WILDLIFE: Alligator photographed in Georgia with deer kill

Posted on June 28, 2009 by Buck

The extraordinary images below show an American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) with what appears to be a freshly killed adult white-tailed deer. I imagine if the gator didn’t find the deer dead fresh that it took the deer swimming or crossing the waterway or via ambush.

The American alligator was once an endangered species, but it is now considered a recovered species. However, as these great predators continue to recover, conflicts with people will likely become more common. Furthermore, primarily because of fear and ignorance, humans have historically targeted large predators (the gray wolf is a good example). From the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

The sight of a 12 to 14 foot-long alligator is something south Georgia folks see occasionally, but few have seen one take an adult deer out to lunch. Actually — for lunch.

The photographs of this deer-eating alligator were taken from the air by Terri Jenkins, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service District Fire Management Officer. She was preparing to ignite a prescribed fire at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, about 40 miles south of Savannah, Georgia, on March 4, 2004. The photo has

“One advantage of fire work is you get to see that 12-14 footers are common from Santee National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina to Coastal South Carolina to Georgia’s coast,” said Jenkins. “It looks like the alligator population is doing extremely well.”

This one was at least 12-13 feet long. Jenkins said that some bull alligators have a 35 inch girth.

The Service uses a helicopter capable of igniting controlled burns by dropping flaming fuel-filled ping pong balls on pre-selected areas. She works throughout parts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Coastal Georgia refuges and fish hatcheries. The Service uses prescribed fire to improve habitat and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Images via Terri Jenkins for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

A very large alligator was shot in Texas back in 2005, because it was living in someone’s back yard. From Brazosport Facts:

“The first time I really got an idea of the size of it was when they got it,” Anita Rogers said.

Spring is mating season for the reclusive animals and the bulls tend to roam, said Joe Goff, who is not only the game warden who shot the animal, but has a house behind the Rogerses.

“In the last two weeks, we’ve had a number of nuisance alligator calls,” Goff said.

But Friday’s took the cake. Normally, game wardens will capture the animals and turn them over to alligator farms. Not this one.

“He’s too big,” Goff said. “We couldn’t capture him, he’s too dangerous. He’ll eat the females.”

Goff said the alligator swam to within 3 feet of him. Goff shot him with a .22-caliber rifle.

“He’s blind in his left eye,” Goff said. “It was spooky.”

Goff said the alligator will be given to a nuisance hunter who puts bids in with the state and will pay for the animal. The hunter then will clean the carcass and sell the meat and hide for processing.

While alligators can be a danger to pets, they’re generally not a threat to humans, said Charles Mann, a zookeeper in the reptile and amphibian department at the Houston Zoo.

“Certainly an alligator that gets up to 13 feet long gets that way by being very wary and probably tries to shy away from anything that could hurt it, mainly people,” Mann said.

Mann estimated the animal had to be at least 12 to 15 years old, but could be much older, based on its size.

“They grow about a foot a year until they’re 7 or 8 feet long, then past that they grow slower,” Mann said. “The record for longevity would be 50 or 60 years.”

Anita Rogers said she kept her dogs in the fence when she first heard the stories and heard the bellowing, which she likened to a giant bullfrog.

The Rogerses are glad the reptile is gone, but they don’t have problems with the smaller ones in the water.

“They keep the bayou cleaned out,” Charles Rogers said.

Mann said the animals, which have been around for hundreds of millions of years, were almost wiped out before the federal government stepped in.

“It’s really a success story of the Endangered Species Act,” he said.

ENDANGERED SPECIES: Judge orders Fish and Wildlife Service to prepare recovery plan for jaguar

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Buck

From E&ENews PM:

Judge John Roll of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona ruled the agency erred in not preparing a recovery plan or designating critical habitat for the rare cat. His ruling orders federal officials to issue a new recovery plan and critical habitat decisions by January 2010.

The service listed the jaguar under the Endangered Species Act in 1997 but did not protect habitat for the cat or write a recovery plan — both required by law.

Initially, FWS officials said that since human takes of the jaguars were one of the chief threats, a habitat map could do more harm than good for the animal. The agency eventually dropped that argument after other jaguar recovery programs in the Southwest published maps. Agency officials then argued that the recovery efforts were not needed because the jaguar’s range in the United States was “insignificant.”

Roll ruled that the FWS findings were inconsistent with federal law and the best available science.

