“...grizzlies were never as vicious or purely predatory as the stories made them out to be. The narrative of the huge killer bear instead fed a larger settler story of a landscape — and a people — that could not coexist with the settlers themselves. And that story became a disaster for more than just bears.”
The grizzly, a subspecies of brown bear, has long held a place in mainstream American myth as a dangerous, even bloodthirsty creature. Its scientific name, Ursus arctos horribilis, means “the horrible bear.” But that image is being challenged by a new set of studies that combine modern biochemical analysis, historical research and Indigenous knowledge to bring the story of the California grizzly from fiction to fact.
“Pretty much everything that I thought I knew about these animals turned out to be wrong,” said Peter Alagona, an ecologist and historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara and co-author of the study. [...]
“The annihilation of the California grizzly bear was part of a much larger campaign of annihilation,” Alagona said. “I think it’s clear that what happened in California meets the legal definition of a genocide. But in a way, it was even more than that, because these were not just attempts to eliminate groups of people. These were attempts to destroy an entire world.”
Shepherds have long used dogs to protect grazing livestock such as sheep from predators. But a few years ago, Young and bear biologist Wesley Sarmento of Montana’s wildlife department, wondered whether the canines might offer a relatively simple way to protect farms from grizzly bears, which have seen their numbers grow to nearly 2000 in the continental United States since the species gained legal protection in the 1970s. Because the bears are protected, killing problem animals is legally complicated, they note, and installing electric fences or other defenses can be expensive.
Using livestock guardian dogs to deter bears from farmsteads, however, hadn’t been rigorously tested. And the researchers had doubts it would work, because the breeds involved—including Kangal, Boz, and Anatolian shepherds—had “been born and bred for thousands of years to protect livestock and not people,” Young says. “Would [they] work for this scenario?”
The results, published last month in Biological Conservation, are encouraging, the researchers say. The GPS data showed an 88% reduction in the number of bears that came within 300 meters of farms with dogs, compared with farms without dogs. And bears spent 94% less time at farms with dogs. In contrast, Young notes, before the dogs arrived, bears “sometimes were just sitting in front of the camera traps … eating all the grain, and they didn’t have any reason to move on.”
The study also showed the dogs didn’t threaten people or pets. “They know what they’re protecting [the farm] from, which is grizzly bears,” Young says.
The @NatlParkService and @USFWS have announced a decision to actively restore grizzly bears to the North Cascades, where they roamed until nearly hunted to extinction in the area during the 20th century. News release: https://nps.gov/noca/learn/news/agencies-announce-decision-to-restore-grizzly-bears-to-north-cascades.htm… (1/4)
In the years ahead, agencies will seek to translocate three to seven grizzly bears per year from other ecosystems to establish an initial population of 25 bears. (2/4)
The @USFWS will also designate grizzly bears in the North Cascades as an experimental population under section 10(j) of the Endangered Species Act, which will provide additional tools for management that would not otherwise be available to manage a restored population. (3/4)
Anthropogenic habitat alteration and climate change are two well-known contributors to biodiversity loss through changes to species distribution and abundance; yet, disentangling the effects of these two factors is often hindered by their inherent confound across both space and time. We leveraged a contrast in habitat alteration associated with the jurisdictional boundary between two Canadian provinces to evaluate the relative effects of spatial variation in habitat alteration and climate on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) densities. White-tailed deer are an invading ungulate across much of North America, whose expansion into Canada's boreal forest is implicated in the decline of boreal caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), a species listed as Threatened in Canada.
Our findings suggest that climate is the primary driver of white-tailed deer populations; however, understanding the mechanisms underpinning this relationship requires further study of over-winter survival and fecundity. Long-term monitoring at the invasion front is needed to evaluate the drivers of abundance over time, particularly given the unpredictability of climate change and increasing prevalence of extreme weather events.
Noise pollution from traffic stunts growth in baby birds, even while inside the egg, research has found.
Unhatched birds and hatchlings that are exposed to noise from city traffic experience long-term negative effects on their health, growth and reproduction, the study found.
“Sound has a much stronger and more direct impact on bird development than we knew before,” said Dr Mylene Mariette, a bird communication expert at Deakin University in Australia and a co-author of the study, published in the journal Science. “It would be wise to work more to reduce noise pollution.”
A growing body of research has suggested that noise pollution causes stress to birds and makes communication harder for them. But whether birds are already distressed at a young age because they are affected by noise, or by how noise disrupts their environment and parental care, was still unclear.
A new study published online today, April 25, in the scientific journal Science provides the strongest evidence to date that not only is nature conservation successful, but that scaling conservation interventions up would be transformational for halting and reversing biodiversity loss—a crisis that can lead to ecosystem collapses and a planet less able to support life—and reducing the effects of climate change. [...]
