This week’s column deals with a government agency’s desire to kill an elk that escaped from a captive deer facility. Politicians won’t let them. Read on:
Archive for the ‘Wildlife’ Category
Escaped elk ignites debate over disease
Sunday, February 12, 2012Homeowners encounter purple squirrel
Friday, February 10, 2012
Just when you thought you’d heard everything…
From the Associated Press:
JERSEY SHORE, Pa. (AP) — A couple in central Pennsylvania found a very unusual critter in their backyard — a purple squirrel.
Percy Emert said he and his wife, Connie, have cage-like traps in their yard to keep squirrels away from the bird feeders. Percy Emery then releases the squirrels into the woods away from his home but joked that sometimes they make it back to his house before he does.
“I came home (one day recently) and my wife said, ‘You’re not going to believe it but I saw a purple squirrel in the yard,’” he said Thursday. “So I put out a trap with a couple of peanuts inside.”
Before too long, the squirrel came back and found itself in the trap Sunday.
“I thought, ‘Nobody’s going to believe me,” he said. “Even the inside of its ears were purple. It wasn’t like it fell into something. It didn’t look like that at all.”
The animal quickly became an online sensation and even has its own Facebook page.
After the couple released the squirrel Tuesday, Percy Emert said a state game warden came by and took samples of purple fur that the squirrel left behind inside the cage, as well as six to eight pieces of fur that Percy Emert took from the squirrel’s tail before releasing it.
“It looked like it was healthy, the only thing was that its teeth were brown,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of having this particular squirrel making its way back to his house, Emert said he thought it was unlikely.
“It’s far enough away,” he said. “Maybe we’ll hear about someone in town seeing it.”
Henry Kacprzyk, a curator at the Pittsburgh Zoo, said Thursday he thought it looked like a gray squirrel tinged in purple, after looking at a picture of the critter on an iPhone.
He knows of albino squirrels. Black squirrels. Gray squirrels. Reddish squirrels.
“But the purple coloration, from the purple I saw … it looked to me like this animal had come in contact with something with its fur and dyed its fur,” Kacprzyk said. The squirrel could have come in contact with a pokeberry patch, but pokeberries aren’t in season.
“I’ve got to think one of the suggestions might be it fell in a Porta John that had blue coloration,” he said with a chuckle. “I have no idea why … but I don’t think it was born that way.”
When asked about the suggestions by some people in online forums of the potential impact of fracking fluid, Kacprzyk said the composition of such fluids in Pennsylvania wasn’t known. “My guess there is if you don’t know something, is that there’s no scientific proof to that. … I would find it amazing that it had that kind of effect,” he said.
In general, purple is an unusual color for mammals, let alone squirrels.
“There are definitely birds that have coloration like this … but not mammals,” he said. “Mammals don’t normally uptake color, ingest something it goes through and (then) it comes out through their fur.”
Accuweather.com first reported the discovery.
An Arctic falcon in Southern California?
Thursday, February 9, 2012You can tell it’s an exceptionally cold year in the Great White North.
Recent blog posts have covered an extraordinary southward winter migration of snow owls as well as the extraordinary steps Alaskans are taking to keep snowbound moose from getting killed on plowed roads and railways.
Now here’s a new one: A gyrfalcon, ordinarily found in the Arctic, has turned up in California. From the Associated Press:
PERRIS, Calif. (AP) — An arctic bird that has never been reported in Southern California has taken up residence near Lake Perris, drawing throngs of bird watchers hoping to catch a glimpse of the world’s largest falcon.
The Press-Enterprise says the taupe-and-white gyrf alcon was first spotted at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area on Jan. 15.
UC Riverside biology professor Mark Chappell, who snapped numerous photos of the bird that day, says he couldn’t believe his eyes. He says there have been 10 accepted accounts of gyrfalcon sightings in California since 1948, and the farthest south was the Central Valley.
No one is certain why the bird has strayed so far. Extreme weather or the movements of a food source can push birds beyond their normal territories.
How to save a moose
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Alaskan moose (Erwin Bauer, courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Moose lovers in Alaska are hating life right now. Deep drifts caused by mammoth snowfalls are forcing moose onto plowed roads, where they’re getting killed at a startling rate.
The Alaska Moose Federation has come up with a plan to save the moose — and motorists who collide with the half-ton creatures. From the Associated Press:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Feeding an Alaska moose is normally taboo, but state wildlife officials will make an exception this year because of extraordinary circumstances — deep snow.
