Saturday, January 19, 2019

"As we begin calendar year 2019, some 150-200 Canadian Lynx are believed to call Colorado home"............"Colorado’s native lynx died out in the early 1970s because of trapping, poisoning and development"..........."Colorado represents the southern-most historical distribution of lynx, where the species occupied the higher elevation montane forests of the state right on through the late 1880's" ......"The state Division of Wildlife began reintroducing them in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado by releasing lynx that were captured in Alaska and Canada"................."By 2006, 218 lynx had been brought in and equipped with tracking devices on collars so researchers could monitor their movements"..............."The first kittens born to the transplanted lynx were documented in 2003, and third-generation cats were first found in 2006".............."Their current home ranges include the San Juan Mountains in the southwestern part of the state with occasional sightings reported in high-elevation areas such as Copper Mountain, Vail Pass, Red Cliff, and Leadville"..............."Currently considered a stable and healthy population, their long-term prospects are very much tied to the virulence of the Spruce Bark Beetle infestation that warmer weather has helped aggravate..............This insects' destruction of the forest canopy effects the lynx's main source of food, snowshoe hare"................... "Snowshoe hare prefer a 'two-story forest,’ with lower vegetative shrubs and plants to eat; while the second story is used as protection and shelter from the elements"............."When you remove those over-stories, you're looking at a total forest turnover, which would be a deciding factor in whether or not those lynx populations thrive"

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.vaildaily.com/news/curious-nature-in-search-of-the-missing-lynx-column/&ct...
Friday, January 18, 2019

"Although we don't know the original population of the Eastern Elk, it had to have been massive"................."When European settlers started colonizing the Americas, Eastern Elk could be found from Southern Canada to central Georgia and Louisiana, and as far west as the Mississippi River".............. "Their numbers were great, their herds were huge, and they were a prized catch among Native Americans"..................."The specific range and number of elk that inhabited the Northeast are unknown, but fossil bones of elk have been found in shell heaps in Maine and at archaeological sites in Rhode Island"................"Elk antlers have been discovered in bogs in Vermont and a pond in New Hampshire".............."In The Mohican World, author Shirley Dunn relates a 1714 account of a Native American guide who was showing a group of settlers land near the Catskills(upsatate NY)"..............."He pointed out a deep path worn in the streambank by herds of elk crossing a river".................."The last elk in Massachusetts was killed in Worcester County in 1732"................"The few remaining in Saranac, New York were dispatched in 1826".............."John James Audubon mentioned that by 1851, a handful of elk could still be found in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains"............"In 1737, the last sighting of an elk in South Carolina occurred"................"By 1850, it's believed the whole population had been eliminated except for a few isolated herds in the Allegheny Mountains of north central Pennsylvania near Cameron, Elk and McKean counties"..............."In 1877, the last known wild Eastern Elk was killed by John D. Decker in Pennsylvania".............."In 1880, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the eastern subspecies of elk extinct".................."In the early 1900's, Elk from Yellowstone were re-introduced into Pennsylvania"............ "More recently, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Michigan, Arkansas, and Wisconsin have free-ranging elk herds"................"Elk have also spread into West Virginia, and the first wild elk in 275 years was sighted in South Carolina, likely an emigrant from the herd in Great Smoky Mountains National Park"..............."Kentucky in particular has been a success story, and now has over 10,000 elk".............."The reintroduced elk are a western subspecies, smaller than the original eastern elk"

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https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__r20.rs6.net_tn.jsp-3Ff-3D0016VsAknOYguLTQV-2DRxtb9LZh5Y1v9TTYcBhAl6VlhiFinckC7DotmhJWvD...
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Thursday, January 17, 2019

