Wednesday, December 26, 2018

"The American marten (Martes americana), also referred to as the pine marten, is on the 'comeback trail' in New England"............"Prior to colonization, this smaller-than-a-cat mamma(weasel family)l was widely distributed and considered common"..............."The forces that led to it becoming a species of high concern are not unusual: habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as over-trapping".............."The glossy, golden-brown pelt made this animal’s fur highly desirable"..............."By the early 1900s, it was considered extinct in Vermont and barely existed in New Hampshire"............... Only in the Adirondacks(NY) and remote northern Maine did populations manage to persist"............" Marten were reintroduced in New Hampshire in the 1950s and again in the 1970s, and populations were noticeably bolstered by the 1990s"................"The comeback continued, and in 2016, marten was removed from that state’s Threatened and Endangered Species List"......... "From 1989 to 1991, Vermont’s Fish and Wildlife Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced 115 American martens into southern Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest"............."The vast majority of these pioneer martens came from Maine, and the rest were from the Adirondacks..................."By the mid-1990s, the reintroduction was considered a failure"............."No evidence could be found that any of the martens had survived"............."One theory as to what happened points the finger at another member of the mustelid family: the fisher"............"A larger cousin to the marten, the fisher had been successfully reintroduced to Vermont in 1959 as a way to control an over-abundance of porcupine"............."Fishers compete with and hunt marten".........."Perhaps the failure of the marten reintroduction had something to do with the success of the fisher recovery – a reminder that everything in nature is connected"..............."For 15 years, marten went undetected in Vermont"..............."But then several were accidentally caught in fisher traps in the southern Greens, which spurred a whole new search for them".............."A small but stable population was discovered in southern Vermont, and another population was discovered in the northern part of the state".............:"Were these the offspring of the original reintroduced martens?"..........."Are the populations related?"..........."Or did these new arrivals come from another place?"..............."By examining the DNA of both populations, and comparing them to each other and the other surrounding populations from the Adirondacks, northern Maine, and northern New Hampshire, researchers have been able to shed light on this tangled tale"..........."The data suggest that the newly discovered southern population does have genetic lineage with the marten that were reintroduced back in the 1990s"..............."The northern population has markers that tie it to populations in northern New Hampshire, with a dash of genes from the southern Vermont population, suggesting connectivity between the two populations and invites Vermonters to consider how to continue protecting land to increase this landscape connection"..............."The most intriguing reveal from the DNA testing is that there is some suggestion that the southern Vermont population has genes from a relic population"............."Could it be that martens had actually managed to survive in the Green Mountain National Forest, tucked quietly out of our view, ever since pre-colonial days?"

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https://adirondackexplorer.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f2786fbb7862339a0b90113d7&id=0c33a39928&e=46b8d98c61 MONDAY, DECE...
Monday, December 24, 2018

A Coyote seeking a Christmas party in Manhattan, NYC was captured on Sunday night by Police at the Chelsea Pier 59.................It checked out Harlem on Saturday night and then went south prior to capture............Dept. of Conservation Officials checked its health(all good) and then released it into an undisclosed wooded area north of the City..............Young Coyotes born north of Manhattan in Westchester County have been purshing south in the Bronx and Queens seeking mates and their own territories(Coyotes were being spotted all over the city in 2015 (Long Island City and Middle Villagein Queens; Stuy-Town, Upper West Side and Battery Park City in Manhattan)"..............."Researcher Carol Henger estimates there are between 30 and 40 coyotes living in New York City".............. "She analyzed the genetics of local coyotes and found connections to packs in Westchester County".................“Most coyotes we are aware of live very quiet lives, said Simon"...............“We are not suggesting they are harmless animals but knowing where they live and recognizing normal vs threatening behavior goes a long way to mitigate any potential conflict between coyotes and people"............... "Chris Nagy who heads up the Gotham Coyote Study emphasizes that coyotes prefer to stay away from humans unless they are taught inadvertently or on purpose that they can get food from us"................"Through a public awareness campaign that includes subway and bus ads, family-friendly events, public talks and an interactive website, the Parks Department is aiming to teach New Yorkers about sharing the city and keeping their distance from wildlife"

