Saturday, October 24, 2015

Little knowledge exists about where songbirds roost at night...........Is it in their daytime home range or someplace different?.............In 2013-14 in the coastal plain of Virginia, Researchers from the College of William and Mary studiied Wood Thrush behaviour during breeding season to get a better handle on this topic...................Their observations reveal tlat females stay in their daytime range and in their nest on top of their eggs in the evenings........... However, Male Thrushes move to more heavily wooded habitat at night to avoid predators................Once Nestlings fledge or are killed by predators, male birds move back to daytime territories during the evenings and roost side by side with their mates ............This change in behaviour occurs because the males do not want another male stealing their mates and impregnating them---# birds sleeping behaviour

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sciencedaily/plants_animals/ecology/~3/FIFAbx4_3bc/151021185056.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=emai...
Thursday, October 22, 2015

The National Park Service is conducting the first urban Coyote Study in Los Angeles,,,,,,,,,,,,Three Coyotes have been fitted with GPS collars and the latest one under investigation utilizes a two mile stretch of land around the Los Angeles River..........Another being studied lives in the Silver Lake section of the city and the third was last heard from(GPS died) just west of downtown L.A.in Westlake, crossing the busy 101 freeway into Echo Park, ......Although the Park Service had previously studied more suburban and exurban living Los Angeles Coyotes over a 8 year period spanning 1996-2004, this is the first ever inner city evaluation of the life cycle habits of the adaptable canid........Biologists are amazed at how with virtually no green belt in the downtown area of the city, Coyotes manage to carve out a living for themselves......Kudos to the Park Service for conducting this study which will help us learn to coexist with our ever present SoCal Coyote population

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.imperialvalleynews.com/index.php/news/california-news/5902-scientists-begin-tra...
Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Science actually prevails over special interest politics in Washington State as Govenor Jay Inslee rejects increasing the Puma hunting Quota in the state.............He stares down his Wildlife Commission with facts rather than succumbing to their fiction about the need to kill more Pumas because Wolves also exist in Washington, thus allegedly putting farmers livestock in more jeopardy.............The Governor is squarely on board with the long documented evidence secured by Dr. Rob Wielgus' Washington State University Large Carnivore Lab which consistenly proves that increased cougar removal/killing actually exacerbates risk to the public by creating an unnatural number of juvenile cougars in the population"............... "Juveniles have been shown to be the age class most frequently involved in conflicts with people"---# Cougar hunting/quotas, # Puma hunting increases conflicts with humans and wildlife

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2015-10-21/animal-welfare/governor-rejects-increased-coug...
Tuesday, October 20, 2015

While all kinds of discussions are taking place at various Conservation Societies and in some State Houses on how to keep the Boreal Forest that blankets Alaska, Canada, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Minnesota(northern sections) from becoming a "swiss cheese, pock marked" inferior version of it's historical self, Dennis Murray, a professor of ecology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, thinks the dying moose of Minnesota and New Hampshire and elsewhere are one symptom of something far bigger – a giant forest ecosystem that is rapidly shrinking, dying, and otherwise changing.............. "The boreal forest is breaking apart," he says........... "The question is what will replace it?"..................Murray has been researching the boreal forest for 25 years, and he and his colleagues have seen many changes firsthand................. "In British Columbia, 80 percent of the province's mature lodgepole, another boreal species, have recently died from the mountain pine beetle, whose range and season both expanded greatly because of a warmer world".............. "White and black spruce, the main trees species in the boreal, are also dying in vast numbers"............. “The southwest Yukon looks dramatically different than it did 25 years ago when I did my master’s [degree]".......... “Everywhere you go there is deadfall"..................Murray’s modeling shows that a large gap is opening in the boreal in Ontario and Quebec, a gap some 500 by 350 kilometers.................. "It will essentially split the contiguous forest into two separate forests — one to the east, the other to the west — as the black spruce and white spruce disappear"................... "That gap could then become grassland or Carolinian, the forest ecosystem that dominates south of the boreal in Ontario, characterized by oak, maple, black walnut and other deciduous species"................. "As the spruce goes, so goes its inhabitants".............. "We're predicting there’s going to be no lynx, moose, or hare in central Ontario in the years to come, “so we’re going to have disjunct populations on either side"................ "It could cause a break between populations of species and a loss of genetic diversity"........... Murray has coined a term for the patchy quality of the effects of warming on the boreal – "climate fragmentation"............. “Because it’s a gradual transition, it won’t be real boreal and it won’t be real deciduous". “Ecosystems will likely be less stable and more open to invasives"

