life-humans-midnight-oil.html

JULY 31, 2019

Black bears adapt to life near humans by burning the midnight oil

by Kathy Zeller,

Amid reports that human activities are pushing many wild species to the edge of extinction, it's easy to miss the fact that some animal populations are expanding. Across North America, a number of species that were reduced by overhunting and loss of forested habitat in the 1800s are rebounding. This sometimes results in wildlife living near populated areas.

In a recent study, my colleagues and Ianalyzed one of these comeback species: American black bears (Ursus americanus). In the early 1900s, black bears were relegated to more wild parts of North America. Today, thanks to regulated hunting and forest regrowth, they have returned to about 75% of their historic North American range. An estimated 1 million black bears now roam from Mexico to Canada and Alaska.

In Massachusetts, where we worked, black bears have expanded from a small isolated population in the Berkshire Mountains to an estimated 4,500 bears across the state. Massachusetts is the third-most densely populated state in the nation, and human development is expanding, sometimes putting bears and people in close proximity to one another.

Other scholars have found that bears shift their behavior from natural areas to human-dominated ones in years when natural foods are scarce. My co-authors and I wanted to know how bears in Massachusetts were behaving around people and human activity. We found that in spring and fall, bears were altering their natural daily rhythms to move through human-developed areas at night. Before hibernation in the fall, bears enter a metabolic state called hyperphagia—literally, excessive eating—in which they consume 15,000 to 20,000 calories a day. That's roughly equivalent to eight large cheese pizzas or five gallons of chocolate ice cream.

During hibernation bears can lose up to one-third of their body weight. And after they emerge from their dens in springtime, natural foods are typically scarce until plants start to leaf out and flower.

Black bears' energy requirements during these phases can drive their behavior. We examined data from 76 black bear GPS collars across central and western Massachusetts. As expected, the bears we tracked moved around more in daytime than at night, and avoided humans and developed areas during the day. However, we also found that in spring and fall, when the bears had increased caloric demands, they altered their natural daily rhythms to move through human-developed areas at night.

Our findings and existing knowledge about black bears' seasonal energetic demands indicate that bears may be operating in a "landscape of fear"—a conceptual mode lthat ecologists originally developed in studies of prey species such as elk. Viewed through this framework, an individual animal's behavior is the result of a cost-benefit analysis that trades off food reward against risk. For black bears, the reward is high-calorie supplemental food and the risk is encounters with humans.

Along with Rhode Island, New Jersey is our most densely

populated human state,,,,,,,,,,,,nonetheless, Black Bears over the

past 25 years have spread out and colonized virtually the entire

land mass

In spring when natural foods are scarce, and in fall when bears need to gain weight for hibernation, the attraction of food rewards outweighs the associated risks. Still, bears try to mitigate this risk as much as possible by altering their natural activity patterns to visit developed areas at night, when human activity is lowest.

In summer, when natural foods are more abundant and bears are least metabolically stressed, we did not observe these behavioral changes. Bears avoided developed areas at all times of day.

The story was more nuanced when we considered individual bears. We developed movement models for each of our collared bears, and found that their responses to some landscape features varied.

For example, we found some bears avoided human development less than others. These bears lived in more populated areas, with densities in their territories of at least 190 houses per square mile (75 houses per square kilometer). Planners classify such areas as country suburbs or early suburbanization.

Our findings indicate that black bears can adjust from living in more natural areas to living in areas with some human development. Factors such as the distribution of bears in an area and the availability of open territories may affect their willingness to settle near humans.

Getting along with the neighbors

Our observation of black bears acclimating to developed areas and becoming more nocturnal echoes a wider trend observed among wildlife worldwide. Wild animals are increasing their nocturnal activity in response to development and other human activities, such as hiking, biking and farming. Understanding how, when and why these nocturnal shifts occur can help prevent wildlife-human conflict and keep both people and animals safe.

For example, most human-bear conflict arises from people inadvertently making calorie-rich foods, like bird seed, garbage and pet food, available to bears. Knowing that bears seek out these foods more often at night and in areas with certain housing densities can help managers educate people in avoiding conflict. And people who are scared of bears may be comforted to know that most of the time, black bears are just as scared of them.

"Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. Schoolcraft was one of the first white travelers to make detailed notes of a journey through the Ozarks at the moment of very early settlement".........."The Ozarks were still nominally the hunting grounds of the Osage Indians; the Delaware had migrated from the east into the region, and only a few white hunters were living with their families in the interior"............." Schoolcraft and a companion set out from Potosi, Missouri, a lead-mining village of 70 buildings, with one pack-horse in November of 1818"............."They walked down to Arkansas, up to the Springfield area and then back to Potosi, crossing the Black River in Wayne County"..........."The two men walked 900 miles in 90 days"..........."Schoolcraft diligently recorded his observations about natural communities and their plants, trees and wildlife, streams, geology, the Osage, and early settlers"..........."He often describes oak woodland and forest, and forests of pine, as well as frequent savanna, glade, and prairie"..........." Here is his description of the area near James River, around what became Springfield, written on Monday Jan. 4, 1819: “The prairies, which commence at the distance of a mile west of this river, are the most extensive, rich, and beautiful, of any which I have ever seen west of the Mississippi river"............."They are covered by a coarse wild grass, which attains so great a height that it completely hides a man on horseback in riding through it"..........."The deer and elk abound in this quarter, and the buffalo is occasionally seen in droves upon the prairies, and in the open highland woods"............."Along the margin of the river, and to a width of from one to two miles each way, is found a vigorous growth of forest trees, some of which attain an almost incredible size"

http://www.watersheds.org/history/schoolcraft2.htm

 Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was one of the first white travelers to make detailed notes of a journey through the Ozarks at the moment of very early settlement.

 He was an explorer, geologist, geographer and ethnologist who surveyed large sections of the midwest and discovered the source of the Mississippi River. During 1818 and 1819, Schoolcraft explored Missouri and Arkansas from Potosi, Missouri to what is now Springfield, Missouri. This is the journal of his trip and the first written account of an exploration of the Ozarks. The book was originally published in 1821.

Prior to settlement(circa 1800), the Ozarks was an admix of both open woodland
and prairie, home to Bison, Wolves, Pumas, deer, beaver, turkeys and a wide
array of other mammals

The Ozarks were still nominally the hunting grounds of the Osage; the Delaware had migrated from the east into the region, and only a few white hunters were living with their families in the interior. Schoolcraft and a companion set out from Potosi, Missouri, a lead-mining village of 70 buildings, with one pack-horse in November of 1818. They walked down to Arkansas, up to the Springfield area and then back to Potosi, crossing the Black River in Wayne County. The two men walked 900 miles in 90 days.

Schoolcraft diligently recorded his observations about natural communities and their plants, trees and wildlife, streams, geology, the Osage, and early settlers. Streams he crossed and described include Courtois, Ashley and Bull Creeks, and the Meramac, Current, Big Piney, North Fork, James and White Rivers. He often describes oak woodland and forest, and forests of pine, as well as frequent savanna, glade, and prairie.

Saturday, Nov 7, between Potosi and Courtois Creek: "Our path this day has lain across an elevated ridge of land, covered with yellow pine, and strewed with fragments of sandstone, quartz, and a species of coarse flinty jasper, the soil being sterile, and the vegetation scanty."

Sunday, Nov 8, 1818, near the headwaters of the Meramac: "We immediately entered on a hilly barren tract, covered with high grass, and here and there clumps of oak-trees. Soil poor, and covered with fragments of jaspery flint, horn-stone, quartz, and detached masses of carbonate of lime. Such, indeed, has been the character of the small stones under foot from Potosi, but the ledges breaking out on hill sides have uniformly been limestone."

The amount of open land they crossed in the Ozarks we might find suprising today. Tuesday Nov. 10: "One of the greatest inconveniences we experience in traveling in this region arises from the difficulty of finding, at the proper time, a place of encampment affording wood and water, both of which are indispensable. On this account we find it prudent to encamp early in the afternoon, when we come to a spring of good water, with plenty of wood for fire, and grass for our horse; and, on the contrary, are compelled to travel late at night in order to find them."

