Friday, May 26, 2017

"Teeth can tell a lot about a species’ line of work — particularly what they eat and how they catch their dinner".................. "Teeth are action-oriented; incisors nip and gnaw, canines stab and hold, premolars cut, sheer, slice, and grind, molars mash and crush".............. "Teeth forms hint at a species’ evolutionary story and crown wear can tell much about the age of an animal"..........." For example, deer and other herbivores that dine on abrasive foods — tree buds, inner bark, seeds, roots and shoots, leaves, woody stems, grasses — show rates of premolar and molar wear that are predictable and measurable".................... "Animals particularly long in tooth may have molars worn down to the bone".................... "Rodents, on the other hand, have “rootless” incisors or molars, and the crowns continue to grow, keeping up with wear"...................... "Aging a beaver using incisor wear wouldn’t work for that reason"

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Read Full Article Mammal Teeth by Tim Traver Outside Story May 22, 2017 0 Comments 49 Illustration by  ...
Thursday, May 25, 2017

"American forests are under attack by invasive, tree-killing insects and disease-causing organisms that originated in other countries"............. "According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), more than 400 non-native insects and 24 non-native pathogens are now permanently established in North American woodlands"........... "Some of these species have become invasive, spreading rapidly and causing significant economic and ecological impacts to the nation's forest and wildlife"............. "In the past dozen years, 28 new tree-killing pests have been detected in the country". ............. "Some of the species at risk are the foundation of ecologically unique species assemblies, such as the “high-five” pine species in the mountains of the West; hemlock groves in the Appalachians, tanbark as the only hardwood/hard mast species in the predominantly coniferous forests of northern California and Whitebark Pine, whose seeds in the Inter-mountain West are a critical food source for the remaining 750-1000 Grizzly Bears remaining alive in the lower 48 States"..............."Imported nursery stock—trees, shrubs, garden plants, roots and cuttings brought in from other countries for sale to the U.S. consumer—is one of two chief pathways that bring invasive insects and diseases into American forests"............. "Once the pests are established, their eradication is, at a minimum, costly and politically difficult"............... "Often it is simply impossible".................."The loss of nuts and berries formerly produced by vanishing or severely reduced tree species has had a poorly documented but surely substantial impact on forest wildlife species"............."At the beginning of the 1900s, the American chestnut was one of the most important wildlife plants of the Eastern United States (Martin and others 1951)"............... "With this tree practically exterminated by the exotic chestnut blight, mast-dependent forest wildlife such as white-tailed deer and black bears had to settle for inconsistent acorn and hickory nut crops as their primary food (Clark and Pelton 1999)".......... "The blight almost certainly reduced the carrying capacity of southern highland habitats for mast-dependent wildlife"............ "The blight is thought to have caused at least five indigenous insect species to become extinct or extremely rare"

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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=15&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiSn7zZk-HTAhVV0...
Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Tim Hiller, a wildlife biologist and founder of the Wildlife Ecology Institute, began studying the Sierra Nevada red fox in 2012. He said he plans to capture and radio-­collar eight more foxes within a year to continue the study. “We don’t know their population status,” Hiller said. “Nobody has a clue.”

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://registerguard.com/rg/news/local/35604488-75/rare-foxes-spotted-in-oregon-may-help-c...
Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Today another insightful article from the JOURNAL OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT on the dilemma of the remaining 50 Red Wolf(Eastern Wolf) population in the USA, located in the 5 county region of North Carolina(Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties)................Completely exterminated by us humans from its East of the Mississippi River historical domain running from Texas east to Florida, NY, Maine and all eastern states in between by the mid 1950's, the last wild Red Wolves found in Louisiana and Texas were removed from the wild and placed into a captive breeding program in the 1970's as they were facing extinction due to decimation of habitat, potential of disease epidemic and hybridization with Western Coyotes......................Re-introduced in the North Carolina barrier island counties in 1987, researchers felt that with protection from coyote hybridization and human hunters, the region could support 150 of the animals.............Indeed, as of 2001, 131 Red Wolves called their reintroduced Carolina habitat home..........................This was short lived as year round coyote hunting has whittled the Wolf population to about 50....................With the Obama Administration having first decided to end the reintroduction program and then the Federal Courts countering that order with instructions for a re-evaluation of the rewilding, we await to see what the Trump Fish and Wildlife folks decide to do for the Wolves....................As many of you know, Red Wolves are a distinct species, an American Wolf that split from an Ancient Coyote species millenia ago(as did our modern western coyotes).................For this reason, when we humans killed off all large wildlife east of the Mississippi by the dawn of the 20th century, the few remaining Red Wolves found it necessary and ecologically possible to hybridize with westward colonizing coyotes(not enough red wolves to keep it all in the family).....................I know that many researchers feel that at this point why not just let Eastern Coyotes and the 50 Eastern Wolves mix and match and let the resulting "homogenized" canid be the "new wild dawg" of the east..............I say that Eastern Coyotes do not fully execute ecological deer/beaver/Moose/Elk eating functions of the Red Wolf(coyotes still smaller on average than the wolves) and that we should "keep all the cogs and wheels" of genetic diversity that the Red Wolves bring to the planet

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click on  PDF to read full article Abstract Article PDF(742K) Survival and population size estimates of the red wolf Authors ...
Monday, May 22, 2017

An excellent article on the ability and propensity for both male and female Gray Wolves to be able to disperse from their natal birth place is in the current issue of THE JOURNAL OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT....................From my perch, I take from the article that without persecution, Gray Wolves likely could reclaim all of Western North America as home turf in the course of a human lifetime..............Both male and female Wolves who reach sexual maturity at approximately 2 years/8 months of age have nearly the same propensity to wander far and wide in search of a mate and territory of their own.................Unlike with Pumas where male "cats wander great distances and females do not, there would be a good "dating scene for the young Gray Wolves as they wandered far and wide seeking to spread their genes...............Full article below for you to click on and read

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Click on this link to read full article http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.21238/pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10...