"U. of Victoria(Canda) and First Nations biologists have just published research showing that the more variety of salmon that Grizzly and Black Bears eat, the bigger they get, the more offspring they are able to have and the better those offspring do"................"The team of researchers tested hair samples from 379 black bears and 122 grizzly bears between 2009 and 2014 to estimate their salmon consumption, which also indicates population health".............They studied animals across a 22,000-kilometre stretch along coastal British Columbia's "Great Bear Rainforest," in collaboration with the Wuikinuxv, Nuxalk, Heiltsuk and Kitasoo/Xai'xais First Nations".............."The Bear-Salmon relationship is very important to ecosystem health as bears carry salmon inland from the water and act as gardeners by fertilizing the ground with fish carcass which helps trees and other plants thrive"..........."Accordingly, Province and State Game Agencies must begin thinking of Salmon fisheries as benefitting not just commercial and recreational interests but other wildlife and ecosystems as well"................."Focusing on the health of both the larger as well as the smaller Salmon runs provide bears with the greatest variety and quantity of Salmon--enabling the Bears to be the best 'ecosystem-service-gardeners' possible"

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/study-shows-black-bears-need-a-variety-of-...
Tuesday, January 15, 2019

WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY biologist Matt Scrafford is leading an Ontario, Canada study of its Wolverine population in an attempt to expand and restore the species in this Province..........'In Ontario, the Wolverine plays an important role in the cultural beliefs of many First Nations as symbols of strength"................."Historically, Wolverines were found throughout most of Ontario"............."Recent studies show some re-colonization of their historical northeastern range with the most optimistic estimates suggesting there may be several hundred".........."The main threat to the Wolverine is habitat loss due to forest clearing, and habitat fragmentation often associated with mineral extraction, forestry, and road creation".............."Wolverines in Ontario has decreased over 50 percent since the mid-1800s with them now found primarily in the far north central and western portions of the province"........"The pattern for Wolverine has been similar to that of Woodland Caribou with both species disappearing from southern Ontario fairly rapidly during the nineteenth century during a period characterized by a large increase in human settlement, logging and railroad construction, and during the early twentieth century, a period of intensive exploitation of wildlife"........."As one of the first species to disappear with the onset of human disturbance, Wolverines are an excellent indicator of ecosystem integrity" ..........."Moose and Woodland Caribou are the primary ungulate species in the Wolverine diet" ........."When carrion is scarce, small mammals and birds become primary prey for Wolverines with "Trappers noting Wolverines staking out Beaver lodges to get a meal" ............"Females do not produce litters successfully until they are an average of 3.4 years old with average litter size two to three kits with a life expectancy of eight to ten years" ................."Births generally coincide with periods of greater ungulate carrion availability and snow cover, which provides enhanced security cover for kits".................."A fundamental goal of Wolverine recovery is to provide for connectivity across its historical range in Ontario and neighbouring jurisdictions"

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https://twitter.com/M_Scrafford/status/1076275656869072897 https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.cbc.ca/news...
Sunday, January 13, 2019

We discussed last week how what was a Caribou population of tens of thousands in Maine at the time of European colonization gradually disappeared from that landscape and went functionally extinct in 1860 due to human settlement, hunting and Wolf prey-switching to Caribou as Deer expanded their range into northern Maine.............As of last year, the same has occurred in Montana, Idaho and Washington State---due to the same reasons that the Maine herd blinked out, the only difference being that Moose as well as Deer migrated into this once stronghold of Caribou as human development fractured its Northwest forest biome................."Just to the north of Montana and Washington, a splintered population of Caribou are holding on in some remote unfractured forest sections of British Columbia, Canada"..............."Biologist and photographer David Moskowitz spent four years documenting caribou ecology in this part of the world for his new book 'Caribou Rainforest: From Heartbreak to Hope'".............."Caribou need unbroken interior forest, where wolves and pumas find it harder to get at them"............"Their lifecycle includes a double annual migration, moving up and down in elevation rather than point to point across landscapes"..............."In winter, Cariibou wide hooves allow it to use the deep snow like an elevator so it can get at the lichens it eats around the tops of evergreen trees"................"When the snow melts it moves to lower elevations and depends on winds to blow lichen out of the trees to the forest floor"................"When midsummer reaches the upper elevations with green up, the caribou return to the peaks"................ "And when that dries up in fall before the snows return, the animal migrates downslope again"..............“Deer, elk and moose don’t like that old forest so there’s no predators there either"................."They have the ecosystem to themselves"

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://missoulian.com/news/local/last-look-book-recounts-decline-of-woodland-caribou/ar...