Sunday, Nov. 15, heading southwest from Ashley Cave: "...the soil was covered thinly with yellow pine, and shrubby oaks, and with so thick a growth of under-brush as to increase, very much, the labour of travelling. To this succeeded a high-land prairie, with little timber, or underbrush, and covered with grass... In calling this a high-land prairie, I am to be understood as meaning a tract of high-land generally level, and with very little wood or shrubbery. It is a level woodless barren covered with wild grass."

Schoolcraft called the North Fork “the Limestone River” because of all the limestone in the river valley. He wrote that the river was “wholly composed of springs” flowing pure, cold, and clear water. Schoolcraft visited Topaz Spring, which feeds the North Fork River and later became the site of a water mill for settlers. Schoolcraft called it Elkhorn Spring because he found an elk horn there.

Saturday, Nov 21, in the valley of the North Fork: "The bottom-lands continue to improve both in quality and extent, and growth of cane is more vigorous and green, and affords a nutritious food our horse. The bluffs on each side of the valley continue, and are covered by the yellow pine."

 Schoolcraft and his companion saw flocks of turkey and ducks, as well as a great many deer, squirrels, and beaver. Bear and elk were also common. And the rivers were deep. Once, they found a place to cross the North Fork that they thought was only two or three feet deep. The water was so clear that what looked easy to wade turned out to be so deep that their pack-horse fell in and had to swim across. The water spoiled or damaged much of their provisions of meal, salt, sugar, tea, and powder for their guns. Soon after they were lucky to find a trail that led to a cabin where a settler family gave them food. The diet of the settlers they found was composed of meat from wild animals and meal ground from corn grown by their cabins.

Here is his description of the area near James River, around what became Springfield, written on Monday

Jan. 4, 1819: “The prairies, which commence at the distance of a mile west of this river, are the most extensive, rich, and beautiful, of any which I have ever seen west of the Mississippi river. They are covered by a coarse wild grass, which attains so great a height that it completely hides a man on horseback in riding through it. The deer and elk abound in this quarter, and the buffalo is occasionally seen in droves upon the prairies, and in the open highland woods. Along the margin of the river, and to a width of from one to two miles each way, is found a vigorous growth of forest trees, some of which attain an almost incredible size…"

Periodic native and lightning set fires kept the landscape more open that it is today. Aside from cities and towns, highways and gravel roads, impounded streams and the elimination of elk, wolves, and buffalo, the lack of fire on the land is probably the biggest change on the landscape.

Schoolcraft writes of seeing white hunters laden with skins stop to shoot game just for the fun of it, and contrasts that behavior with that of the natives: “The Indian considers the forest his own, and is careful in using and preserving every thing which it affords. He never kills more meat than he has occasion for. The white…destroys all before him, and cannot resist the opportunity of killing game, although he neither wants the meat, nor can carry the skins.”

Schoolcraft’s journal has recently been reissued and updated by Milton Rafferty, with maps and notes on what certain areas look like today. Rude Pursuits and Rugged Peaks: Schoolcraft’s Ozark Journal,1818-1819is published by University of Arkansas Press. Amazingly, the complete Journal is now online! An abridged version is also 

available. http://history.smsu.edu/FTMiller/LocalHistory/Schoolcraft/schcrftjournal.htm

"The most practical, non-toxic way to deal with Mosquitoes is to understand a mosquitoes lifecycle, and interrupt it where it starts".............. "Mosquitoes begin their lives in eggs laid singly or in rafts, in most cases on the surface of water"............. "Mosquitoes reproduce in any standing water"............"Air breathing helps them survive inferior water quality"................."Their feet repel water and their leg scales allow them to safely land and take off from the water surface".............."So hydrophobic are these scales that Mosquitoes are able to bear more than 23 times their weight on the water surface"..............."We provide many suitable Mosquitoe habitats: discarded buckets, birdbaths,tires, beer cans, the tarp on your firepit, clogged gutters and even a water-filled foot print will do"............."So eliminating places for water to accumulate will help reduce mosquitoe populations from around your home"

https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/mosquitoes

Mosquitoes: Life Under Tension

by Declan McCabe

July 22, 2019

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Illustration by Adelaide Tyrol

A good friend was in touch; her son was enduring allergic reactions to mosquitoes and, like any good parent, she sought solutions. I told her that the most practical, non-toxic way to deal with the problem was to consider a mosquito's lifecycle, and interrupt it where it starts.