The Department of Fish and Game announced Monday that a permit has been issued to the Alaska Moose Federation allowing the advocacy group to take measures in southcentral Alaska that will divert moose from roads, driveways and railroad lines, which moose seek out in heavy snow years. The measures include feeding stations and, perhaps as important, trails that moose can use to move to natural feeding areas.
Tony Kavalok, assistant director of the Wildlife Conservation Division, said public safety drove the decision.
“We hope the diversionary feeding stations will lure moose away from roads and will reduce moose-vehicle collisions and other dangerous encounters,” he said in the announcement.
Kavalok estimates that more than 600 moose have been killed by cars, trucks and trains so far this winter in the Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula and the Matanuska-Susitna boroughs, where the tactics will be applied. He didn’t have an exact count, but the Mat-Su Borough a few weeks ago had listed the moose kill at 315.
“All I can tell you is that we’re way above normal,” he said by phone.
Snow has accumulated to more than 4 feet deep in some places, making snow shoes a necessity for humans leaving a trail. It’s not just the quantity of the snow that’s the problem, Kavalok said. The quality also can be an issue if moose are breaking through crust.
“It makes it very difficult to move around,” he said.
Moose punching through the snow burn more calories.
“They end up spending a lot more energy, which they need to overwinter,” he said. Their long legs serve them well until the snow gets higher than 34 to 40 inches, he said.
Moose gravitate to plowed areas to conserve energy, putting them and drivers in harm’s way.
Alaska Moose Federation Director Gary Olson said his group has state grants to expand moose-kill salvage programs and to relocate moose from high-contact areas but neither will be used for the diversion effort. The group will instead rely on donations and this week received the first installment of a $50,000 gift from Allstate Insurance Co.
“That’s a good start,” Olson said. “We’re going to be requesting assistance from state agencies, from the railroad, and other partners,” he said.
An elementary school called to say it wanted to raise money for haylage. One 4-foot-wide bale from a local farmer will cost the federation $50.
“Now that we have this permit, we can actually start picking up partners as fast as we can to offset this damage that’s well under way,” Olson said.
The moose federation will identify areas with high moose concentrations and try to lure moose to natural feeding areas by setting trails away from roads, Kavalok said. Part of the attraction will be bales of silage or “haylage,” a crop that carries some nutritional value for moose. The federation may also seek permits to cut down trees and other natural vegetation that will divert moose from roads.
According to the permit, trails should be oriented to be parallel to nearby roads or railways. The moose federation will need permission from landowners before creating trails or diversionary feed. Trails will have to be at least a quarter-mile from public roads or railroads.
The alternate travel routes will not be set up immediately, Kavalok said.
“It will be a process,” he said. “It might take a couple or three weeks.”
It will remain a misdemeanor for people to feed moose if they don’t have a permit. Kavalok said feeding moose is dangerous people, as well as their neighbors.
Moose can turn aggressive and demanding to protect a food supply. They can also eat the wrong things. What people might believe is moose food may not be digestible for the ungulates, leading to serious health problems, he said.
W.Va. might (finally!) regulate exotic wildlife
Sunday, February 5, 2012All I can say is that it’s about time. It’s a shame, though, that it took last summer’s exotic wildlife tragedy in Ohio to spur West Virginia’s lawmakers into action. For decades the state’s wildlife laws have contained loopholes literally big enough to walk an elephant through.
From the Associated Press:
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia has joined a string of states looking to regulate or ban exotic animals kept as pets following the release of dozens of wild animals in an Ohio town last year.
The Senate introduced a bill this week that would require current owners of such animals to obtain a permit and inspection from the Division of Natural Resources and generally bans breeding and possession of non-native, wild animals. A related bill in the House of Delegates would ban future purchases and prohibit breeding but does not provide a permitting process.
Animals under the ban could include snow leopards, cobras and crocodiles.
Both bills also detail records that the owners must keep or present to health or animal control officials and allow the animals to be confiscated.
The Senate bill currently lacks a specific list of animals and lawmakers are working to change the wording before the Natural Resources Committee could consider the issue as early as next week, said Sen. William Laird, the committee’s chair.
The Fayette County Democrat said the bills were prompted by the release of dozens of animals by a private owner in Zanesville, Ohio, last October. Police were forced to kill 48 of the animals and several others were taken to zoos for care and treatment.
