Thursday, March 27, 2008
'Weekend America' this weekend
Barring an especially news-rich morning, I'll be making one of my periodic appearances on public radio's "Weekend America" this Saturday. It's part of a segment in which listeners share their stories of spring, including several about robins - and I'll be talking about the bird most naturalists consider the real icon of spring, the American woodcock.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Crab moratorium passes
On March 17, the New Jersey Senate - by a 39-0 vote - passed a moratorium on horseshoe crab fishing in state waters. The bill goes to Gov. Jon Corzine, who is widely expected to sign it. More details here.
The action overturns the Feb. 11 decision of the state Marine Fisheries Council to lift an existing moratorium - the only one of its kind on the East Coast, and a measure conservationists consider critical for preventing the further decline of the rufa race of the red knot, which has plummeted from a population of more than 100,000 in the early 1990s to near-extinction today. Similar declines are now beginning to manifest themselves among ruddy turnstones and semipalmated sandpipers, two other species that depend on the crabs' eggs during their spring migration to the Arctic.
Should we all just congratulate the N.J. legislature (and ourselves, since conservationists from around the country lobbied hard for this bill) and go back to birding? Hardly. The existing annual crab quota, set by the federal Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, is too high, and the commission should again consider a region-wide harvest moratorium, thus superceding a Delaware state court ruling last year striking down a state moratorium there.
The best source for information on the red knot/crab situation remains New Jersey Audubon.
The action overturns the Feb. 11 decision of the state Marine Fisheries Council to lift an existing moratorium - the only one of its kind on the East Coast, and a measure conservationists consider critical for preventing the further decline of the rufa race of the red knot, which has plummeted from a population of more than 100,000 in the early 1990s to near-extinction today. Similar declines are now beginning to manifest themselves among ruddy turnstones and semipalmated sandpipers, two other species that depend on the crabs' eggs during their spring migration to the Arctic.
Should we all just congratulate the N.J. legislature (and ourselves, since conservationists from around the country lobbied hard for this bill) and go back to birding? Hardly. The existing annual crab quota, set by the federal Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, is too high, and the commission should again consider a region-wide harvest moratorium, thus superceding a Delaware state court ruling last year striking down a state moratorium there.
The best source for information on the red knot/crab situation remains New Jersey Audubon.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
No rest for the weary...
I'm blessed to have a remarkably enthusiastic and highly trained banding crew working on the Ned Smith Center's owl research project, but they really don't know when to stop.
Back in October my King's Gap crew, which bands at a state environmental education training center on South Mountain, near Carlisle, PA, started more than two months of nightly netting to catch migrant saw-whet owls. It's fun but tiring, and by the time they finished in the first week of December, they'd banded almost 240 owls.
They'd also fitted several with tiny, 2-gram radio transmitters, which allowed us to find the owls each day on their roosts, part of a study we've been conducting since 2000 to look at roost site and habitat selection. That part of the project has long been overseen by Aura Stauffer, a state DCNR biologist who has been one of our
banders for years. So several nights a week Aura was staying up past midnight banding, and most days either she or one of the other volunteers was also out with an antenna and radio receiver, tracking the owls through Michaux State Forest.
One of the birds, radio-tagged Dec. 1 and nicknamed "Grinch," stuck around through at least the middle of February, when the signal from her radio faded and died -- probably empty batteries, which had reached the end of their expected life.
Now, having had just two weeks of rest, the King's Gap crew is moving back into a month of nightly banding again, as we try to document the spring saw-whet migration, which is far less well understood. Tonight was the first night, and my King's Gap site coordinator Gary Shimmel, along with volunteer Rhonda Hackenberg (who with her husband Scott, the park director, lives on the mountaintop) opened the nets at dark. (That's Gary in the photo, tracking the Grinch last month.)
Less than two hours later, Gary called to report that they'd just caught eight owls, and that the woods were full of vocalizations from others. Considering that our entire season total in 2001 (the last time we tried spring netting) was just seven owls, we're obviously off to a great start.