Mosquitoes begin their lives in eggs laid singly or in rafts, in most cases on the surface of water. We purchase mosquito egg rafts at Saint Michael's College to run student experiments with the hatching larvae.

A female mosquito, potentially using your blood or mine for energy, delicately alights on the water to lay her eggs. Humans, operating at entirely different scales, fail to alight on water; we break through the surface and, if all goes well, we float. Alighting is not the same as floating – in fact some insects such as water striders are denser than water and therefore cannot float. Rather, insects are held up by surface tension.

Water molecules pull together, as you can witness when water beads up on a waxed surface. In a pond, or droplet on your tent fly, water molecules are more strongly attracted to each other than to gas molecules in air. Forces of attraction in water are strong and provide a skin-like structure on water that can support a small insect.

Surface tension is strong enough to hold up steel. To see, lay a sewing needle flat on tissue paper; lower the tissue into water and let it saturate and sink. If all goes as planned, the needle will remain on the surface. And steel needles do not float; prove it by touching it with your finger. When your salty skin breaks the surface tension, the needle will sink like any well-behaved piece of steel.

Mosquitoes are neither dense as steel nor absorbent like tissue paper. Their ‘feet’, or tarsal leg segments, repel water. Professor Wu and colleagues from Dalian University of Technology in China found that mosquito leg scales have nanoscale ridges and cross ribs that allow them to safely land and take off from the water surface. So hydrophobic are these scales that Professor Wu calculated they could bear more than 23 times the weight of a mosquito on the water surface, making a water strider’s legs, which can support only 15 times that insect’s weight, look positively wimpy.

When mosquito eggs hatch, the larvae, or “wrigglers,” are vaguely tadpole shaped but smaller. They breathe air through a rear-mounted snorkel or siphon. The top of the siphon has five flaps that, when submerged, close to form a protective cone that keeps water out. When the siphon breaks the water surface, the flaps open to form a floating triangle shape from which the resting larva hangs. Like other arthropods, growing larvae shed their exoskeletons several times as they grow from hatchling to full-size larva. And then they transform to a pupae that’s unique among insects.

When I think “pupa,” I remember my children’s copy of Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar. The pupa, or cocoon, sits quietly until a spectacular adult emerges. Mosquito pupae hang from the surface tension, but at the first hint of danger, like the shadow of a passing bird or biologist’s net, they actively swim to depth. And when the danger passes, they bob right back up and take another breath. From the water surface, the adult mosquito, balancing precariously on the skin of its earlier self, emerges vertically, pulling legs and wings out from its still-submerged pupal husk. I would have thought it akin to taking your pants off, one leg at a time. But YouTube videos suggest otherwise: the legs pop out in pairs or all at once and the fly can immediately walk on water or take off directly.

Most facets of mosquito life depend on surface tension. An aerator added to a bird bath, or a pumped waterfall or fountain in a garden pond, is enough surface disruption to stymie mosquito plans.

Mosquitoes did just fine before bird baths and garden ponds; they reproduce in any standing water, and some species in very polluted and/or stagnant water. Air breathing helps them survive inferior water quality. We provide many suitable habitats: discarded buckets, tires, beer cans, even a water-filled hoof print will do. That tarp ignored on your woodpile all summer may well be the source of winged vampires. And a clogged gutter, from a mosquito’s point of view, is a linear pond in close proximity to fresh food on the hoof or sneaker.

So eliminating places for water to accumulate can reduce mosquito populations around your home. Perhaps you’ll eliminate some other tensions from your life in the process!

Declan McCabe’s work with student researchers on insect communities in the Champlain Basin is funded by Vermont EPSCoR’s Grant NSF EPS Award #1556770 from the National Science Foundation.