“If you look only at the trend of species declines, it would be easy to think that we’re failing to protect biodiversity, but you would not be looking at the full picture,” said Penny Langhammer, lead author of the study and executive vice president of Re:wild. “What we show with this paper is that conservation is, in fact, working to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. It is clear that conservation must be prioritized and receive significant additional resources and political support globally, while we simultaneously address the systemic drivers of biodiversity loss, such as unsustainable consumption and production.”
In the last several decades, large forest fires have increasingly threatened communities across the Mediterranean. Climate change is expected to make these fires larger, hotter, and more dangerous in the future. But fire management lessons from the past could help to improve the resilience of local landscapes.
The latest research paper from environmental anthropologist and University of California, Santa Cruz Professor Andrew Mathews … found that peasant women, who historically collected leaf litter in the forests, and shepherds, who grazed their flocks and conducted occasional managed burns, were critical in maintaining fire-resistant landscapes. Yet the social status of these groups meant the importance of their work went unrecognized.
In Monte Pisano and much of the broader Mediterranean, forests and other plant communities have been shaped by thousands of years of intensive human management of the land. But migration to cities since the 1960s has left rural lands increasingly abandoned. And without people to maintain them, local forests have become overgrown with highly flammable brush.
At the same time, many traditional rural land management practices that may have once reduced fire risk in the region have been systematically ignored and even criminalized over the years, to the point where they have been all but forgotten.
The more time we spend analysing at the bench, not the beach, the less connected we are to the ecosystems we are trying to protect. In an age of data abundance, I urge myself and other ecologists not to lose touch with the joy of the field.
This sense of connection is personal. As I’m seeing techniques change, I’m also seeing a changing of the guard. The field-hardened scientists — most of whom are male, and white — who taught me, in practice or through literature, are adding ‘emeritus’ to their titles, one by one. With them goes a wealth of knowledge and their history of belonging. I and my younger colleagues must now share our knowledge and foster a new, inclusive sense of belonging.
It is no secret that female scientists, especially those from historically under-represented backgrounds, are the most susceptible to fieldwork exclusion or harassment (A.-J. C. Demery and M. Avery Pipkin Nature Ecol. Evol. 5, 5–9; 2021). As one of just 2% of graduate students in Earth, atmospheric and ocean sciences who identify as Black (L. M. Isma et al. Oceanography 36, 56–59; 2023), I am used to being the only one, and having to explain and defend my presence in science and in the field. One of the attractions of the field is that my non-human kin don’t question my purpose there.
The joy of doing field work manifested.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture first announced finding a strain of bird flu in dairy cattle in Kansas and Texas on March 25 (SN: 4/3/24). Since then, the virus has been found in dairy cows in eight states. The same version of the virus infecting cows — called clade 2.3.4.4b — has also been found in poultry in five states, the USDA said in a federal order. That order announced mandatory testing for all dairy cows before they can be moved to another state, and also requires tracing the previous movements of cows from infected herds. The order will go into effect on April 29.
H5N1 may have jumped into cattle only once and then spread from cow-to-cow, evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona in Tucson posted on X (formerly Twitter) after he and colleagues analyzed 239 bird flu viruses from cattle and other species. The jump may have happened in late December 2023, months earlier than thought.
These findings are still preliminary and haven’t been independently verified by other scientists, Davis cautions. But they do suggest that bird flu in cattle is “probably more widespread than what we’ve identified based on the reported cases on the USDA dashboard. What we’re looking at is probably circulation, potentially cow-to-cow, but … we don’t yet know the extent.”
"Avian flu virus survives indefinitely while frozen and remains infectious."
The case of a Florida bottlenose dolphin found with highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, or HPAIV—a discovery made by University of Florida researchers in collaboration with multiple other agencies and one of the first reports of a constantly growing list of mammals affected by this virus—has been published in Communications Biology.
The report documents the discovery, the first finding of HPAIV in a cetacean in North America, from the initial response by UF's Marine Animal Rescue team to a report of a distressed dolphin in Dixie County, Florida, to the subsequent identification of the virus from brain and tissue samples obtained in a postmortem examination. [...]
"We still don't know where the dolphin got the virus and more research needs to be done," Webby said.
Four more cats have tested positive for H5N1 bird flu in connection with a growing outbreak in dairy cows in the United States, according to state and federal officials, raising the number of cases in the current outbreak to seven.
Sonja Olsen, the Associate Director of Preparedness and Response at CDC’s Influenza Division, reported three new cases in cats on Thursday and state officials reported a fourth case on Friday.
“The reports we heard were of cats having neurologic symptoms, rapid decline, and death,” Olsen told BNO News.
Three of the new cases were found at two dairy farms in Curry County, New Mexico and all of them died, according to the state’s Agriculture Department. The fourth case was found at a dairy farm in Wood County, Ohio.
This follows the recent deaths of three other cats at dairy farms in Texas.
New research has highlighted the profound link between dietary choices and brain health.
Published in Nature, the research showed that a healthy, balanced diet was linked to superior brain health, cognitive function and mental wellbeing. The study, involving researchers at the University of Warwick, sheds light on how our food preferences not only influence physical health but also significantly impact brain health.