Back in October my King's Gap crew, which bands at a state environmental education training center on South Mountain, near Carlisle, PA, started more than two months of nightly netting to catch migrant saw-whet owls. It's fun but tiring, and by the time they finished in the first week of December, they'd banded almost 240 owls.
They'd also fitted several with tiny, 2-gram radio transmitters, which allowed us to find the owls each day on their roosts, part of a study we've been conducting since 2000 to look at roost site and habitat selection. That part of the project has long been overseen by Aura Stauffer, a state DCNR biologist who has been one of our
banders for years. So several nights a week Aura was staying up past midnight banding, and most days either she or one of the other volunteers was also out with an antenna and radio receiver, tracking the owls through Michaux State Forest.One of the birds, radio-tagged Dec. 1 and nicknamed "Grinch," stuck around through at least the middle of February, when the signal from her radio faded and died -- probably empty batteries, which had reached the end of their expected life.
Now, having had just two weeks of rest, the King's Gap crew is moving back into a month of nightly banding again, as we try to document the spring saw-whet migration, which is far less well understood. Tonight was the first night, and my King's Gap site coordinator Gary Shimmel, along with volunteer Rhonda Hackenberg (who with her husband Scott, the park director, lives on the mountaintop) opened the nets at dark. (That's Gary in the photo, tracking the Grinch last month.)
Less than two hours later, Gary called to report that they'd just caught eight owls, and that the woods were full of vocalizations from others. Considering that our entire season total in 2001 (the last time we tried spring netting) was just seven owls, we're obviously off to a great start.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Red knot update
There's been some encouraging movement in New Jersey on the dire situation regarding red knots and overharvested horseshoe crabs. Since the NJ Marine Fisheries Council voted 5-4 to lift a moratorium on crab harvests on Feb. 11, there has been a bipartisan movement in the state legislature to institute a permanent harvest ban.
You can read updates on the situation from New Jersey Audubon here. And you can read a recent news report from the Asbury Park News and a far less objective piece from the Press of Atlantic City, which focuses only on the watermen's views. (One could argue, for example, that a resource management council comprised primarily of commercial fin-fishermen, shellfisherman and fish processors constitutes a "special interest" of just the sort criticized.)
You can read updates on the situation from New Jersey Audubon here. And you can read a recent news report from the Asbury Park News and a far less objective piece from the Press of Atlantic City, which focuses only on the watermen's views. (One could argue, for example, that a resource management council comprised primarily of commercial fin-fishermen, shellfisherman and fish processors constitutes a "special interest" of just the sort criticized.)
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Dark Days for the Red Knot
It's been a bad week for one of the most extraordinary birds in the world.
Red knots at Reed's Beach, NJ, in better days, in the late 1980s (©Scott Weidensaul)
This follows on the announcement last week that scientists studying knots on their South American wintering grounds could find only about a thousand of them. Just a decade ago the population was nearly 100,000, and observers in Tierra del Fuego saw them in flocks of 20,000 at a time. Last winter researchers found only 8,000-10,000 total, a 30 percent drop from 2006. At this rate of decline, the knots will be effectively gone in a few more years.
The evidence is overwhelming that overharvesting of crabs, whose once-abundant eggs fed more than a million and a half migrant shorebirds each May along Delaware Bay, has led to this catastrophe. Without sufficient food at this critical stopover site, the knots cannot gain enough weight to continue their migration to the Arctic, and to breed successfully. Ominously, the same thing is now happening to ruddy turnstones and semipalmated sandpipers.
The state Division of Fish and Wildlife urged the fisheries panel to enact the moratorium, noting that male-only harvests have not resulted in any increase in egg production.
But in both New Jersey and Delaware (where watermen overturned a moratorium in court), the interests of a handful of commercial fishermen have stopped any significant progress.
The NJ Marine Fisheries Council's vote was 5-4 against a harvest moratorium, and given the makeup of the council, I'm frankly surprised the vote was as close as it was. The panel's membership, set by law, consists of "four sports fishermen, two active commercial fin fishermen, one active fish processor, two members of the general public, and the chairman of the two sections of the Shellfisheries Council." Like most such fisheries commissions, state and federal, it is heavily weighted toward fishing interests.