Of all U.S.A Presidents to come and go since Republican Teddy Roosevelt, who has best championed for biodiversity and and a healthy environment?..........You might be surprised to learn it is Republican Richard Nixon..............Inspite of his "unforced error" with Watergate, Dick Nixon was all-in on doing tangible things that impacted all living things lives the moment he signed a piece of environmental legistation, not like some who say they are "Green" and offer "pie in the sky" environmental recipes that either are years away from implementation or are so impractical that they will never see the ligt of day

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.ohio.com/news/20190721/wild-side-richard-nixons-environmental-legacy&ct=ga&cd=CAEYASoUMTAzNzA2NjUzNTYwMDI3OTkxNDgyGjU2ZDFlN2YxOWU4Zjk5OTE6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNFZYgfWXAkGOxe6b00IVwwrI4uOWg

THE WILD SIDE: Richard Nixon’s environmental legacy

July 21, 2019

Most Americans who remember President Richard Nixon probably associate his name with the Watergate break-in and his abbreviated presidency. Despite Nixon’s self-inflicted problems, I remember him as the greatest environmental president of my lifetime.

Among Nixon’s environmental accomplishments: 

He signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. 

It encouraged harmony between man and his environment; it promoted efforts to prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man; it sought to enrich the understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to the Nation; and it established a Council on Environmental Quality. 

In 1970 he signed the executive order that created the 

Environmental Protection Agency. Its mission was to conduct environmental assessments, research, and education on projects that use federal funds.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 regulated air emissions from stationary and mobile sources to protect public health and public welfare and to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants.

Finally, the Clean Water Act of 1972 established the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters.

Without these laws over the last 50 years, the U.S. would be an environmental sewer. Can you imagine what the air and water in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and other major industrial cities would look and smell like today? 

Nixon also saw the looming threats to American wildlife. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 covered species such as whales, sea otters, walruses, polar bears, manatees, seals, and sea lions. It is a primary reason many whale populations have rebounded from endangered levels. 

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 passed the Senate in a voice vote and passed the House 355-4. The power of this legislation has helped rescue everything from bald eagles, peregrine falcons, whooping cranes, and California condors to grizzly bears, black-footed ferrets, alligators, and Kirkland’s warblers from the brink of extinction. Rarely does Nixon get the credit he deserves for his broad environmental agenda.

The final piece of Nixon’s environmental legacy, the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, was proposed by Nixon, passed by Congress in 1974, but actually signed into law by President Gerald Ford. It became a turning point in efforts to protect the nation’s lakes, streams, rivers, wetlands and other bodies of water. The law requires actions to protect drinking water and its sources, including reservoirs, springs, and groundwater wells to protect public health. Thanks to Richard Nixon, the United States has spent the last 50 years recognizing and addressing our most pressing environmental problems.

Maine's pam and Bryan Wells doing wildlife, woodland and river restoration work on their 1050 acres acquired by them 15 years ago---"Living a lot of Blog readers(and blogger Rick's) dream"

Read Full ArRead Full Article-article belowR

Read What will my woods look like-full Maine Government booklet below--

"A before and after, and sometimes during, photographs of a common harvest activity. Accompanying each image are observations from the perspective of a landowner, forester and logger. There is also information on likely wildlife habitat outcomes"

https://www.maine.gov/dacf/mfs/projects/what_will_my_woods_look_like/documents/wwmwll.pdf

What Will My Woods Look Like?

by Elise Tillinghast

July 19, 2019

0 Comments

New growth after a crop tree release. Photo by Pam Wells.

When she was young, Pam Wells aspired to be a forester. It was the late 1970s, and as she now wryly recalls, “I was not encouraged, as a woman.” So she directed her smarts and considerable energy elsewhere, including a twenty year career as a children’s mental health social worker.

Pam’s fascination with the woods remained, however, and in 2004, she and her husband Bryan made an offer on 1050 acres of land just seven miles up the road from their home in Old Town, Maine. The property was in bad shape – poor logging practices had destroyed most of the forestland’s commercial value, and Pam remembers riding out with a game warden in the ruts left by equipment.

But it was cheap and beautiful, with stunning waterfalls. It presented endless opportunities for a woman inclined to forestry-related projects. After a few years, as the forest grew, she says, “I began to think, now what?”

A view of Sunhaze Stream, which runs through Wells Forest. Photo by Pam Wells.

