Displaying Spoon-billed Sandpiper

This video of a displaying male Spoon-billed Sandpiper was filmed by David Erterius in Chukotka in June 2010. Spoon-billed Sandpipers are critically endangered due to habitat loss across their range and other factors. This individual failed to find a mate.

A Response to Radiolab's Report on the Kirtland's Warbler

Kirtland's Warbler Female / Photo by Joel Trick (USFWS)

The protection and recovery of endangered species remains a controversial issue almost 40 years after the Endangered Species Act was passed. Nicholas Lund, who formerly blogged at birdDC and The Birdist, writes a guest post about how WNYC's Radiolab reported on the recovery program for the Kirtland's Warbler....

I have been a big fan of the Radiolab podcast for a few years now.  It’s wonderful in the way many NPR programs are: entertaining, insightful and unabashedly wonky in a time when a lot of entertainment races to appeal to the lowest common denominator to get ratings (anybody tuning in to River Monsters or Moose Attack! on the Discovery Channel this week?  Me neither.)

As the show is wont to do, a segment on Radiolab’s most recent episode, a collection of scientific efforts that resulted in “unintended consequences” titled “Oops” (listen here: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/), left me thinking.  The segment discusses the impact of Kirtland’s Warbler protection on the small town of Mio, Michigan and confronts difficult questions about the value of conservation.  After first listening to the story I felt that certain aspects were misleading or incomplete.  I exchanged some emails with John about the story, and he agreed to give me some space here to ramble about the story from a birder’s perspective.

You really should just listen to the segment (it starts just after the 27-minute mark at the link above), but here’s a little summary in case you don’t.  The Kirtland’s Warbler, likely the rarest bird in the US, was not faring well in one of its few remaining habitats, the area near the town of Mio.  An extensive and grisly program of culling Brown-headed Cowbirds (who were hurting Kirtland’s populations with their parasitic nesting techniques) had succeeded in preventing further Kirtland’s declines but was not restoring the population.  However, a new strategy – prescribed burning to restore the Kirtland’s favored young jack pine habitat – showed promise.  In fact, after one large fire in 1980, Kirtland’s population skyrocketed.

The problem is that the fire didn’t go as planned. Inexperience with the technique and a lack of care allowed the fire to rage out of control, burning several houses and killing a Forest Service worker named Jim Swiderski.  After the fire, and to this day, many of the residents of Mio question whether the continued efforts to maintain the Kirtland’s Warbler are worth the death of Mr. Swiderski.  The story’s reporter, Lulu Miller, questions whether the loss of life and the constant expenditure of money and manpower are worth the continued existence of a bird that can’t evolve to survive on its own. 

I have a few issues with the way the story is presented.  First, I feel that Ms. Miller created an incomplete picture of the town’s relationship with the bird.   According to the story, “a question lingers in the air” about whether Kirtland’s protection was worth the life of Mr. Swiderski, and several of the townspeople are heard saying that they’ve never even seen the bird, the implication being that a human life might not be worth this insignificant animal. 

What the story doesn’t say, at least explicitly, is the benefits the town receives from having the warbler around.  By the story’s own admission, tourists – who need places to stay and things to eat - come from all over the world to Mio to find the Kirtland’s.  I think it’s safe to say that these people wouldn’t be bringing their tourist dollars to Mio if the bird was extinct.  So, regardless of whether or not most people in town have ever seen the bird (have they ever looked?  It’s not clear), there can be no doubt that the town is benefiting from Kirtland’s protection.  The fact that this aspect was left out of the story seems a glaring oversight and an oversimplification in order to serve a “birders v. townspeople” narrative. 

Second, I take issue with the story’s offhand dismissal of the “because it’s the law” justification of species protection.  In the story, when Ms. Miller is questioning whether all of the effort on behalf of the bird is worthwhile, she dismisses a Forest Service employee’s explanation that the reason they spend so much time on Kirtland’s protection is because they have to, it’s the law.  The question that goes unanswered, though, is “Why is it the law?”  It’s the law because, as a nation, we’ve decided that protecting species from the effects of human impact – our own impacts – is important.  Kirtland’s Warblers are not declining because of natural causes but a human one: the disruption of the natural cycle of wildfire. 

The Endangered Species Act wasn’t created in a lab, it was passed by our representatives in Congress.  As a nation we decided that we were tired of species going in the direction of the Passenger Pigeon and the Bison, and decided that species should be protected from our impacts.  While there is of course the question of whether humans have anything but a moral obligation to protect species (it’s a juicy moral question hinted at during the interview with Mr. Swiderski’s parents), there’s no debating that it was a question answered by the American people, who tasked that Forest Service employee with protecting the Kirtland’s.  I feel that the failure to mention the national mandate of endangered species protection is a serious omission, and one that could provide a proper frame for better understanding the tragedy surrounding the death of Mr. Swiderski.

British Columbia Spotted Owl Population Critically Low

Pat's Nature News contained a piece of very bad news about Northern Spotted Owls. The species is down to six wild individuals in British Columbia.

Spotted owls live up to 17 years in the wild, but they breed slowly, mating for life and producing just one or two chicks every two years. Silent hunters with excellent vision and hearing, the owls swoop through the open canopy of old-growth forests at dusk to catch wood rats, voles, mice, and squirrels. At one time, at least 500 pairs lived in B.C.’s forests, but over the past 100 years, their habitat has been so heavily logged that the owls have been unable to survive.

Spotted owls are particularly vulnerable to logging because of the way they nest and hunt. The owls don’t build nests but lay eggs in trees hollowed out by age or decay. And when a forest is cleared and prey populations decline, the birds often starve.