In this case, the council decided the right of 39 New Jersey fishermen – that's right, just 39 – to catch crabs as eel and conch bait outweighed the interests of two extraordinary species, and a timeless migratory drama that plays out across 18,000 miles a year. (Never mind that this fishery is less than 15 years old, and is as sustainable as strip-mining. Never mind that the state offered to compensate fishermen for their losses. And never mind the tens of millions of ecotourist dollars that birds bring to the New Jersey shore each year.)
But commercial fishermen have a long and bewildering history of refusing the heed even the clearest warnings of overfishing; expecting them to heed the best available science is like expecting a drunk to suddenly sober up and take the pledge.
The real villain here is the Bush administration, whose hamstrung U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the red knot under the Endangered Species Act, despite the most exhaustively documented emergency petition in the ESA's history. An ESA listing would, finally, place the welfare of the knots foremost in the regulatory process.
One reason a member of the NJMFC gave for voting against the moratorium was that, since the feds didn't list the knots as endangered, they must not really be endangered.
In fact, the USFWS admitted that the knot deserved ESA protection, but said that "placing the bird on the endangered species list is precluded by higher priority listing actions for species at greater risk."
The translation: Although we'd like to, our endangered species budget has been purposefully gutted to prevent us from listing new species under the ESA, regardless of how profoundly jeopardized they may be. USFWS named the knot a candidate species, but there is no regulatory teeth behind that designation.
There is still a chance that the New Jersey's legislature could overrule the NJMFC and institute a moratorium. I suspect we're going to see the same kind of up-to-the-last-second drama, in and out of courtrooms, that we've seen past few years.
And in the meantime, the clock keeps ticking on what may become our generation's Eskimo curlew – and shame on us for allowing it.
In an ironic little twist, the same week that PBS has been broadcasting a documentary called "Crash: A Tale of Two Species," about how overharvesting of horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay has led to the near-extinction of the red knot, the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council has narrowly voted down a moratorium on crab harvests in state waters that would have given both species a critical break.
Red knots at Reed's Beach, NJ, in better days, in the late 1980s (©Scott Weidensaul)This follows on the announcement last week that scientists studying knots on their South American wintering grounds could find only about a thousand of them. Just a decade ago the population was nearly 100,000, and observers in Tierra del Fuego saw them in flocks of 20,000 at a time. Last winter researchers found only 8,000-10,000 total, a 30 percent drop from 2006. At this rate of decline, the knots will be effectively gone in a few more years.
The evidence is overwhelming that overharvesting of crabs, whose once-abundant eggs fed more than a million and a half migrant shorebirds each May along Delaware Bay, has led to this catastrophe. Without sufficient food at this critical stopover site, the knots cannot gain enough weight to continue their migration to the Arctic, and to breed successfully. Ominously, the same thing is now happening to ruddy turnstones and semipalmated sandpipers.
The state Division of Fish and Wildlife urged the fisheries panel to enact the moratorium, noting that male-only harvests have not resulted in any increase in egg production.
But in both New Jersey and Delaware (where watermen overturned a moratorium in court), the interests of a handful of commercial fishermen have stopped any significant progress.
The NJ Marine Fisheries Council's vote was 5-4 against a harvest moratorium, and given the makeup of the council, I'm frankly surprised the vote was as close as it was. The panel's membership, set by law, consists of "four sports fishermen, two active commercial fin fishermen, one active fish processor, two members of the general public, and the chairman of the two sections of the Shellfisheries Council." Like most such fisheries commissions, state and federal, it is heavily weighted toward fishing interests.
In this case, the council decided the right of 39 New Jersey fishermen – that's right, just 39 – to catch crabs as eel and conch bait outweighed the interests of two extraordinary species, and a timeless migratory drama that plays out across 18,000 miles a year. (Never mind that this fishery is less than 15 years old, and is as sustainable as strip-mining. Never mind that the state offered to compensate fishermen for their losses. And never mind the tens of millions of ecotourist dollars that birds bring to the New Jersey shore each year.)
But commercial fishermen have a long and bewildering history of refusing the heed even the clearest warnings of overfishing; expecting them to heed the best available science is like expecting a drunk to suddenly sober up and take the pledge.