“Based upon a comprehensive review of the administrative record … and because the FWS determination does not appear to be based upon the best scientific evidence available, and because it is inconsistent with the statutory mandate of the ESA, its own regulations, and relevant case law, it must be set aside,” Roll wrote in his 33-page opinion.

Image Found Here

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ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT amendment defeated in Senate

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Buck

Republican attacks on the Endangered Species Act still continue, but “on Thursday, the Senate defeated a move by Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski to require the new administration go through a lengthy process to reverse the Bush-era rules.”

During August of last year, the Bush Administration began eleventh-hour changes to the ESA. The Administration sought to gut the Section 7 consultation requirement, which requires independent review of projects by federal scientists from either the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service (depending on the species) in order to determine whether an endangered species will be harmed. The consultation process also determines the mitigation measures that should be implemented in order to minimize takes of or harm to endangered species.

Allowing independent review makes sense, because permitting corporations and developers to determine what’s best for endangered species would severely weaken the Act and certainly result in more lawsuits.

During this time, the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Bush Administration also restricted the public comment period. According to Grist, “Normally, the Fish and Wildlife Service has a 90-day comment period for a rule change like this, [but] when the draft of this rule change was first released, it was cut to 60, [and] now it’s down to 30.”

The Bush Administration also disallowed electronic submission of public comments in an effort to limit the number of comments. As a result, conservation organizations allowed the public to submit electronic comments through their websites, and these comments were subsequently printed and delivered to the Interior Department.

Considering the number of comments that were submitted to the Interior Department and the amount of time they had to review these comments: “6,250 comments would have to be reviewed every hour, [so] that means that each member of the team would be reviewing at least seven comments each minute.” Certainly, the whole process was a sham, since the government is required to review all public comments, and quite often the public will submit better-quality ideas than what the government has proposed (especially projects that require NEPA review and comment). From Environment & Energy Daily:

One of the amendments that the Senate defeated yesterday was a proposal by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would have hampered the Obama administration’s ability to toss out two endangered species regulations that the Bush administration put in place in its waning days.

The amendment failed, 42-52, as it managed to pick up the support of three Democratic senators — Mark Begich of Alaska, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Language in the omnibus bill would give the Obama administration significant leeway to reverse two controversial endangered species rules — one that scaled back longstanding safeguards for endangered species and another that limited protections for the polar bear. The bill would allow the White House to withdraw the ESA rules within 60 days without having to go through any public comment period or legal challenge.

The Bush administration proposed the polar bear rule in May and rolled out the larger ESA changes in August. The administration finalized both rules in December, just in time for them to enter into force before President Obama took office. The timing leaves little recourse for the new administration to change the rules without starting over with the federal regulatory process.

The rider, however, would clear the way for the Interior or Commerce departments to throw out the Bush-era changes without going through the normal lengthy regulatory process. Some Republicans are concerned the rider could open the door to using the polar bear’s ESA listing to force the federal government to address greenhouse gas emissions and have vehemently objected to the language (E&E Daily, March 3).

Murkowski’s amendment proposed that if the Obama administration does decide to pull the rules it would be subject to the standard 60-day comment period.

Image Found Here

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ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT: Bill reverses last minute Bush rule changes to ESA

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Buck

Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act “directs all Federal agencies to use their existing authorities to conserve threatened and endangered species and, in consultation with the Service, to ensure that their actions do not jeopardize listed species or destroy or adversely modify critical habitat, [and] Section 7 applies to management of Federal lands as well as other Federal actions that may affect listed species, such as Federal approval of private activities through the issuance of Federal permits, licenses, or other actions.”

Obviously, Section 7 as a substantive rule carries a lot of weight, so without the mandatory Section 7 consultation requirement or independent review, the ESA would be much weaker. Before leaving office, former President George W. Bush attempted to weaken this provision. From TPMDC:

The bill also authorizes a reversal of last year’s controversial Bush end run around the Endangered Species Act, which would allow oil rigs and highways to be built anywhere in the U.S. without independent reviews of their potential impact on the surrounding wildlife populations. As Bloomberg reports:

The provision authorizes President Barack Obama to reverse a Bush administration rule that said energy projects outside the habitat of polar bears couldn’t be blocked solely because emissions might add to global warming and destruction of the arctic species.
…

The provision could also expand the consultations required before changes are made to endangered-species listings. A rule issued under President George W. Bush limited the number of agencies that had to weigh in on decisions about endangered animals.