Pam’s answer to that question has led to continuing, escalating ambitions as a landowner. She has gone back to forestry school, not for a degree this time but for the specific purpose of learning how to care for her woods. She has also thrown herself into the physical work of management (for example, with her forester Kirby Ellis, she spent a summer with a host of University of Maine students, measuring stands of trees on her property). She and her husband have provided access to their land as a stewardship educational site, and have plans for stream restoration activities.  In 2017, Pam and Bryan were recognized as Maine Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year.

For the past several years, Pam has also served as a landowner advisor/contributing photographer to What Will My Woods Look Like?, a booklet just published by the Maine Forest Service. It’s an easy read, and an excellent resource for anyone who ever wonders what their forester is talking about, but is afraid to ask.

The booklet’s design is simple. Each section presents before and after, and sometimes during, photographs of a common harvest activity. Accompanying each image are observations from the perspective of a landowner, forester and logger. There is also information on likely wildlife habitat outcomes. As Pam notes, this approach encourages conversations about how each person measures success, in what time frame. Photographs can also help landowners overcome often-daunting forest industry vocabulary. “Precommercial thinning – what is that? Quit talking and show me.”

Andy Shultz, the Landowner Outreach Forester at the Maine Forest Service, notes that the idea for What Will My Woods Look Like? isn’t new; “we’d talked about making something like this for years.” A critical group of individuals and organizations had to come together to make it happen, to put together both the writing and photography from sites around the state. Shultz credits key support from the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund and the Sustainable Forest Initiative, and in-kind support (paper) from Sappi North America. A pdf of the booklet (including a list of acknowledgements) is found here. As for Pam Wells, you can read a description of the Wells Forest and see a gallery of her photographs here. Be sure to check out the image of baby moose

Another (just published in the current issue of he Journal of Wildlife Management) reinforcing Study pointing to the fact that Eastern Coyote colonization across eastern North America from the 1940's to present day has not dampened deer herds............"Overall, deer populations in all states experienced positive population growth following coyote arrival".........."Time since coyote arrival was not a significant predictor in any deer population models and our results indicate that coyotes are not controlling deer populations at a large spatial scale in eastern North America"............."Even when survival of fawns is low(Coyotes and Black Bears do kill deer fawns in first three weeks of their birth), deer populations may be sustained by high adult female survival (Robinson et al. 2014)"..............."Even though deer are prominent in eastern coyote diets (McVey et al. 2013, Chitwood et al. 2014, Swingen et al. 2015), and their predation on fawns is well documented (Kilgo et al. 2012, Chitwood et al. 2015b), the extent to which coyotes can hunt prey as large as an adult white-tailed deer (>50 kg) is debated (Chitwood et al. 2015a, Kilgo et al. 2016)"............"Comparisons across the Carnivora order show an energetic threshold, with predators below 21.5 kg generally specializing in smaller prey (below predator mass) and predators above 21.5 kg energetically constrained to large prey (near or above predator mass, Carbone et al. 1999)"............"Eastern coyote populations average 14–16 kg (Way 2007), well below the 21.5-kg threshold, suggesting they are too small to consistently kill adult deer"............"We(the research team) detected no signal for eastern coyotes causing a decline of white-tailed deer over time"............. "Our results imply that coyote removal would have little effect on increasing deer numbers in this region".............."Although coyote control may influence local deer dynamics for short periods of time in some situations, we do not expect coyote removal would be able to increase deer population size at large spatial scales"................The bottom line is that we need Eastern Wolves and Pumas back in our woodlands and fields to restore the historical 6-12 deer per square mile(at time of European colonization) rather than the 20 to 30 to 40+ deer per square mile that are currently nubbing our forest seedlings before they can take their place as forest citizens

click on link to read full article
https://redwolves.com/newsite/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Bragina_et_al-2019-The_Journal_of_Wildlife_Management.pdf

Effects on White-Tailed Deer Following Eastern Coyote Colonization 

EUGENIA V. BRAGIN(lead author); E-mail: e.bragina@gmail.com
 1 Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Program, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA ROLAND KAYS, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, 11 West Jones Street, Raleigh, NC 27601, USA ALLISON HODY, Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Program, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA CHRISTOPHER E. MOORMAN, Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Program, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA CHRISTOPHER S. DEPERNO, Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Program, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA L. SCOTT MILLS, Wildlife Biology Program and Office of Research and Creative Scholarship, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA

 ABSTRACT

The expansion or recovery of predators can affect local prey populations. Since the 1940s, coyotes (Canis latrans) have expanded into eastern North America where they are now the largest predator and prey on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). However, their effect on deer populations remains controversial.