The real villain here is the Bush administration, whose hamstrung U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the red knot under the Endangered Species Act, despite the most exhaustively documented emergency petition in the ESA's history. An ESA listing would, finally, place the welfare of the knots foremost in the regulatory process.
One reason a member of the NJMFC gave for voting against the moratorium was that, since the feds didn't list the knots as endangered, they must not really be endangered.
In fact, the USFWS admitted that the knot deserved ESA protection, but said that "placing the bird on the endangered species list is precluded by higher priority listing actions for species at greater risk."
The translation: Although we'd like to, our endangered species budget has been purposefully gutted to prevent us from listing new species under the ESA, regardless of how profoundly jeopardized they may be. USFWS named the knot a candidate species, but there is no regulatory teeth behind that designation.
There is still a chance that the New Jersey's legislature could overrule the NJMFC and institute a moratorium. I suspect we're going to see the same kind of up-to-the-last-second drama, in and out of courtrooms, that we've seen past few years.
And in the meantime, the clock keeps ticking on what may become our generation's Eskimo curlew – and shame on us for allowing it.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Enough, already
Got back last week from southwest Florida, where I gave a series of lectures, including talks at Ding Darling NWR and the Southwest Florida Birding and Wildlife Festival.
It was, as most of my visits to Florida are, a mix of the sublime and the emotionally wrenching. It was wonderful to revisit favorite haunts like the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park and Collier-Seminole State Park with Amy and a couple of friends in tow, to watch big flocks of warblers and gnatcatchers moving through the pine flatwoods, or finally see my first wild indigo snake, an endangered species – though the fact that the snake was being eaten by a young red-shouldered hawk left us with decidedly conflicted emotions. It was nice to escape the snowy mountains for a few days, chasing purple gallinules and wood storks, watching short-tailed hawks, or finding a baby red rat snake.
But. There's always a very big "but" for me when it comes to visiting this part of Florida.
For a long time, this was the forgotten part of the Sunshine State, but that hasn't been the case for decades. Naples and Ft. Myers are metastasising with little apparent thought or planning, just a binge that will only end when every inch consumed by a tide of overpriced homes, golf greens and an endless, soulless swarm of Publix, CVS and Winn Dixies.
Yes, there are good things happening in southwest Florida for conservation, attempts to undo the wrongs of the past on the big chunks of land that are protected – like the ongoing work to close up 1960s-era drainage ditches in the old Golden Gate Estates boondoggle, which wrecked the hydrology of much of the Fakahatchee Strand, Florida Panther NWR and the Ten Thousand Islands and Rookery Bay estuarine reserves.
The problem is, the insane rush to build on every square meter that isn't formally protected more than offsets the gains, and (though this is a small thing in the great scheme) manages to rob my time in Florida of much of its pleasure. For a week, virtually every road and highway I drove was under expansion – two-lanes going to four, four lanes to six, six lanes to eight. Coming down I-75 and then Rt. 951 toward Rookery Bay, the longest stretch I drove without passing new construction was maybe half a mile. The redundancy of it all surpasses understanding, but the most surreal moment came when I found myself looking at competing Dunkin' Donuts and Subway shops, facing each other across the intersection like mirror images.
I felt like an accessory to a crime just being there, and the obscene recklessness of it cast a pall on my mood much of the time. By the end of the week, driving back to the Ft. Myers airport past one new golf course subdivision and shopping mall after another, I'd seen enough. It was time to get back to Pennsylvania Dutch country, cold though it may be.
But I had one more gantlet to run. The airport, itself carved out of pine flatwoods, has of course become the nexus for still more development, and several patches ranging from a few dozen acres to more than a hundred were freshly scraped down to the sandy soil.
But what stopped me dead, made me close my eyes in a laugh-or-cry moment, was the yellow "Panther X-ing" highway sign - right next to the biggest clearing of all.
If I were a panther, I might throw myself in front of a car just to make an end of it. But no matter. Looks like Lee County will be able to retire that sign pretty soon anyway, and save itself a few bucks.