“In West Virginia we don’t currently have what are considered to be adequate laws relating to exotic animals,” Laid said. “This legislation is intended to bring some elements of oversight to that process for persons would choose to have animals that are not indigenous to this region.”
Existing state law provides pet permits for some native animals and commercial permits for captive deer. State law also prohibits keeping some animals like raccoons as pets because of the risk of rabies, said Paul Johansen, assistant chief in charge of game management with the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.
But officials have no idea how many people own exotic animals because state law doesn’t require owners to report them, Johansen said.
“A lot of this stuff takes place underneath the radar screen,” he said. “We don’t know where they are. We don’t know how many there are. We don’t how they are being housed or if they’re a threat to local communities.”
The last time DNR officers encountered an exotic animal, a tiger had escaped its cage and was spotted several miles away from Snowshoe Mountain Resort in 2008, Johansen said.
The Humane Society of the United States supports the House version of the bill. The organization wants to prohibit breeding and prevent future wild animal purchases in the state in order to reduce the risk of spreading diseases to domestic animals and humans, said Summer Wyatt, the state director in West Virginia.
Exotic animals that escape or set free pose a risk to native wildlife. Constricting snakes are a particular problem in West Virginia, Wyatt said.
Owners purchase them when they are small and manageable. But when they grow to full size, owners often can’t care for them or grow tired of them and let them loose. The constrictors, which can kill a full-size deer, have no local predators and often breed, she said.
“It is really scary how these animals can affect our world when they’re in the wrong places,” Wyatt said.
The West Virginia Legislature considered a similar bill several years ago but lawmakers showed little interest and the measure stalled. But the release and destruction of the animals in Ohio showed lawmakers just how dangerous owning wild creatures can be, she said.
The Legislature giveth, and the Legislature taketh away. At the very same time they’re proposing to bring exotic animals under the Division of Natural Resources’ jurisdiction, they’re considering a bill that would take captive deer facilities out of the DNR’s control and place it under the Department of Agriculture.
Hunter needs rabies shots after killing rabid deer
Friday, February 3, 2012
For the second day in a row, I’m posting a rabies story. This one’s a little unusual, though. It involves a hunter and a rabid deer. Here’s the release from the Pennsylvania Game Commission:
HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania Game Commission officials today announced that a Lancaster County hunter has undergone post-exposure rabies shots after harvesting and field dressing a deer on Jan. 20, in Valley Township, Chester County, that ultimately tested positive for rabies.
“The hunter contacted us about his concerns that the deer was unfit for human consumption,” said John Veylupek, Game Commission Wildlife Conservation Officer (WCO). “The hunter said that he saw the deer standing in a creek, straining and growling. He thought there was a coyote nearby from the sounds the deer was making.
“After gathering information from the hunter, as well as samples for testing, it was determined that the deer was rabid. Because the hunter had scratches on his hands and had field dressed the deer without wearing gloves, we considered this a human exposure and urged him to contact his doctor about post-exposure rabies shots.”
Dr. Walter Cottrell, Game Commission wildlife veterinarian, reiterated the agency’s long-standing recommendations that hunters and trappers avoid harvesting animals that appear sick and to wear rubber or latex gloves when field dressing any mammal.
“All mammals are susceptible to rabies and can spread the virus in the right circumstances,” Dr. Cottrell said. “To prevent the spread of wildlife diseases, we encourage hunters and trappers to contact the Game Commission about any animals that they encounter that may appear to be sick. Also, when field dressing any mammal, it is critical to wear rubber or latex gloves to prevent exposure to not just rabies, but also to other disease organisms.”
Hat tip: J.R. Absher at The Outdoor Pressroom.
Show-and-tell bat sparks rabies scare
Thursday, February 2, 2012I don’t quite understand why a Rhode Island man felt compelled to walk through Providence holding a box that contained a live bat, but he obviously got something out of it.
Unfortunately, he apparently also felt compelled to show the bat to people. And, naturally, it bit someone. Rabies scare!
From the Associated Press:
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Health officials are warning people who were in downtown Providence last week that they may have been exposed to rabies when a man was showing off a bat he had in a box.
Officials say the man was displaying the animal in Kennedy Plaza on the morning of Jan. 23. A health care provider alerted health officials after treating one onlooker for a bat bite and another for suspected rabies exposure.