We tested the hypothesis that coyotes, as a novel predator, would affect deer population dynamics across large spatial scales, and the strongest effects would occur after a time lag following initial coyote colonization that allows for the predator populations to grow.

We evaluated deer population trends from 1981 to 2014 in 384 counties of 6 eastern states in the United States with linear mixed models. We included deer harvest data as a proxy for deer relative abundance, years since coyote arrival in a county as a proxy of coyote abundance, and landscape and climate covariates to account for environmental effects.

Overall, deer populations in all states experienced positive population growth following coyote arrival. Time since coyote arrival was not a significant predictor in any deer population models and our results indicate that coyotes are not  controlling deer populations at a large spatial scale in eastern North America.

 2019 The Wildlife Society

bears

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bears-eat-human-food-may-hibernate-less-and-age-faster

Bears that eat ‘junk food’ may hibernate less and age faster

Wildlife raiding human foods might risk faster cellular aging

susan Milius; 3/4/19

Mama bears may need to raise their snouts and join the chorus protesting junk food.

The more sugary, highly processed foods that 30 female black bears scrounged from humans, the less time the bears were likely to spend hibernating, researchers found. In turn, bears that hibernated less tended to score worse on a test for aging at the cellular level, wildlife ecologist Rebecca Kirby and her colleagues conclude February 21 inScientific Reports. 

Human foods weaken Bears

The new research grew out of an earlier project to see what wild black bears across Colorado were eating, says study coauthor Jonathan Pauli, a community ecologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Kirby, his Ph.D. student at the time, checked diets from hundreds of bears across the state. Hunters there are not allowed to set out bear bait, such as heaps of doughnuts or candy, so the animals’ exposure to human food comes mostly from scavenging.

When bears eat more processed foods, their tissue picks up higher concentrations of a stable form of carbon called carbon-13. That extra carbon comes from plants such as corn and cane sugar. (These crop plants concentrate the atmosphere’s normally sparse amounts of carbon-13 as they build sugar molecules in steps somewhat different from those in most of North America’s wild plants.)

Wild foods help Bears stay strong and live healthier lives

Looking for the telltale forms of carbon in that earlier study, the researchers found bears in some places scavenging “really high” proportions of people’s leftovers. On occasion, these leftovers made up more than 30 percent of bears’ diets, Pauli says.

In the new study, Kirby looked at the impact of diet on hibernation. Bears typically slumber four to six months, during which female bears give birth. Kirby and her colleagues focused on 30 free-roaming females around Durango that were monitored by Colorado’s Parks and Wildlife department. The team first tested bears for carbon-13, and determined that the ones that ate more human-related foods tended to hibernate for shorter periods of time.

Studies in smaller hibernating mammals hint that these seasonal metabolic slowdowns might delay the ravages of aging. If that’s true, shortening hibernation bouts might have a downside for the bears.

To measure aging, the researchers tested for relative changes in length of what are called telomeres. These repetitive bits of DNA form the ends of chromosomes in complex cells. As cells divide over time, telomere bits fail to get copied and telomeres gradually shorten. Various researchers propose that tracking this shortening can reveal how quickly a creature is aging. Among bears in the study, those that hibernated for shorter periods had telomeres that shortened more quickly than those of other bears, suggesting the animals were aging faster, the team found.

Bears who hibernate seem to stave off old age related maladies better

than those bears who shorten their hibernating season

Free-ranging bears didn’t always cooperate with Kirby’s needs for several kinds of data, so she does not claim to have made one direct and “definitive” link between bears eating more human food and shortening telomeres as a sign of aging. So far, Kirby, now with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento, Calif., calls the evidence “suggestive.”

Using additional methods to measure telomeres could help clarify what is going on at the cellular level, says telomere researcher Jerry Shay of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Still, he muses, the idea of connecting more human food, truncated bear hibernation and faster cell aging “may be correct.”