It was, as most of my visits to Florida are, a mix of the sublime and the emotionally wrenching. It was wonderful to revisit favorite haunts like the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park and Collier-Seminole State Park with Amy and a couple of friends in tow, to watch big flocks of warblers and gnatcatchers moving through the pine flatwoods, or finally see my first wild indigo snake, an endangered species – though the fact that the snake was being eaten by a young red-shouldered hawk left us with decidedly conflicted emotions. It was nice to escape the snowy mountains for a few days, chasing purple gallinules and wood storks, watching short-tailed hawks, or finding a baby red rat snake.
But. There's always a very big "but" for me when it comes to visiting this part of Florida.
For a long time, this was the forgotten part of the Sunshine State, but that hasn't been the case for decades. Naples and Ft. Myers are metastasising with little apparent thought or planning, just a binge that will only end when every inch consumed by a tide of overpriced homes, golf greens and an endless, soulless swarm of Publix, CVS and Winn Dixies.
Yes, there are good things happening in southwest Florida for conservation, attempts to undo the wrongs of the past on the big chunks of land that are protected – like the ongoing work to close up 1960s-era drainage ditches in the old Golden Gate Estates boondoggle, which wrecked the hydrology of much of the Fakahatchee Strand, Florida Panther NWR and the Ten Thousand Islands and Rookery Bay estuarine reserves.
The problem is, the insane rush to build on every square meter that isn't formally protected more than offsets the gains, and (though this is a small thing in the great scheme) manages to rob my time in Florida of much of its pleasure. For a week, virtually every road and highway I drove was under expansion – two-lanes going to four, four lanes to six, six lanes to eight. Coming down I-75 and then Rt. 951 toward Rookery Bay, the longest stretch I drove without passing new construction was maybe half a mile. The redundancy of it all surpasses understanding, but the most surreal moment came when I found myself looking at competing Dunkin' Donuts and Subway shops, facing each other across the intersection like mirror images.
I felt like an accessory to a crime just being there, and the obscene recklessness of it cast a pall on my mood much of the time. By the end of the week, driving back to the Ft. Myers airport past one new golf course subdivision and shopping mall after another, I'd seen enough. It was time to get back to Pennsylvania Dutch country, cold though it may be.
But I had one more gantlet to run. The airport, itself carved out of pine flatwoods, has of course become the nexus for still more development, and several patches ranging from a few dozen acres to more than a hundred were freshly scraped down to the sandy soil.
But what stopped me dead, made me close my eyes in a laugh-or-cry moment, was the yellow "Panther X-ing" highway sign - right next to the biggest clearing of all.
If I were a panther, I might throw myself in front of a car just to make an end of it. But no matter. Looks like Lee County will be able to retire that sign pretty soon anyway, and save itself a few bucks.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Hummingbird update, and a Vermont sojourn
Even though the mid-Atlantic region has been in the meteorological mixer the past few weeks -- with several ice storms, snow, a mild spell and now a blast of Arctic cold that sent the mercury to near zero on our back porch last night -- there are still a few hummingbirds hanging around.
At one home in northern Lancaster County, Pa., which had been hosting two rufous hummingbirds for several months, one is gone but one remained earlier this week. An immature male that my colleague Wayne Laubscher banded in October left on Dec. 28, but an immature female that I banded Nov. 18 was still there at last report.
Another immature female rufous, which I banded in mid-November in southern Berks County (only a few miles from the birds mentioned above), made it through the big ice storm on Dec. 18-19, and left on Dec. 20 after feeding heavily in the morning. An adult female rufous that I banded on Halloween in Dauphin County was last seen Dec. 16.
There's a female Selasphorus hummingbird, probably a rufous, in northern New Jersey that's been coming to a feeder since November, and continued two days ago…if it sticks around into next week I'll be making the drive to band it, though I wouldn't be surprised if both of these lingering hummers decide to head south Monday or Tuesday, with the unseasonably milder temperatures being predicted.
If they do, it would fit the pattern we often see – many times, wintering hummingbirds ride out extremely cold or stormy weather at a feeder, then depart when there's a break, usually after feeding heavily for a couple of hours in the morning.