Bat rabies is highly contagious. Health officials say they’re not sure if the bat had rabies, but they’re advising people who were at the plaza that morning to have themselves checked out and to call the Department of Health.
Officials say the unidentified man was in his 50s and was about 6 feet tall with a beard and glasses.
Study: Giant snakes devastate mammal populations
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
A Burmese python killed in Florida
Wow. Biologists working in the Florida Everglades have confirmed what they suspected all along — that Burmese pythons are consuming mammals at a startling rate. To see just how startling, read on. From the Associated Press:
MIAMI _ While Burmese pythons boomed in the Everglades, populations of key native animals headed in the opposite direction — their numbers crashing to near-zero in the case of bite-sized creatures such as raccoons, opossums and marsh rabbits.
Those are the findings of a sobering study published Monday, the first by scientists to assess the impact the giant constrictors have had on the complex food web of the Everglades. A word sums it up: carnage.
Scientists have firmly established what pythons eat, pulling the remains of just about everything that walks, crawls or flies in the Everglades from the bellies of captured snakes over the last decade. But just how much a snake population of unknown size has been eating has largely been a guess, at least until now.
According to the study published in the science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the probable answer is, once again, just about everything.
“When we actually did the calculations, we were astonished by the magnitude of the declines,” said Michael Dorcas, a biology professor at Davidson College in North Carolina and the study’s lead author.
The peer-reviewed study, based on nocturnal field surveys conducted before and after the python invasion, suggests a collapse of the park’s mid-sized mammal populations since the mid-1990s and points to the exotic snake as prime suspect.
Raccoons — once so abundant that park managers had to post signs warning campers to safeguard food from roaming hoards of the wily thieves — dropped 99.3 percent. Opossum sightings fell 98.9 percent. Observations of bobcats, foxes and deer also all fell precipitously, though researchers believe those declines could be less from snakes eating them and more from the indirect effect of pythons reducing the amount of prey to go around.
And marsh rabbits, small brown bunnies frequently seen foraging along roads in the park’s pre-python past, didn’t appear at all during the surveys.
Frank Mazzotti, a wildlife ecology professor at the University of Florida, likened the study to a grand jury investigation — a damning initial finding that needs more research to refine and confirm.
“We examined all the evidence and there is enough to indict pythons but we haven’t gone to trial yet,” said Mazzotti, one of 11 university and federal government researchers who co-authored the study.
Other factors, such as changes in Everglades water levels that can affect the food chain at microscopic levels may have contributed to the mammal decline as well, he said.
Still, the Obama administration pointed to the findings as more justification for the decision earlier this month to ban the import and interstate sale of Burmese pythons, two types of African rock pythons and yellow anacondas. The decision to declare them “injurious species” had been criticized by reptile breeders and collectors, as well as some Republican lawmakers who contend the measure would kill jobs in the cottage industry of constrictor breeding.
The study suggests a strong link between the rise of the snake and the fall of the bunnies and other mammals, finding little support for other possible causes. Between 2000 and 2010, a period when python captures soared from two to nearly 400 a year, no diseases swept the mammal population and there were no big losses of habitat or other major environmental changes that might explain the declines, the study found.
Besides the coincidental timing, researchers also found a pattern across the landscape, with the greatest losses in the southern portion of the park in and around Flamingo, where the python infestation has been heaviest. Mammal populations are strong on the park’s fringes or in adjacent areas.
“Our data are consistent in any number of ways with python as the primary reason or maybe the only reason, either directly or indirectly,” said Dorcas, author of the book “Invasive Pythons in the United States.”
Scientists can only guess at the population of Burmese pythons in the vast expanse of the Everglades, estimating the number in the tens of thousands, even after a record freeze in 2010 that may have knocked the population back by half or more. A month after the cold snap, biologists captured a 16-foot female in a nest with more than 100 eggs.
To assess the impact of pythons on wildlife, researchers counted live animals and road kill during sunset-to-sunrise surveys from 2003 to 2011, driving slowly along the main roads in Everglades National Park and counting the most common and easy-to-spot animals. They conducted 313 surveys, covering some 39,000 miles, as well as 26 surveys at sites along the park border and in adjacent federally protected lands. They compared the results to similar surveys conducted in 1996, before pythons had spread across much of the Everglades.
The changes in 15 years were startling. Before pythons, a raccoon would show up every 30 miles or so, according to the study. In more recent years, researchers would go nights without seeing a single one.