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http://gothamist.com/2018/12/23/coyote_caught_chelsea_piers.php Coyote Wandering Manhattan Streets Finally Captured Near Chelsea Pier...
Friday, December 21, 2018

Our native Opossum, North America's only native marsupial, is our greatest ally in the fight against lyme and other tick borne diseases, consuming up to 5000 ticks annually............"In 1608, Capt. John Smith coined the word opossum from the word opassum, the Algonquian term meaning white animal.".............."In his notes, the captain wrote: An Opassom hath an head like a Swine, and a taile like a Rat, and is of the bignes of a Cat. Under her belly she hath a bagge, wherein shee lodgeth, carrieth, and sucketh her young"................... "No one is quite sure how the opossum’s “o” was dropped, but it appeared in print as "possum" as early as 1613, and remains the colloquial term in many regions of the country".................. "Opossums are mostly immune to rabies, and in fact, they are eight times less likely to carry rabies compared to wild dogs".............. "Opossums have partial or total immunity to the venom produced by rattlesnakes, cottonmouths and other pit vipers"................."Their normal diet consists of carrion, rodents, insects, ticks, snails, slugs, birds, eggs, frogs, plants, fruits and grains"................. "They also eat human food, table scraps, dog and cat food"................."They have an unusually high need for calcium, which incites them to eat the skeletons of rodents and road kill they consume"..................."They're the sanitation workers of the wild"................ "Although many people think opossums are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, there are several areas of intelligence in which they soar"................ "When tested for the ability to remember where food is, opossums scored better than rats, rabbits, cats and dogs"................. "They also can find their way through a maze more quickly than rats and cats"................. "Since their diet allows them to indulge on snails, slugs and beetles, they are a welcome addition to the garden"................"Opossums also keep rats and cockroaches at bay by competing with them for food".................."In fact, it’s common for opossums to kill cockroaches and rats if they find them in their territory"............."The opossum has opposable "thumbs(called halux) which are on its rear feet (so, technically they're toes), and abet the opossum’s formidable climbing skills".............."They have prehensile tails which are adapted for grasping and wrapping around things like tree limbs"...................."The opossum can hang from its tail for short periods of time, but the creature doesn’t sleep hanging from its tail, as some people think"............................ "Opossums have been observed carrying bundles of grasses and other materials by looping their tail around them; this conscious control leads many to consider the tail as a fifth appendage, like a hand"............. "The mouth of an opossum holds an impressive 50 teeth".................."When threatened, opossums run, growl, belch, urinate and defecate"..............."When all else fails, they “play ‘possum" and act as if they are dead"..................."It is an involuntary response (like fainting) rather than a conscious act"..................."They roll over, become stiff, close their eyes (or stare off into space) and bare their teeth as saliva foams around the mouth and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from glands"..............."The catatonic state can last for up to four hours, and has proven effective as a deterrent to predators looking for a hot meal".

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http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001h2yQFQq849UjYDDxQh7Etornpd7k8cYSHLuUf87vV57x-_lGf1W-cJLmvdjYVfNkPqakNz_UNk0ibuJ3MyHWKn7eWFXMxYb0mS6Fw5cml2ue...
Thursday, December 20, 2018

