Wildlife Corridors
- From: chatnoir <wolfbat359a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:34:35 -0700 (PDT)
http://south-east-advertiser.whereilive.com.au/news/story/fauna-threat-from-houses/
Fauna threat from houses
news Local News 11 Mar 09 @ 09:15am by Penny Brand
HAZEL Shields has been a wildlife carer for 39 years and has seen
first hand what happens to animals when development occurs in green
corridors.
Mrs Shields fears she will have to care for more animals if a
Carindale housing development that crosses a green corridor is given
the go-ahead.
Last week in the South East Advertiser, LNP candidate for the seat of
Chatsworth Andrea Caltabiano called on the Government to reject the
application for the housing development at Carindale.
“I love the Australian wildlife and I don’t think there is enough room
for it any more,” Mrs Shields said.
“We are destroying their habitat and when that happens somebody has to
care for them,” she said.
A trained nurse, Mrs Shields’s house has become an animal hospital
with bird cages lining her back patio.
She cares for many animals including echidnas, koalas, hairy nosed
wombats and macropods.
The grandmother has even been called to neighbours’ homes to remove
snakes.
She cared for 35 birds over Christmas and recently took in a lamb that
found comfort at night by cuddling up to her dog Cindy in Cindy’s
kennel.
“All I worry about is the wildlife,” she said.
“We fight very hard to keep the bushland for the animals.’
“We are running out of space and pushing our wildlife to extinction in
the suburbs.”
Mrs Shields also educates local school pupils about wildlife care.
----------------
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/02/protecting-wild.html
Protecting Western Wildlife Corridors
5:28 PM, February 13, 2009
Conservation initiatives in the 2008 Farm Bill could help animals
safely migrate across western states, according to a report by the
Environmental Defense Fund.
The report encourages state agencies and groups to take measures to
protect wildlife corridors - areas with natural vegetation that
provide animals with a safe passageway when moving or migrating
between habitats.
The Farm Bill includes a Conservation Reserve Program that could help
restore wildlife corridors, which enable animals to migrate and
interbreed. In western states, salmon, elk, migratory birds, ocelot,
sage grouse and countless other species use wildlife corridors to move
across landscape.
The bill could provide tens of millions of dollars to protecting
corridors if conservation groups and state agencies take advantage of
its provisions, the report said. Among the report's recommendations:
Reward land management practices, such as modifying or removing
fences, that protect wildlife corridors
Use Farm Bill programs to create wildlife-friendly fence designs and
reduce fencing when feasible for ranchers and farmers
Focus resources from the Farm Bill's programs toward creating and
preserving wildlife corridors
--Catherine Ho
-------------------------
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bobcats-study-bobcat-2326820-wildlife-second
Friday, March 6, 2009
Dodging cars, hanging tough: That's bobcat's life
Midsized predators yield up their secrets to biologists.
By PAT BRENNAN
The Orange County Register
Comments | Recommend
Orange County's bobcats prowl a knife's edge of life and death.
In a hopeful sign for the secretive felines, they appear to inhabit
far more of the tiny, damaged fragments of habitat alongside urban
enclaves than scientists previously thought.
But to get there, they cross busy streets that can become death traps
– the cause of 26 out of 27 bobcat deaths in a 2 1/2-year period in
central-coastal Orange County.
"From our mortality surveys, we found they overwhelmingly died by
being hit on roads," said U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist
Erin Boydston. (Click here to see a map of where bobcats died.)
The eye-opening findings come in two hefty studies conducted by
Boydston and other scientists over three years, both involving bobcat
trapping, radio-collar tracking and monitoring with motion-triggered
cameras.
"To me, they're right on this precipice in Southern California of
maintaining these resident populations," said Colorado State
University biologist Kevin Crooks, one of the studies' co-leaders.
"But those populations are often isolated. I think it's fair to say
they're in trouble, in some circumstances."
The second study tests the oft-repeated pledge by proponents of
Irvine's "Great Park" – to create viable wildlife corridors through
the property – and finds that it will likely be difficult, if not
impossible, for the presently planned corridors to function properly
without parallel efforts on adjoining properties.
The corridors would be unlikely to make solid enough links to
surrounding wild areas to be useful to bobcats, a key predator, as
well as other important species, Crooks said. (Click here to see the
areas studied.)
Blood, hair and feces samples revealed a more disturbing finding: cats
heavily burdened with mange. A previous study by other scientists in
the Santa Monica Mountains showed mange on bobcats could be related to
consumption of rodents that have ingested chemical rodenticides. In
the Great Park study, 10 bobcats were found dead of mange in inland
Orange County.
"(A bobcat) euthanized by Animal Control was completely covered with
mange, and emaciated," said Lisa Lyren, a USGS biologist and the lead
author in the studies.
DNA from the blood samples also shows that bobcats in the interior of
Orange County, near the Santa Ana Mountains, are genetically isolated
from bobcats in the San Joaquin Hills, near Laguna Beach, likely
because of the near impossibility of crossing 26 lanes of traffic at
the El Toro Y, where interstates 5 and 405 meet.
