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Making Room For Predators

5/31/2014

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Making Room For Predators
May 31, 2014
By Bennett Hall
Corvallis Gazette-Times

One of the most enduring symbols of wild America, the wolf, is coming back across the West after being virtually eliminated from the lower 48 states.

Oregon State University ecologist Cristina Eisenberg believes that wolves and other large carnivores can continue to recolonize large parts of their historic range with a little help from humans.

She also believes that, without our assistance, some of North America’s most magnificent wild creatures could disappear forever.

Eisenberg’s new book from Island Press, “The Carnivore Way: Coexisting With and Conserving North America’s Predators,” argues that one of the keys to their survival is the ability to move across the landscape, both to respond to changing environmental conditions and to maintain genetic connections between isolated populations.

The book surveys the conservation status of six imperiled carnivore species — wolves, grizzly bears, lynx, wolverines, cougars and jaguars — and explores the beneficial influences these apex predators have on the ecosystems they inhabit, often helping to restore balance by keeping deer, elk and other herbivores in check. (Eisenberg’s work, along with that of pioneering colleagues such as William Ripple and Robert Beschta, is helping put OSU on the map in the emerging field of trophic cascades research.)

It also makes the case for a continental-scale conservation initiative that would make it easier for big predators to move up and down the Rocky Mountain region from Mexico to Alaska, the mega-corridor she calls the Carnivore Way.

Eisenberg points to the success of the gray wolf recovery effort in the northern Rockies as evidence that carnivore recovery is possible. Since their reintroduction in the mid-1990s, wolf numbers in the region soared to around 1,700. Many packs have recolonized territory on their own through natural dispersal, including eight established packs in Eastern Oregon.


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Oregon’s famous “wandering wolf,” dubbed OR-7 by wildlife managers, is a perfect example, recently finding a mate and establishing a territory near the California border in an area that hadn’t seen a wolf in decades.

“That wolf is a poster wolf,” Eisenberg said. “Right now he’s having a pretty happy ending.”


But that story is still being written and could change in a hurry, she warned.

With the lifting of federal protections for the gray wolf, hunting has made major inroads in some areas, threatening to reverse some of the animal’s hard-won progress in the contiguous United States.

“I feels like we’re in the process of undoing that and getting wolves to the lowest possible number,” Eisenberg said. “Those numbers are not enough to ensure the survival of the species.”

She favors an approach that could make it easier for wolves, bears and other large carnivores to coexist with people in an increasingly human-dominated landscape.

That doesn’t necessarily mean setting aside more land in nature preserves. Rather, it means things like building crossing structures to let wildlife get over or under major highways, establishing regional recovery zones where conservation is a major policy focus, and creating cross-border legal frameworks to coordinate planning efforts among states, provinces and nations.

It also means taking the concerns of people into account.

“I come from a ranching background and a hunting background, so I’m a real pragmatist when it comes to wolf conservation,” Eisenberg said. “You have to consider human needs.”

And it has to be more than simply lending a sympathetic ear.

She cites Oregon’s wolf management plan as an example. Arrived at through a highly collaborative process that included extensive input from ranchers, it includes financial assistance for non-lethal deterrents and the promise of a heads-up from wildlife managers when wolves are in their area.

“It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s one of the best,” Eisenberg said. “Wolves are going to thrive in Oregon if we let them.”

And if it can work here, it can work elsewhere. People, she believes, can find all sorts of new and innovative ways to help wolves and other big predators throughout the Carnivore Way — if that’s what we really want to do.

“I believe we can,” Eisenberg said. “But we need to decide as a society, on a regional basis, whether that’s a priority or not.”


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The Wilderness Act Represents Lessons Learned...

5/24/2014

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By KATE JOHNSTON
For the Concord Monitor
My Turn: Wilderness Act Represents Lessons Learned

Published: Saturday, May 24, 2014

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, a conservation bill that created the National Wilderness Preservation System, which protects more than 100 million acres of American wild land.