In other endangered species news:

The “furry little American pika has chalked up a significant victory in Sacramento federal court, [because] the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finally agreed to consider listing it as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act.”
The republicans are not happy about polar bear protection in bill: “Language in the omnibus spending bill that would allow the Obama administration to reverse a controversial regulation on the polar bear is raising the ire of some prominent Republicans, who claim the rider could open the door for the Interior Department to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.”
A Georgia man was charged for possessing various wildlife contraband: “United States Attorney David E. Nahmias said, ‘This defendant was a collector and had acquired a number of illegal skulls of birds and the carcass of a snow leopard, all of which are endangered and therefore protected by federal wildlife law.’”
Mixed salmon forecast: “Things are looking up for commercial and sports fishing off the northern Oregon and Washington Coasts. But the forecast remains grim farther south.”
Protected sea lions eating endangered salmon and sturgeon will be trapped and killed. From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

A federal appeals court has refused to block plans to start trapping and killing sea lions that eat endangered salmon at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Thursday it would not issue a stay sought by the Humane Society of the United States, because their arguments are unlikely to prevail as the case moves forward.

California sea lions are normally protected by federal law. But since some have discovered that salmon – including threatened and endangered species – are easy pickings at the dam, NOAA Fisheries Service has given authority to the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho to kill up to 85 a year.

The American pika image was found here, and the sea lion images were found here and here.

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ENDANGERED SPECIES: Conserving all species—even the smallest—is essential to saving all nature

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Buck

A good case study regarding the conservation of small and seemingly insignificant species, from habitat degradation, loss, and fragmentation, is the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly (Rhaphiomidas terminatus abdominalis), which is on the Endangered Species List.

As a subspecies, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly is “restricted to the Delhi Sands formation, an area of ancient inland dunes of which only a few hundred acres out of more than 40 square miles (100 km2) remain, the rest largely now forming much or all of the foundation on which the towns of Colton, Fontana, and Ontario, California are built.”

Listing the fly on the Endangered Species Act has been controversial, and it has been the subject of lawsuits. See National Association of Home Builders v. Babbitt, 130 F.3d 1041 (D.C. Cir. 1997). According to the Washington Legal Foundation:

On December 8, 1997, in a sharply divided opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Endangered Species Act (ESA), as applied to a subspecies of a fly found in only two California counties, is a proper exercise of federal power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. On June 16, 1997, WLF filed a brief with the Court urging it to overturn a lower court decision that had upheld federal regulation. The lower court ruled that because the government proved that two botanists traveled across state lines to visit the fly’s habitat, Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt had authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to prevent a county hospital as well as other structures from being built in the habitat area. WLF argued in its brief that Congress has no authority to regulate local land use activity with regard to the fly.

Biologist Paul Ehrlich discusses the importance of conserving nature—even the smallest and seemingly insignificant species. From Science Daily:

“I think what most people miss is that the human economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the economy of nature, which supplies us from our natural capital a steady flow of income that we can’t do without,” Ehrlich said. “And that income is in the form of what are called ‘ecosystem services’-keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, supplying fresh water, preventing floods, protecting our crops from pests and pollinating many of them, recycling the nutrients that are essential to agriculture and forestry, and on and on.”

. . .

Ehrlich said the answer to the question, “What difference does it make if we put a strip mall in here and this little fly goes extinct, or this little mouse goes extinct?” lies in the rivet-popper hypothesis, which he and his wife and colleague, Anne Ehrlich, a senior research scientist in the Department of Biology at Stanford, developed in the 1980s.

An airplane wing has a certain amount of redundancy in its design, as does much of nature. So you can pop off some of the rivets and the wing will still hold together and the plane will still fly. But at some point, you’ll have removed one too many rivets and the plane will crash.

“Even though you don’t know the value of each rivet, you know it’s nuttier than hell to keep removing them,” Ehrlich said. “There is some redundancy, but we don’t know how much. And facing serious climate disruption, humanity is going to need more redundancy in the little rivets, the species and populations that run the world.
“We are facing for the first time the collapse of a global civilization,” he said. “You have to reduce the scale of the human enterprise to having a chance at preventing that.”

The image of the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly above is from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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The Conservation Report

Tracking news regarding conservation, the environment, energy, politics, and technology

Tag Archives: Endangered Species Act

WILDLIFE: Alligator photographed in Georgia with deer kill

ENDANGERED SPECIES: Judge orders Fish and Wildlife Service to prepare recovery plan for jaguar

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT amendment defeated in Senate

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT: Bill reverses last minute Bush rule changes to ESA

In other endangered species news:

ENDANGERED SPECIES: Conserving all species—even the smallest—is essential to saving all nature

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