Since the Pleistocene extinctions of 12,000 years ago, there have always been long stretches of sustained droughts in California and the inter-continental western states….......…"Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years"............"We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years"............. “We’re living in a dream world.”............The current, never-ending diatribe you hear from the mainstream media about the "new-normal weather and drought paradigm is an attempt to dupe the American people, a calculated subterfuge to change the way we power ourselves, enriching a supposedly more benign land-destroying energy supplying technology while eliminating a supposedly dirty existing energy supplying technology.............One is labeled "evil" and stupid if not agreeing that we must stop using fossil fuels and instead immediately installing 500 foot windmills everywhere on the planet, simultaneously creating land-blanketing solar farms where windmills are not present............The reality is the firms who benefit from the current definition of "GOING GREEN" are laughing at the gullibility of the American people as they rack in the $$ manufacturing these industrial "earth scarring" and wildlife destroying monstrosities………….While there is no question that breathing in an overabundance of Carbon Monoxide and Methane is bad for your health, the so-called panacea of moving away from burning fossil fuels to building tens of thousands of 500 foot windmills and gargantuan solar panel farms, destroying the last of our open space and deeply gashing biodiversity is sheer madness,,,,,,,,,,,, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result"--Albert Einstein................Germany is the first and foremost example of this wrong-headed, earth-destroying and economically damaging "Going Green" insanity................ "From 1991 on, anyone in Germany who invested in wind power or biogas plants would receive a highly subsidized price for their electricity for 20 years"................"The law set off the most dramatic changes in the German landscape since World War Two – slowly at first, then very noticeably, and finally faster and faster"...................."Today about 30,000 wind turbines defile the face of Germany, from the North Sea to the Alps, from the Black Forest to Berlin"........................"Because politicians and investors want to avoid long legal battles with local communities and residents, they are planning to site more and more of their large wind farms in forests"................ "In Baden Württemberg, in southwestern Germany, where the famous Black Forest is located, the state environment minister, Franz Untersteller, announced that ‘we are going to build wind parks in forest areas far away from residential buildings.’ 1200 turbines have now been constructed in forests".................."The newer turbine models, such as the ‘Enercon E126’, are 200 m high, with a rotor diameter of 127 m"..................."To build one of these towers, more than 5000 m2 of forest must be cleared"................"If investors from any other industry had scarred natural areas and remote forests in this way, there would have been a political scandal"..............."In the meantime, however, politicians of all parties are working to weaken German conservation laws, in order to allow wind and solar farms to be built in every last unspoilt corner of Germany".............."Wind power has an enormous need for space"..............."For example, to replace a single coal-fired power station, such as the Moorburg power plant in Hamburg, the entire area of the city-state would have to be covered with turbines"..............And the wildlife destroying that these windmills wreck is horrendous............."The ornithologist Klaus Richarz was commissioned by the German Wildlife Foundation to examine the effect of wind power in forest habitats"............."For 22 years, Richarz headed a Bird Protection Observatory covering three German states"........... "His study proves that we have an urgent problem"..............."The rotor blades of a wind turbine have a radius as long as a football field and rotate at 300 km/h"................."Against these huge propeller walls, red kites and other birds don’t stand a chance"....................."The rotor blades hit large birds, such as storks, raptors and ducks, particularly often"................‘"Birds of prey’, says Professor Oliver Krüger, ‘are relatively rare, need large areas, but collide disproportionately often"................"For the number of all birds killed by the German wind industry there is an extrapolation from Hermann Hötker, an ornithologist at German Foundation for Nature Conservation"................"He estimates that each turbine kills between one and five birds per year, meaning between 28,000 and 140,000 fatalities in total."..............The bottom line is that it sucks that we have had to dig oil wells, cut down mountains for coal and frack our landscape for natural gas...............But we have done that already,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,So now, we are going to finish off the last of our open spaces and wildlife by draping the land with windmills and panels, selling it as green..............I for one say, WAKE UP AMERICA and stop allowing one group of our politicians to get away with supposedly being morally just and concerned for our well-being...........Talk about FAKE NEWS and a contempt for the folks, feeling that they can bloviate on how they are morally just in pushing for windmills and solar panels..............Truly evil, they are in my book..............we need our best and brightest to come up with a true source of green energy and not allow the final rape and pillage of our remaining WILD AMERICA

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c lick to read full article https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-s...