A major reason for the studies was to find the corridors bobcats rely
on, which could in turn help landowners avoid disrupting them with
development and heavy human traffic. Bobcats are present in many wild
areas in the San Joaquin Hills and around the Santa Ana Mountains, but
the corridors are esssential: separated populations of animals and
plants need naturalistic links between islands of habitat to keep up a
healthy exchange of genes.
"Connectivity is the key to the persistence of carnivores in Southern
California," Crooks said.
But for the bobcat groups separated by the two freeways, one of their
only hopes is a long, dark tunnel beneath the interstates, at the El
Toro Y, that few animals appear willing to enter.
"If we were going to look for a critical link for this, it would be
that underpass," Lyren said.
Not only crossing through the intimidating tunnel, but navigating
around homes and businesses on both sides would make the trip
extremely difficult for bobcats and other wildlife.
"It's as if you're trying to get a pinball through a pinball machine,"
Boydston said.
Skylights within the tunnel, as well as thick vegetation cover at the
two entrances, are among the measures landscape designers could take
to make it more appealing to wildlife, the scientists said, though
that was not a focus of their study.
A second passage beneath the 5 freeway appears possible for bobcats at
Trabuco Creek, but the animals must travel much farther south to reach
it.
Great Park officials would be willing to help pay for improvements
outside their property to beef up the wildlife corridors, said Glen
Worthington, manager of planning for the Great Park Corp.
"That would be our game plan," Worthington said – although they would
likely seek funding partners, such as Caltrans.
He mentioned skylights, as well as a shelf inside the tunnel to allow
animals to pass through without walking in mud, as two improvements
that could make it a more viable corridor.
"We acknowledge that this is a problematic location," Worthington
said. "We just think we can find a way to overcome that."
The genetics showed that somehow, a small number of bobcats
occasionally make the journey from outside the San Joaquin Hills to
mate within that largely isolated population. (Click here to learn
more about bobcats and their ranges.)
But unless such links to wild areas outside the Great Park boundaries
are improved, even a world-class wildlife corridor through the Great
Park would be of little use.
"Without addressing all the constrictions along the biological
corridor, the function of the entire linkage remains in jeopardy,"
Crooks said.
The $280,000 cost of the first study was paid for largely by the The
Nature Conservancy, the second, at $100,000, mainly by the Great Park
Corp. and the Irvine Co. Together, the studies paint a troubling
picture of Orange County's bobcats, a favorite species for wildlife
watchers and one that, unlike mountain lions, poses no threat to
humans.
The radio collars relay bobcat locations using the global positioning
system, and later drop off the animals automatically.
Plotting their day to day movements suggests they may be far more
adaptable than the scientists had expected. But life in the forgotten
pockets of wild habitat scattered along the urban edge is proving
hazardous to their health – and, too often, fatal.
"Those seem to be supporting a few individual bobcats, and that is
probably a good thing for the system overall – as long as the
mortality is not so detrimental that it is driving the whole
population down," Boydston said.
That mortality is most apparent on several roadway hot spots, where
the scientists found high numbers of bobcat deaths – three or more
during the study period. They include Newport Coast Drive in Newport
Beach, University and Campus Drives in Irvine, and Alicia Parkway at
Aliso Creek Road in Laguna Niguel.
The numbers from the studies are grim: necropsies, the equivalent of
human autopsies, revealed that at least 26 of the 27 bobcats found
dead during the 30 months of the first study were killed by cars. Of
the five bobcat carcasses found during the 17 months of the second
study, three had been killed by cars.
The researchers also trapped coyotes for tracking and analyzed coyote
carcasses during the second study; all six coyotes found dead during
the second study were killed by cars.
While the numbers are telling, they are not a perfect measure of
causes of death; Boydston cautions that animals killed by cars are
more likely to be found by people than those that die for other
reasons. Still, they show the hazards the animals face in an urban
setting.
The Santiago Fire of 2007 swept through the area during the second
study, and at least one bobcat – one not collared in the study – was
found dead of injuries suffered in the fire.
The death illustrates another problem for the cats, Boydston says.
Wildfire can push surviving bobcats into areas of poor habitat, or to
places where they are more likely to be struck by cars.
"These other kinds of events come in, and that's when the life and
death balance becomes even more critical," Boydston said.
It's too late for mountain lions in the San Joaquin Hills, now
considered "functionally extinct" there, though a population remains
in the Santa Ana Mountains. But it might still be possible to create
viable wildlife corridors for bobcats and other predators from the
mountains to the ocean.
Crook's colleague at Colorado State, Jeff Tracey, used the research to
develop a computer model of bobcat movement that could help land
managers: plug in a few perameters, run the model, and see if you've
created a working wildlife corridor.
They hope their work will help others find ways to preserve top
predators wherever they survive, including mountain lions, bobcats,
coyotes and gray foxes.
"It still impresses me, amazes me, that we can still retain this suite
of carnivores, ranging from small to large, in coastal Southern
California," Crooks said.
.
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