New Hampshire, though a small state (9,279 square miles), has six protected wilderness areas: the 29,000-acre Presidential Range/Dry River Wilderness, the 5,552-acre Great Gulf Wilderness, the 45,000-acre Pemigewasset Wilderness, the 35,800-acre Sandwich Range Wilderness, the 14,000-acre Caribou-Speckled Mountain Wilderness, and the 23,700-acre Wild River Wilderness.

Within these areas, animals and plants thrive, untainted. No roads, vehicles, permanent structures are allowed in any of the protected areas. Invasive activities such as logging or mining are not permitted. People can camp, hike and fish, but only according to strict regulations.

A visitor to these areas might find pine martens or peregrine falcons or the endangered plant called three birds orchid, species you won’t generally find in places overrun with humans, species that used to be bountiful 400 years ago, when wolves also roamed freely throughout this state.

These protected areas reflect a once upon a time.

Up until the 1600s, when settlers came to this country, nature managed itself just fine. In New Hampshire, wolves and mountain lions (or Eastern cougars) were the top predators and kept other wildlife populations in check, particularly deer and moose. They only preyed on what they needed to survive, usually killing the vulnerable individuals. This method is known as “culling,” and it helps keep the entire ecosystem in balance.


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Dense forests once flourished across the landscape, harboring New England cottontails and great horned owls. Craggy mountains provided lush habitat for black bear and bald eagles. Bodies of water were clean and clear, chock full of aquatic life like American brook lamprey and spotted turtles that sustained golden eagles, osprey and raccoons. Scavengers such as turkey vultures, foxes and crows ate what the predators didn’t.

These links in the ecosystem are crucial. Top predators keep populations of grazing animals at healthy and manageable levels. This means that vegetation is not at risk for overbrowsing. Plentiful shrubbery and trees provide shelter and food for smaller animals and birds. One missing link can cause nature’s system to collapse.

The face of wilderness changed when Europeans came to settle the land. They ravaged North America’s wild lands to the point where multiple species became endangered or extinct.

Immediately, they saw large predators like wolves and mountain lions as a threat. Incorrectly assuming that these predators were dangerous to humans, they killed them on sight. Settlers leveled forests and cleared out low vegetation, taking over the habitat that wolves and mountain lions required for survival.

People recklessly hunted white-tailed deer for food, decimating the deer population, yet another blow to wolves and mountain lions. When the predators turned to livestock because deer were scarce, people killed them for that, too.

Today, there are no known breeding populations of wolves or mountain lions in New Hampshire. The gray wolf is on the endangered list, and there hasn’t been a confirmed mountain lion sighting in more than 140 years. The Eastern cougar (a subspecies of cougar) once lived in every eastern state in a variety of habitats. It is now considered extinct, and the endangered Florida panther is the only breeding population of cougar east of the Mississippi. The decimation of these predators is a travesty due to habitat loss, limited prey and persecution.

Protecting the wolf and mountain lion in New Hampshire has been a long, heated and complicated battle. With 80 percent of the state forested, New Hampshire’s habitat is ideal for wolves and mountain lions, though not at the same historical levels. Wolf packs need a tremendous amount of space for hunting, usually about 50 to 100 square miles.

Mountain lions, on the other hand, are loners but roam long distances to hunt. Their ranges can vary from 10 square miles to 370 square miles.

While the Wilderness Act doesn’t specifically protect these two top predators, it does protect habitat in which they could live if given the chance. As habitat loss is one of the major reasons large predators have disappeared from New Hampshire, the thousands of acres that can’t be abused by people are a gift to wolves, mountain lions and threatened species in particular and to wildlife in general. The protected wilderness areas combined with plentiful food sources and regulated hunting could indeed result in both predators making a comeback.

