CANADA'S NATIONAL OBSERVER
BC's most recent five-year wolf cull is set to expire with no indication the province has plans to end the controversial measure that doesn't support the long-term recovery of caribou, say critics.
Please also read my article from some years ago.
Canada's National Observer
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| A PinP photo. |
Beavers are the engineers of the forest. Best known for chewing down trees to build up dams, the animals change their surroundings in obvious ways: pointy stumps lie in their wake; piles of branches and mud peak over riverbeds. However, scientists are increasingly noticing another, less evident way they shift their environment: wildfire prevention.
by Larry Powell
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| The Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa). Photo by Drsarahgrace, public domain. |
A new study in Manitoba shows how the “Great Gray Owl,” a common site, either soaring over the plains and perching and nesting in the forests of the eastern Canadian prairies, overcomes many obstacles to find its prey.
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| The prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) - Photo by Soebe, public domain |
But the snow presents the owl with other problems way before the “moment of capture,” too. Not only does it hide its prey from site, forcing the bird to rely on its hearing only, it deadens, or attenuates any sound the vole is making, and even "bends" or refracts it, creating an “acoustic mirage,” or false impression of its location. (See above.) The denser the snow, the more pronounced is both the attenuation and refraction.
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The owl soars towards its prey from its perch (above), then hovers as directly over it as it can until it reaches a “listening position” of least refraction and attenuation - defeating that "acoustic mirage" in the process. Then it plummets straight down on its target, forming a “plunge-hole” in the snow.
There are other features that make the “Great Gray” unique, too.
It is the largest owl in North America, with a wing span of well over a metre. It can be found across the province, year-round. And, since Manitobans “adopted” it in 1987, it’s been our official, provincial bird, too!
A three-member team, two from the US, along with James Duncan from “Discover Owls” in Balmoral, Manitoba, used loudspeakers and special cameras in their research.
The above images were extracted, with thanks, from the team's official study, just published in the proceedings of The Royal Society.
The Manitoban
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| The bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) A PinP photo We need to rethink the way we regulate noise pollution from oil rigs as the noise from oil drilling can be harmful to prairie songbirds, including species that are at risk. These findings come from a new study authored by Nicola Koper and Patricia Rosa. Koper is a professor at the natural resources institute at the University of Manitoba and Rosa is an assistant professor at St. George’s University. They both study how human activity can interfere with songbird behaviour. Story here. |
EcoWatch
The head of the world body sounds the alarm on what he calls humanity's "senseless and suicidal war on nature." Details here.
Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. (COSEWIC)
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The Blackmouth (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) a type of Chinook. Image by Animal Diversity Web. |
After maturing at sea, Chinook Salmon on Canada's West Coast swim back to their natal streams to spawn. Twenty-eight populations of Chinook Salmon live in Southern British Columbia, each with different habitats and survival strategies. Chinook Salmon face many threats in both fresh and saltwater, including climate change and detrimental effects from hatchery fish. At the current meeting, COSEWIC considered the 12 populations of Chinook Salmon most impacted by hatcheries: four were designated Endangered, three Threatened, and one Special Concern, while one was deemed Not at Risk. Three remote populations were determined to be Data Deficient, and will require additional research before being re-assessed. Details here.
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An adult female grizzly (Ursus arctos). "BearID," as the program is called, captures a bear’s face in a photo image, rotates, extracts and embeds it in order to classify the individual. Facial recognition techniques have long been used to identify primates, including humans. But, up 'til now, there's really been no effective way of identifying wild species like the grizzly (brown) bear who, unlike the zebra or giraffe, lacks unique and consistent body markings. In co-operation with two US software developers, four scientists from the University of Victoria bought their idea to reality. They tested their system on grizzlies at two locations - Knight Inlet, BC, and Katmai National Park, Alaska. After taking thousands of pictures, they were able to positively identify 132 individuals with almost eighty-four percent accuracy. |
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| An adult female in another colour phase. Both images by Melanie Clapham, U of Victoria, Canada. |
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| Male elephants socialising along the Boteti River. Credit: Connie Allen. |
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| Male African elephants congregate along hotspots of social activity on the Boteti River. Credit: Connie Allen. |
| A Bengal, the commonest tiger species (but still endangered) paces in its cage at Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park zoo. A PinP photo.
A study just published in the journal, Facets, begins positively enough. It acknowledges that members of Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA - the private, non-profit charity representing thirty such institutions), do try to be leaders in researching this field and, that they do take part in programs aimed at species survival by breeding animals in captivity, then re-introducing them into the wild.
And on its own website, CAZA claims, "We are behind some of the most remarkable conservation success stories. This includes, bringing species such as the Black Footed Ferret and the Vancouver Island Marmot back from the brink of extinction,” for example.
However, in some key areas, the researchers (a team of two biologists from Laurentian University in Sudbury) suggest, CAZA and its members are falling short.
Zoos and aquariums could be "important resources in mitigating biodiversity loss. And the credibility of zoos as conservation organizations can only be enhanced by the production of peer-reviewed science in this field."
Yet, while CAZA members are turning out more such research (still significantly less than their US counterparts and most in "zoo-centric" journals), most are not on the topic of biodiversity conservation at all, but on veterinary science, instead.
"Few studies have explored their contribution to biodiversity conservation efforts and research productivity in general."
Increasing collaboration with academic institutions would be one way for CAZA to overcome that shortcoming. So, “It is puzzling that collaborations between these groups are rare. Academics can use the unique environment zoos and aquariums provide for studying species, whereas academic research based on field observations may increase the success of reintroduction efforts led by zoos and aquariums.”
This new research comes to light against the backdrop of extinctions hanging over tens of thousands of Earth's wild species, “ due to widespread degradation of global ecosystems caused by humans.”
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The Green Wattle Creek bushfire moves toward the Southern Highlands township of
Yanderra, Australia as police evacuate. Dec. 2019.
Photo by Helitak 430.
A new study finds, manmade climate change did, indeed, worsen the bushfires which ravaged much of southeastern Australia late last year and early this year. An international team of seventeen scientists has just concluded, the probability of conditions developing like the ones which kindled the catastrophic blazes “has increased by at least 30% since 1900 as a result of anthropogenic climate change.”
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| "Santa's reindeer" flee a logging truck, somewhere in the boreal forests of Canada. |
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| A great egret. One of the many birds that migrate between Canada and the U.S. A PinP photo. |
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| A PinP photo. |
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| Dr. Ryan Brook, Associate Professor in the College Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan. |
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| Wild pigs in winter. A Pexels photo. |