The systematic surveys, called transects, don’t necessarily mean that the animals have disappeared completely. But the results are a measure of “relative abundance” and that’s considered a good indicator of trends across the entire system, Dorcas said.
The surveys, he said, also are supported by numerous anecdotal reports from rangers, naturalists, photographers and others who have seen sharp drops in mammal numbers. The study notes that that last visitor to report a nuisance raccoon did so in 2005.
“Pythons are wreaking havoc on one of America’s most beautiful, treasured and naturally bountiful ecosystems,” said Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, whose scientists contributed to the study. “Right now, the only hope to halt further python invasion into new areas is swift, decisive and deliberate human action.”
Bitten by bat, man dies of rabies
Sunday, January 29, 2012It doesn’t happen often in the United States, but it happened last week in Massachusetts. From the Associated Press:
BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) — A Cape Cod man who contracted rabies from a bat’s bite late last year has died of the illness, the first confirmed case of human rabies in Massachusetts since 1935, according to public records and officials.
The Cape Cod Times reports that Kevin Galvin, 63, president of the Marstons Mills Historical Society and owner of a historic home in the center of that village in Barnstable, died Monday in a Boston hospital of the neurological illness.
The state Department of Public Health cited patient confidentiality laws in declining to confirm Galvin’s identity as the person who had been hospitalized, but the newspaper reports that it obtained his death certificate and it lists rabies encephalitis as the cause of his death.
Rabies is a deadly virus that spreads to humans from the saliva of infected animals. The disease affects the central nervous system and brain.
State officials said in December that a Massachusetts man had been hospitalized as the first confirmed case of human rabies in the state in decades, and Barnstable’s health director later elaborated that the victim was a local man in his 60s.
Tests conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the disease was transmitted by a common species of brown bat, although it was unknown exactly when and where Galvin was bitten. Officials have said they believe he was bitten on his own property.
Lee Mannillo of the Cape Cod Rabies Task Force told the Cape Cod Times that Galvin had undergone an innovative treatment called the “Milwaukee protocol.” It treatment involves administering a cocktail of sedatives while allowing the body to produce natural antibodies to fight off the infection.
He died last Monday, and his funeral took place Saturday.
Galvin’s siblings told the Cape Cod Times that they did not want to talk to the media about their brother’s death, and his wife indicated the same through a friend.
Galvin was widely praised by fellow residents who said he was devoted to the Marstons Mills village, where he had lived for 11 years and was active in environmental issues, loved history and enjoyed restoring his 231-year-old home.
To some fellow residents like Al Baker, Galvin was jokingly known as “the mayor of Marstons Mills.”
“I found him to be a very good guy,” said Baker, who said he was shocked by Galvin’s illness and death, finding it “very sad and disheartening.”
Barnstable Health Director Thomas McKean did not return phone calls, and had said earlier in the week that the victim’s family members had requested privacy.
The last confirmed case of human rabies contracted in Massachusetts was in 1935, with the victim believed to have been a teenager from Saugus.
In 1983, a 30-year-old Waltham man died after being exposed to rabies, apparently from a dog bite in Africa. The man developed symptoms, including high temperature, difficulty breathing, sore throat and excessive salivation, about three months after returning to the U.S., and was admitted to Waltham Hospital, according to CDC records. He died a few weeks later.
There have been other instances over the years in which individuals infected elsewhere have received treatment in Massachusetts because of the state’s highly-regarded hospital system.
The CDC said rabies-related human deaths have fallen dramatically in the U.S. from 100 or more annually at the turn of the century to no more than 2 or 3 per year, most but not all involving bats.
The CDC reported two other fatal human rabies cases this year, one in New York and one in New Jersey, with both victims believed to have acquired the disease from dog bites outside the U.S., Haiti in one case and Afghanistan the other.
While U.S. cases are rare, worldwide an estimated 55,000 people die from rabies each year.
Teaching wolves not to eat cattle
Sunday, January 29, 2012
A Mexican gray wolf at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (AP Photo)
Researchers in New Mexico are trying to teach captive Mexican gray wolves to dislike beef. The idea is to prevent the wolves from killing cattle once they’re reintroduced into the wild.
It’s an interesting premise, and it might just work on the wolves awaiting relocation. One wonders, though, if the offspring of those wolves would retain their parents’ distaste for beef. The researchers seem to think they would; frankly I have doubts.
Interesting reading, though, from the Associated Press’ Susan Montoya Bryan:
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