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click on this link below to   Read Robbins' report .  12 OCT 2015:  REPORT The Rapid and  Startling Decline Of World...
Monday, October 19, 2015

While the Wall Street Journal article on "MAINE'S LOBSTER BOOM" does mention climate change and a dearth of predators as contributing factors to the "SURGE", the casual reader comes away feeling that all is well in the waters of Maine and that the abundance and varieties of fish are back to their 16th century abundance..........Lets examine the early history of this fishery and put the Lobster "surge" into proper perspective......... Note that the first Europeans to discover these rich fishing grounds were the Basques, a fiercely independent people from northern Spain................ They had salt, which they used to preserve the fish, and by the year 1000 they had established an international trade in salted cod........... The Basques kept the location of their fishing grounds a secret for over 500 years, but in 1497 Giovanni Caboto, a Genovese known by the Anglicized version of his name, John Cabot, undertook a voyage for Henry VII of England............. Searching for a northern spice route, Cabot instead found 1000 Basque fishing vessels, rocky shores ideal for salting and drying fish, and waters teeming with fish............. A legend swiftly grew that the fish were so abundant that they could be scooped out of the water in baskets.............. Cabot named the place New Found Land and claimed it in the name of England............. Southern Europeans from Spain and Portugal called the country which John Cabot had discovered "Baccalaos", the native name for the cod .............. Sebastian Cabot, son of John Cabot, alleged that these fish were so plentiful that they sometimes stopped the progress of his ships...........The abundance of fish in the New World soon became common knowledge to the people of Europe............... To these fishermen, visions of baskets drawn from the seas slopping over with fish, or of their boats bumping and ploughing with difficulty through "great multitudes of big fishes" must have been as glittering as those of gold, silks, or broad lands were to their betters.............And now 500 years later after exploitation of this resource(similar to that of Bison and our land mammals), the result is that Cod and Shrimp no longer exist in New England in commercially viable numbers, the Lobsters have no enemies and they are basking in artificially warmed waters................Will even this Lobster nirvana come crashing down soon due to our manipulation of the planet and climate change?..............

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/maine-lobster-boom-continues-feeding-expanding-market-1445074203 Maine’s Lobster Boom Continues, Feeding Expa...
Sunday, October 18, 2015

Glad to be back online with all of you...........Trouble with my internet service had me "down" since last Wednesday............I start back up with some disturbing statistics from the NATIONAL PARK SERVICE here in Los Angeles(responsible for the Santa Monica Park) revealing that since they began studying the impacts of Rodenticides on Carnivores in 1966, huge percentages of Pumas, Coyotes, Bobcats and Foxes have died from ingesting the poisons that were first eaten by rodents, rabbits, squirrels and small mammals............As of April 2012, 11 of 12 Pumas have tested positive for the poison and two animals have died from it................93 of 105 Bobcats have tested positive with over 70 of these animals perishing from it ..................And 20 of 24 Coyotes tested had the poison in their system and 12 died from it.................Folks, use rat traps to get rid of the mice and rats in your house and barn................STOP USING POISON.............On top of degradation of habitat and climate change, these rodenticides are going to be the knock out punch for our "Impact, Trophic carnivores.................How to exist amongst us and fulfill their ecological services if we conciously poison their food?

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[PDF] Lethal Dose: Rat Poison & Local Wildlife www.nps.gov/samo/learn/news/ .../ Rodenticide Infographic_Apr2014.pdf Anoth...