* * * * *
It's been a bit cold and bit snowy here in Pennsylvania lately, but nothing to what the Green Mountain State has seen.
We spent five days last week with Amy's family, snugged into a 200-year-old farmhouse near Rochester, Vermont, on the eastern slope of the Greens. It was snowing when we arrived, it snowed most of the time we were there, and we slipped out New Year's Day morning to try to beat still another storm that dumped more than 16 fresh inches on the region. The weather weenies on the radio said it's been the snowiest December in Vermont since 1874.
In between storms, the place was a classic, New England winter wonderland; fresh powder draping the pines, sugar maples, hemlocks and spruces, the chance to do some sledding (Amy, with her sister and 2-year-old niece) and snowshoeing and photography (me). The birding was pretty slow; mostly ravens, blue jays, and some mixed songbird flocks of chickadees, creepers and kinglets (no boreal chickadees, though not for a lack of trying).
The ornithological highlight was an old, gnarled apple tree in the pasture below the house, which attracted flocks of pine grosbeaks throughout the week, and one exciting but too-short visit by about 15 Bohemian waxwings. Both of these are rare boreal visitors showing up in the East in record numbers this winter, and the grosbeaks were a life bird for Amy (who, sadly, missed the waxwings).
And sadly, I was always either a bit too far from the tree for good photos when the grosbeaks were there, or didn't have a long lens handy if I was nearby. So you'll have to make due with a nice landscape, looking west into the Greens, the horizon framed by one of those iconic sugar maples.
At one home in northern Lancaster County, Pa., which had been hosting two rufous hummingbirds for several months, one is gone but one remained earlier this week. An immature male that my colleague Wayne Laubscher banded in October left on Dec. 28, but an immature female that I banded Nov. 18 was still there at last report.
Another immature female rufous, which I banded in mid-November in southern Berks County (only a few miles from the birds mentioned above), made it through the big ice storm on Dec. 18-19, and left on Dec. 20 after feeding heavily in the morning. An adult female rufous that I banded on Halloween in Dauphin County was last seen Dec. 16.
There's a female Selasphorus hummingbird, probably a rufous, in northern New Jersey that's been coming to a feeder since November, and continued two days ago…if it sticks around into next week I'll be making the drive to band it, though I wouldn't be surprised if both of these lingering hummers decide to head south Monday or Tuesday, with the unseasonably milder temperatures being predicted.
If they do, it would fit the pattern we often see – many times, wintering hummingbirds ride out extremely cold or stormy weather at a feeder, then depart when there's a break, usually after feeding heavily for a couple of hours in the morning.
* * * * *
It's been a bit cold and bit snowy here in Pennsylvania lately, but nothing to what the Green Mountain State has seen.
We spent five days last week with Amy's family, snugged into a 200-year-old farmhouse near Rochester, Vermont, on the eastern slope of the Greens. It was snowing when we arrived, it snowed most of the time we were there, and we slipped out New Year's Day morning to try to beat still another storm that dumped more than 16 fresh inches on the region. The weather weenies on the radio said it's been the snowiest December in Vermont since 1874.
In between storms, the place was a classic, New England winter wonderland; fresh powder draping the pines, sugar maples, hemlocks and spruces, the chance to do some sledding (Amy, with her sister and 2-year-old niece) and snowshoeing and photography (me). The birding was pretty slow; mostly ravens, blue jays, and some mixed songbird flocks of chickadees, creepers and kinglets (no boreal chickadees, though not for a lack of trying).
The ornithological highlight was an old, gnarled apple tree in the pasture below the house, which attracted flocks of pine grosbeaks throughout the week, and one exciting but too-short visit by about 15 Bohemian waxwings. Both of these are rare boreal visitors showing up in the East in record numbers this winter, and the grosbeaks were a life bird for Amy (who, sadly, missed the waxwings).
And sadly, I was always either a bit too far from the tree for good photos when the grosbeaks were there, or didn't have a long lens handy if I was nearby. So you'll have to make due with a nice landscape, looking west into the Greens, the horizon framed by one of those iconic sugar maples.
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