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, consider how much we are protecting: more than 750 wilderness areas; 109,511,966 million acres; wilderness areas in all but six U.S. states; and rare species that can’t survive in areas populated by humans. Such statistics can’t fix the damage of the past four centuries, but they are indicators of lessons learned.

The Wilderness Act gives Americans the chance to bring back some of what we chased away with the promise of treating it better this time around.

(Kate Johnston is a freelance writer who lives in Dover.)

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"Tracks to the Future" Becomes a Catalyst for Change 

5/20/2014

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"Wolf Journal," a young adult novel that adults should read, too, was written by Brian Connolly and was set in the Allegheny Mountains of northern Pennsylvania. Jimmy Warren, a farm boy, finds wolf tracks in the snow. No wolves have been in these woods for a hundred years. The tracks lead him deeper into his passion for nature guided by Hawk, an old Susquehannock storyteller. Along the way, Jimmy falls in love with the beautiful Sherry Woolman who shares his love of the wild. As a school project, Jimmy keeps a journal on wolves. In order to protect the wolf he's discovered, Jimmy writes about him as if he is fiction. The Tanner brothers, a derelict pair of would-be bounty hunters, threaten to destroy the perfect balance of nature that Jimmy has found.

"Wolf Journal" is a journey into the natural world where intricate details, like the imprint of a wing in snow, tell a larger story, one of endangered species, an endangered planet, and the human spirit that strives to understand and protect.
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Throughout Wolf Journal, especially the last two chapters, the author, Brian Connolly, raises awareness about the potential for wolves to recolonize their historic range in the Northeast by encouraging young readers to envision the wolf's return to the Northeast as well as to consider the challenges they may face when they reclaim their wild home.

The Wolf Conservation Center offers the opportunity for teachers to preview one of its "Tracks to the Future" learning activities based on Wolf Journal that invites young adults to read the story, consider the potential benefits wolves can bring to the Northeast landscape and envision solutions that will encourage others to accept wolves on the wild landscape.  Check out - Wolf Journal Vision Activity


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Despite the vast effort, resources and support invested in wolf reintroduction, the future of the wolf and its proven benefits to ecosystems across our nation remains at risk.
Wolf Conservation Center has become a catalyst for change among a new generation of stewards who can reverse this trend before it is too late. “Interdisciplinary Curriculum in Wolf Education: Tracks to the Future” partners with educators in the implementation of a unique unit of study that affords elementary and middle school students differentiated opportunities to learn and master many of the required common core academic standards in Language Arts, Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies and the Arts while using the theme of wolf conservation as its integrating theme.  It goals encourage students to pose and answer relevant questions about wolf recovery and conservation while they simultaneously acquire new knowledge, tools and the critical thinking skills that they will need as life-long learners, in general.
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Can wolves and other large carnivores impact human health?

5/13/2014

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In a 2012 study, "Deer, predators, and the emergence of Lyme disease," UC Santa Cruz researchers suggest continued increase of Lyme disease in the United States, once linked to a recovering deer population, may instead be explained by a decline of small-mammal hosts like the red fox.

The team's findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that although deer populations have stabilized, Lyme disease has increased across the northeastern and midwestern United States over the past three decades. The increase coincides with shrinking populations of the red fox, which feeds on small mammals, such as white-footed mice, short-tailed shrews, and Eastern chipmunks, all of which transmit Lyme disease bacteria to ticks.

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The loss of red foxes can result in an increase in the abundance of the smaller animals that serve as hosts for bacteria-carrying ticks. Red foxes may have once kept those populations under control.

Due to the widespread eradication of large carnivores like wolves and cougars, top predators in many terrestrial ecosystems are now medium-sized carnivores such as coyotes. These medium-sized carnivores can indirectly increase the abundance and diversity of low trophic-level species, such as rodents and songbirds, by suppressing populations of smaller carnivores such as foxes. Strong interactions among predators that lead to cascading effects on prey have been documented for over 60 systems worldwide.


"We found that where there once was an abundance of red foxes there is now an abundance of coyotes," said Levi,  a researcher at the Carey Institute for Ecosystems Studies in the hotspot for Lyme disease, Duchess County, north of New York City. There he works as a postdoctoral research fellow with Lyme disease expert Rick Ostfeld, who literally wrote the book on Lyme disease, Lyme Disease Ecology of a Complex System.

Lyme disease was first reported in Old Lyme, Conn. in 1975. Ticks pick up the bacteria when they bite infected mice and later infect other animals including humans. Levi said tick nymphs, about the size of a sesame seed, carry the bacteria and are so small that many people who contract Lyme disease never knew they were bitten.
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As top predators are extirpated in some parts of the world, it is important to understand its the consequences to ecosystems, in general, and for the abundance of low trophic-level species, in particular. Such restructuring of predator communities, may have unintended consequences for human disease.
Dwindling numbers of red foxes, the authors suggest, might be attributed to growing populations of coyotes, now top predators in the Northeast where wolves and mountain lions are extinct.

"A new top predator has entered the northeast and has strong impact on the ecosystem," said researcher, Taal Levi Ph.D. graduate in environmental studies.  "Coyotes can and will kill foxes and more significantly," Levi said, "foxes often don't build dens when coyotes are around."

Levi and his UCSC co-authors used an extensive data-set from five states as well as mathematical models to determine why Lyme disease continues to rise despite stabilized numbers of deer, long known to act as reproductive hosts for adult ticks that carry Lyme disease bacteria.
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These results suggest that changes in predator communities may have cascading impacts that facilitate the emergence of zoonotic diseases, like Lyme disease, the vast majority of which rely on hosts that occupy low trophic levels.  

According to Wildlife Conservation Society researcher Dr. Kim Berger, healthy populations of wolves help to keep coyote numbers in check. In her study, Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, Dr. Berger stated, "This study shows just how complex relationships between predators and their prey can be. It is an important reminder that we often don’t understand ecosystems nearly as well as we think we do, and that our efforts to manipulate them can have unexpected consequences.”

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"The Carnivore Way" by Cristina Eisenberg

5/6/2014

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What would it be like to live in a world with no predators roaming our landscapes? Would their elimination, which humans have sought with ever greater urgency in recent times, bring about a pastoral, peaceful human civilization? Or in fact is their existence critical to our own, and do we need to be doing more to assure their health and the health of the landscapes they need to thrive?

In "The Carnivore Way: Coexisting with and Conserving North American Predators," published May 1st by Island Press, Cristina Eisenberg describes the ongoing efforts of humans to coexist with wolves, cougars, wolverines and other species in a largely wild but developing landscape.

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Anyone curious about carnivore ecology and management in a changing world will find a thoughtful guide to large carnivore conservation that dispels long-held myths about their ecology and contributions to healthy, resilient landscapes.

To purchase Dr. Eisenberg's outstanding book, please visit Island Press for details.

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Large carnivore conservation is ultimately about people," Eisenberg wrote. "Science and environmental law can help us learn to share landscapes with fierce creatures, but ultimately coexistence has to do with our human hearts."

For Eisenberg, it also has much to do with ecosystems. Wildlife scientists have documented the crucial role that large carnivores play in shaping forests and rangelands, she said.

"When you're out there on the ground and a wolf shows up or a cougar shows up and starts doing what they do, you have these 'aha' moments," Eisenberg said. "What I'm doing in 'The Carnivore Way' is providing a lot of stories and examples. There's a massive amount of science in the book, but in the end, it's sharing those 'aha' moments that help people connect with these animals."

In a world in which ecosystems are reeling from climate change and other human influences, Eisenberg said, wolves and other carnivores can restore resilience that benefits the resources that people depend on. By maintaining a role for carnivores, ecosystems are more likely to rebound in the face of drought, fire and other disturbances linked to a changing climate.

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