Visitor Counter

hitwebcounter web counter
Visitors Since Blog Created in March 2010

Click Below to:

Add Blog to Favorites

Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

Subscribe via email to get updates

Enter your email address:

Receive New Posting Alerts

(A Maximum of One Alert Per Day)

Friday, October 29, 2010

We have discussed the need for expanded wildlife road crossings if we are to optimize Carnivore populations and their gene pools.................Automatic sensing detectors in the Upper Midwest and certain Western States proving capable or reducing road kills by 90%....Florida on the verge of utilizing to prevent Mountain Lions from being cut down on highways

New Traffic Warning System Aims to Cut Florida Panther Road-kill Deaths.



Florida panther. Photo: USFWS
In the November-December issue, Kurt Repanshek writes about an innovative approach to decrease Florida panther deaths:

Recognizing shadows in the dark is hard at best, but if they trigger a motion detector, it just might be possible to glimpse them. That's the thinking behind Florida officials' new plan to help stop highly endangered Florida panthers from becoming road kill.
A creature once thought destined to follow the passenger pigeon into extinction, the panther has rebounded from only about 20 wild individuals in the 1970s to perhaps 100 today. But the path to a self-sustaining population is treacherous because of inbreeding, habitat loss, and highways that slice through their territories. By mid-summer vehicles had killed 11 of the tawny cats—about 10 percent of the known population.
The feline ghosts can stretch seven feet from tail tip to nose and cover 20 miles a day in search of white-tailed deer, wild hogs, and small game. Some of those miles, unfortunately, put them on a collision course with cars and trucks. A $675,000 grant secured by Defenders of Wildlife will be committed this fall to an "animal detection system" that will alert motorists to cats on the move.
 
Depending on which system officials opt for, a roadside warning sign will flash when a panther—or any large mammal—crosses an infrared or laser beam, or when a sensor detects body heat and movement.
Such technology has been used in Arizona, Wyoming, Washington, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to warn drivers of approaching elk and deer. In some cases, collisions have dropped 97 percent, says Marcel Huijser, a Montana State University research ecologist who helps test such systems. While panthers present a more ground-hugging target than deer, Huijser doesn't think that will be a problem.
The system selected will be installed near the junction of Turner River Road and U.S. 41 in southwestern Big Cypress National Preserve, which offers top-notch panther habitat. Placing it here, where roughly 2,700 vehicles a day zoom by, could significantly reduce road-kill mortality.
 
"Florida panther conservation and recovery is arguably among the most challenging species conservation questions in the country," says Paul Souza, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's South Florida Ecological Services Office field supervisor. "It's an extraordinarily wide-ranging animal, and this is one of our highest priorities."
 
Read more stories from the November-December

No comments: