FWS studying pssible listing for Monarch

This just in from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced it will be conducting a status review of the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Service has determined that a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Dr. Lincoln Brower to list a subspecies of monarch (Danaus plexippus plexippus) presents substantial information indicating that listing may be warranted. 

Monarch butterflies are found throughout the United States and some populations migrate vast distances across multiple generations each year. Many monarchs fly between the U.S., Mexico and Canada – a journey of over 3,000 miles. This journey has become more perilous for many monarchs because of threats along their migratory paths and on their breeding and wintering grounds. Threats include habitat loss – particularly the loss of milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s sole food source – and mortality resulting from pesticide use. Monarch populations have declined significantly in recent years.

The Service will now conduct a status review to determine whether listing is warranted. To ensure this status review is comprehensive, the Service is requesting scientific and commercial data and other information through a 60-day public information period. Specifically, the Service seeks information including:

• The subspecies’ biology, range and population trends, habitat requirements, genetics and taxonomy;
• Historical and current range, including distribution patterns;
• Historical and current population levels and current and projected trends;
• The life history or behavior of the monarch butterfly that has not yet been documented;
• Thermo-tolerance range and microclimate requirements of the monarch butterfly;
• Past and ongoing conservation measures for the subspecies, its habitat or both;  and,
• Factors that are the basis for making a listing determination under section 4(a) of the ESA;

The notice will publish in the Federal Register December 31, 2014, and it is requested that information be received by March 2, 2015. To view the notice and submit information, visit www.regulations.gov docket number FWS-R3-ES-2014-0056.

For more information on the ESA’s petition process, visit http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/listing-petition-process.html.

Recovery of Mexican lobo suffers another blow

The politicians netted another win while the Southwest's premier natural predator suffered another loss with the administrative BS noted in this article.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo's SW population declared threatened

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the ruling yesterday, and it's none too soon, in my estimation. Read the agency's decision here.

Delmarva fox squirrel to leave ESA list

From my first visit to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on Delmarva, watching for individual Delmarva Fox Squirrels became a mission. Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a proposed rule removing the species from Endangered Species Act listing. That means the species has recovered enough to warrant removal from the list of T/E species. Read the proposed rule here. And here's wa photo of Fox Squirrel habitat.

Judge restores protection for Gray Wolves in Wyoming

The reintroduction of Gray Wolves to the Intermountain West was a real, honest-to-gosh wildlife conservation success story. I remember seeing photos move on the Associated Press wire the day that Intgerior Secretary Bruce Babbit and other high-vis celebrities released the first batch of Canis luplus at Yellowstone. Since that day, the livestock-friendly state lawmakers of Wyoming and Idaho have done their best to kill, rather than sustain, Gray Wolves that now call their states home. Here's some good conservation news.

ESA protection sought for Monarch butterfly

I've been watching and counting Monarchs for decades and have lots of memories of watching them migrating south over the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay (among other locales). I was very fortunate to have found one adult Monarch this summer while walking a nature trail at Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge in northern Vermont (see accompanying photo). The species is in trouble and a group of petitioners (read this article) are asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to grant Endangered Species Act protection to Danaus plexipus. If Dr. Lincoln Brower, who has studied the Monarch since the 1950s, says the species is in trouble then it very much is.

2 Florida butterfly species gain ESA listing

Good news for the two lep species, but sad that habitat destruction forced the issue. See https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/08/12/2014-18614/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-endangered-status-for-the-florida-leafwing-and

Calif. court: Leave water for imperiled fish

A great uninformed human body has apparently forgotten (or never knew or cared to know) that humans are part of the Web of Life. Read about a court's decision regarding water and the Delta Smelt.

The toll of human "taking:" Wildlife buried alive

Naturalists, conservationists, and just-plain folks who enjoy the countryside of Wild Nature have known about this sad reality for many decades. But others and their “development” outfits, fueled by greed, fossil fuel and the dollar bill, conveniently ignore what happens to terrestrial wildlife that crawls, walks or slithers slower than a bulldozer or grader chugs along, wrecking – forever, almost always – the wild homes of those same critters.

Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen, in a May 7, 2006 essay headlined “Killing Animals for Profit,” wrote this, in part, about the burying of Gopher Tortoises in Florida – that’s the “burying alive” of the animal:

“Consider Florida’s poor, pokey Gopher Tortoise. Since 1991, the state has allowed grown-ups to bury 74,000 of them because their burrows stood in the path of future subdivisions, highways, golf courses, and supermarkets.

“Officials prefer the word ‘entomb’ instead of ‘bury’, but it’s the same dirty deed. Even on its most fleet-footed day, the average tortoise cannot outrace earthmoving machinery. Some are able to tunnel to freedom, but most suffocate slowly over a period of weeks.

“Gopher tortoises have been around for 60 million years, but the last few decades have been murder,” Hiaasen wrote. (Readers can take in the whole piece. It’s in Hiaasen’s new paperback titled “Dance of the Reptiles,” a collection of columns he’s written for the Herald.)

To learn more about this reptile, read a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fact sheet about the species at www.fws.gov/northflorida/gophertortoise/gopher_tortoise_fact_sheet.html

Observers of Wild Nature have been watching, and taking field notes about, these kinds of unnatural, killing events for many decades. A field notebook of mine from the mid-1990s includes notes I took of the clearing of an urban forest in West Hazleton. That land, for more than a decade now, has been home to parking lots, retail shops, a supermarket, and a hardware store.

Among the observations I recorded on first seeing this clearing away of nature: “There goes hundreds of hibernating salamanders, likely a screech owl roosting cavity, and the tree-cavity homes of woodpeckers and nuthatches as well as the habitat for a diverse array of songbirds.” Hazleton-area residents who recall what that land once looked like are likely few in number today. But, there are many other case studies across the country.

Sadly, many such places are passed on the way to a protected natural area, a spot where Wild Nature is appreciated for, among other reasons, its positive impact to the human quality-of-life scale.

I see, and study a bit, scenes the one just described while on long fitness walks in northern Vermont. And a trip a couple of years ago to sprawl-mad Colorado Springs yielded more field notes on the local extirpation of nature.

Coming to grips with this habitat loss is made easier, and more meaningful to the observer, when thinking about it in terms of its toll on a favorite wildlife species. For me, as a longtime watcher of the herpetological world (reptiles and amphibians) that brings to mind the Red-backed Salamander. I Googled the species’ name and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (yes, there are state agencies whose mission encompasses both terrestrial wildlife and fish (unlike Pennsylvania, which has two agencies) offers this capsule of information: “This salamander is found under rocks, leaf litter, and rotten logs in deciduous, conifer, and mixed forests throughout Virginia. It nests in rotting logs or stumps or in cavities beneath rocks. It occurs at a variety of elevations, from the crest of Whitetop Mountain to areas as low as 3,000 feet.”

What happens to such animals when a front-end loader or grader shows up?

The same end as Gopher Tortoises continue suffering in Florida.

Utah agency seeks $1M to spend against sage grouse ESA listing

In Utah, once again, science takes a  back seat to politics as the director of that state's public land "policy" office demonstrates in the quotes she gave to the author of this newspaper article. State government officials in Utah continue to find stupid ways in which to throw away taxpayers' money. Instead of working to restore and save Wild Nature,  Utah seems intent on just paving it all over.

Don't use the drought as an excuse to gut Endangered Species Act

That's the gut-level hope expressed by this American Rivers action alert. Legislators, most of them Republicans, will stoop to any new low in serving the wishes of their campaign contributors.

Cars vs. wildlife: Cars keep on winning

It didn’t take long for the new year’s first car vs. wildlife milestone to reach the headline-making point. The Associated Press report: “An endangered Florida Panther (Puma concolor coryi) has been killed in a three-car crash in southwest Florida.
“It's the first recorded Panther death of the year. Wildlife officials say collisions with vehicles pose a significant threat to the rare cats. Roughly 100 to 160 adult panthers remain in the wild. (Read a fact sheet about the species at www.fws.gov/verobeach/MSRPPDFs/FloridaPanther.pdf)
“Darrell Land of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the Panther fatally struck by a vehicle Thursday along Interstate 75 in Collier County was a young male that weighed up to 120 pounds. Biologists believe he was the same cat that has been roaming a Naples neighborhood recently.  Florida Highway Patrol officials say minor injuries were reported after the crash.
“Land says 20 panther deaths were recorded last year. Most of the Panther deaths recorded in recent years are caused by collisions with vehicles.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tracks such data because the Florida Panther is among the most critically endangered native mammals and it has management authority through the Endangered Species Act. The Florida FWCC helps simply because it’s Florida.
While in Boise, Idaho, for three weeks of visiting my sister and her family and our mother, tradition called for me to head east to the much smaller city of Mountain Home – first, to visit an aunt and uncle (Bob, like me, is retired from the Air Force; he’s a chief master sergeant, the top enlisted rank), and then to shop at the Mountain Home Air Force Base “Base Exchange” (known to retired and current military people as the BX).
To get there meant driving a stretch of I-84 that’s famous (or is it infamous?) as the place where, just over the last decade alone, dozens of Barn Owls have been hit and killed by passing vehicles.
The Idaho Fish and Game Department collects roadkill data on this owl species because there, like Pennsylvania, it’s a species of special concern, one that demands a conservation strategy of its own.
The plus side: Since moving to Vermont in 2011, I’ve seen only two roadkill white-tailed deer along a highway shoulder. That’s a heartening anecdote since roadkill whitetails were often-times found on this or that street in Conyngham Borough through my two decades of residency there.
A fundamental truth about America’s century of love of the automobile is this: The infrastructure (roads, streets, freeways, highways, driveways) associated with the nation’s automotive fleet is directly responsible for ongoing and deepening reductions in our natural heritage; what conservation biologists call “biological diversity or simply “biodiversity.”
The principal issue is fragmentation – the fragmentation of otherwise quality habitat by the construction of a road and the sprawl development that often accompanies new strips of asphalt.
And for more than two decades now, the tailpipe emission from that fleet of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide has worsened what scientists have warned over those same years is causing our planet’s climate to change.
This isn’t a far-fetched liberal fantasy, or something dreamed up by progressives. It’s real and is happening. The Arctic cold snap that we Vermonters just endured is weather, not climate.
In Boise, the daily  three-mile walk between my mother’s assisted living center and the hotel I stayed in gave me – as walking always does – a chance to see the world one can’t get close to while seated in the cockpit of a car, SUV or truck. I coined the term “carbon dioxide factory” to describe the daily mishmash of traffic jams – some of them extending down Cole Road or Fairview Avenue or Milwaukee Street for two-plus miles at a hack.
An addendum: Boise, like many other municipalities, does a lot and spends a lot to make life better for cars. But what about people who choose to walk or bicycle?
Yes, Idaho’s capital city does seem to have more bicyclists per capita than any metro area in Luzerne County, Pa. And it was especially heartening to watch cyclists riding on snow-and-ice-covered bicycle lanes on the busiest arterial streets (see the list above).
But Boise is especially emblematic of the environmental and societal ills that always accompany a city’s reliance on private automobiles. On each of my three treks to The Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey (10 or so miles south of the metro area), I passed through a space-time continuum known by the nation’s planning and zoning officials as “sprawl.”
The high desert habitat that once widely separated city from a part of the Great Basin  Desert has been paved and built on to the very political (not ecological) boundary of federal public land.
And it was reliance on the private car that made it possible. Our fellow Americans who choose to live in this and other asteroid belts of sprawl must drive their car, SUV or truck to complete the most mundane of household chores, like buying a half-gallon of milk.

Crank your car’s engine to life and it too becomes part of the carbon dioxide emissions factory.

The EPA: “While not regulated as an air pollutant, (carbon dioxide) is the transportation sector’s primary contribution to climate change. Carbon dioxide emissions are essentially proportional to fuel consumption (and inversely proportional to fuel economy) – each 1 percent increase in fuel consumption results in a corresponding 1 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

“About 19.4 pounds of carbon dioxide is produced for every gallon of gasoline combusted.”

For advocates of conservation focused both of habitat (the land) and wildlife,  “Present-day protected areas will not be enough to help wildlife survive the coming impacts of climate change,” states a release from the Wildlands Network. “Conservation biologists now believe that the only way to accommodate the needs of wildlife as unpredictable climate patterns emerge is to protect, restore, and connect a larger mosaic of habitat and vegetation types – much of it outside the outlines of today’s national parks, monuments and wilderness areas.”

Natural Resources Defense Council: “Moreover, the loss of undeveloped landscapes threatens economic as well as psychological values. Over 130 million Americans enjoy observing, photographing, and feeding wildlife and fish, thus supporting a nature-oriented tourist industry in excess of $14 billion annually.

“The National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation found that 77 percent of the U.S. population enjoys some form of wildlife-related recreation, and a 1987 poll sponsored by the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors found that ‘natural beauty was the single most important criterion for tourists selecting outdoor recreation sites.’ Independent of recreation and tourism, proximity to open spaces has been found to raise the value of residential property by as much as a third in some cases, raising property tax revenues as well.”

If you walk to your workplace and/or walk to the food market, congratulations for doing your part (i.e., burning calories, not a fossil fuel). If you’re walking is limited to, for example, getting from your front door to the garage door, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.

Wolf decision guided by science, or politics?

Dear Alan:

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s (FWS) clumsy handling of its drive to strip federal protections from the gray wolf is making a mockery of its claims to be guided by science. The latest episode is jaw-dropping embarrassing.

After the agency railroaded its plan to a final stage, it announced a slap-dash,fast-track peer review process to be completed in one month. Then last week, PEER revealed that the Service had three of the seven reviewers selected by its contract consultant purged from the panel. The three removed scientists are among the very top wolf experts but the Service barred them because they had signed a letter with 13 other scientists expressing concern about the scientific basis for the federal delisting plan.

This week, FWS cancelled the peer review altogether, refusing to answer media questions beyond issuing a terse statement explaining that what occurred “doesn't meet the standard for independent peer review selections.” 

Incredible.

Since it was FWS which compromised the independence of the panel by screening out potential scientific critics its action is like a lothario spurning his conquest because she is no longer chaste. In any event, the Service is certain to cook up yet another charade that allows it to avoid confronting the issues raised by eminent scientists (whose May 21st letter was never answered).

The transparent official hypocrisy does not stop there. As much as it wanted to, FWS could not strip federal protections from the highly endangered Mexican wolf, with only a mangy handful left in the wild.  But the Service has done everything it can to limit reintroduction of the Mexican wolf in the Southwest. 

Now, an August 1 letter from the Arizona Game & Fish Department confirms another backroom deal in which FWS committed that any Mexican wolves who ventured beyond the Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area (a sliver of land on the Arizona/New Mexico border) “would be captured and returned.” The letter complains that this “issue of critical importance” was not explicitly written into the final plan despite the “comforting clarification” provided by top FWS officials.

The letter encapsulates what is rotten at FWS – rampant political deal-making that is the exact opposite of promises to rely upon the best available science. Yet, despite a new “Scientific Integrity Policy,” FWS is unwilling to police against even the most blatant abuses. Even in the rare instance thatscientific misconduct is determined, FWS leadership apparently will not act. (The agency is refusing to turn over the findings to PEER but we will continue to pursue them).

Had this occurred under Bush, there would be a huge hue and cry.  Arguably, what is going on now under Obama is far worse. Let Sally Jewell, the new Interior Secretary, know what you think and urge her to step in and stop these appalling shenanigans. 

If you support this work, please let us know.

Sincerely,

A lobo found shot to death in S.W. New Mexico

"Lobo," of course, is another name for the Mexican Gray Wolf. Read about the illegal killing of one right here. I took this photo of a lobo at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in N.M.

Anti-wolf group vague on how it spent taxpayers' money

Big Game Forever (BGF) is the group in question. And it, apparently, has little to no understanding of the historic role of predators (like wolves) in the ecological world of wild nature. BGF is akin to many anti-predator organizations that would wish very much if wildlife "management" in the United States was once again utilizing paid hunters and the bounty system to kill predators. Read about the alleged scam.

Jaguar roving near Rosemont mine site in southern Arizona

The Santa Rita mountains named in this article are beautiful. And a population of jaguars would make them even prettier.

Two South Florida butterflies likely extinct, FWS declares

The extinction crisis lurches onward. The latest from South Florida is this.

Op-ed: Gray wolf's recovery not there yet

Especially with state F&G agencies -- all of them dependent on the revenue from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and tags -- conducting "controlled" hunts of Canis lupus populations. This op-ed makes a convincing argument.

Who would kill a Monk Seal?

That's the question asked by the headline over this NY Times magazine feature. Be sure and read at least some of the comments after taking in the article itself. Planet Earth - our only planet - is in trouble.

Idaho, Mont. urge no federal protection for Wolverine

This is predictable grandstanding from these two states. I remain embarrassed, at times, to admit to having Idaho as my home state.