The B.C. government is belatedly trying to save the owls, with plans to capture two of the remaining males to breed with two single females in captivity. The government now has 10 owls in its breeding program and hopes to have 30 or 40 pairs so that 70 or so of the birds can be released back into the wilderness in the next decade. Government biologists have also been killing barred owls, which compete with the spotted owls for habitat.

As in the United States, the problem is attributed to habitat loss. Over 70% of the species's habitat throughout its range has been logged. British Columbia's population is much worse off than the one in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, where there is still a viable (if endangered) breeding population in the wild. It also appears from the linked article that the owls in B.C. lack the habitat protections afforded under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. If so, it may be difficult to restart a breeding population in appropriate habitat.

Whooping Cranes to Get GPS Units

Over the next three years, Whooping Cranes in the western migratory flock are going to be fitted with GPS tracking devices that broadcast a crane's location every six hours.

They have permission to trap and band 10 whooping cranes in the winter and 10 in the summer for three years. It's a big job, and potentially dangerous for all concerned. Trapped birds can develop a potentially fatal muscle ailment called capture myopathy. Bird-banders can get pecked or scratched.

The birds are caught with a rope snare that lies on the ground and is attached to a bent fishing rod. When a walking crane trips it, the rod recoils and tightens the leg noose in a way designed not to traumatize the bird. Two whoopers were outfitted with GPS anklets last winter. Start to finish, the procedure took 15 minutes for one and 16 minutes for the other.

Each device costs $4,500, and the tracking service, provided by a private company, costs $1,500 a year. The anklets are solar-powered and designed to last at least three years. In a trial run the researchers last spring put devices on two sandhill cranes; they're still working.

The program was developed partly to avoid situations like the particularly bad winter that the flock suffered in 2008-2009, when 57 of the cranes died. The location data gathered by the GPS units will provide more detailed information about cranes' migration routes and favored habitats.

"We hope to learn something about their habitat-use patterns," Chavez-Ramirez said. "Where do they spend the night? What are the characteristics of those sites, the depth of the water, the vegetation? We've never had a quantifiable way to evaluate where they roost."

Wetlands are being lost throughout the birds' migration route, he said. The tracking program "will let us understand what they want and what they use so that perhaps we can reproduce those conditions."

It may also help answer more speculative questions.

As part of her research, Gil has correlated climatic variables with the whooping crane population size and the reproductive success of birds identified by colored leg bands (including one four-generation lineage). She has found that the population declines in rough synchrony with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a pattern of Pacific climate variability similar to El Niño. This decline is probably due to weather extremes during those years: low temperatures, which stress the birds, and a shortage of rain, which lowers water levels and exposes their nests to predation.

This point is not mentioned in the Post article, but I hope that the data gained from the study can help the eastern flock in some way as well.

A Change of (Recovery) Plans for Whooping Cranes?

A major goal of the Whooping Crane recovery plan has been the establishment of a self-sustaining migratory eastern flock. At one point, wild Whooping Cranes had been reduced to a single population, the one that now winters in Aransas NWR. That situation would leave the species vulnerable to a natural disaster, epidemic, or other event that could decimate the flock and push it towards extinction, so a second flock is necessary for the long-term good of the species. Creating that second flock from captive-bred birds has proven difficult and expensive. The latest setback is that the proxy summer grounds may need to be moved from Necedah NWR in Wisconsin. Multiple crane pairs have been abandoning their nests, most likely due to swarms of black flies.

Clemency said the chief culprit appears to be marauding black flies - specifically, a species of the insect attracted to birds, not humans.

Research in 2009 by scientists from Clemson University revealed that black flies tend to congregate where the cranes nest. Traps caught few of the flies elsewhere on the refuge, "but thousands of black flies were observed at whooping cranes' nests," after the birds gave up and left, Clemency said.

The researchers found that the flies travel as far as five or six miles to be near the cranes. Why? It's not clear, but Clemency said possible attractions are the birds' feces or hormonal secretions. Scientists don't see black flies hassling cranes in Canada.

This spring, the partnership will experiment with using a naturally occurring soil bacterium to control the flies in the Yellow River.

Also, for the first time researchers will be training high-resolution cameras on nests to see what happens next month, when cranes in past years have left their nests.

"This will give us details not only of the birds in the nest, but we'll be able to see how many flies are on the heads of the birds," Clemency said.

"Frankly, at times it's baffling," Hartup said, but as troubling as it is, "the thing is, it requires a good deal of patience."

Many of the nesting birds will be 6 to 8 years old this spring. In the life of a crane, the birds are still young, inexperienced parents, he said. Some are struggling to pair off; others have lost mates. Also, the birds were born and raised artificially, and he said this might affect their habits as young adults.

The only crane born in the wild in the Eastern flock was in 2006.

A possible destination is Horicon NWR, also in Wisconsin, which may have a lower black fly population than Necedah.

ESA Protections for Loggerhead Sea Turtle and Kaua'i Endemics

Last week, I expressed some frustration with the Obama's administration's record on endangered species after it placed Greater Sage-Grouse on the list of candidates. Up to that point, only two species had been listed under the Endangered Species Act since Obama took office, while 249 species have been sitting on the candidate list. This week that changed in a big way, with two announcements.

Loggerhead Sea Turtle at Archie Carr NWR / Photo by Ryan Hagerty (USFWS)

First, the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a joint proposal to list the Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta caretta) under the Endangered Species Act. Loggerhead Sea Turtle has nine distinct populations around the world. Of these, two will be designated as threatened and seven as endangered. The two populations that occur in U.S. waters, the North Pacific and Northwest Atlantic populations, will both be designated as endangered. Loggerhead Sea Turtles worldwide are currently classified as threatened; the new listing is in response to petitions regarding the two U.S. populations.

This is a proposed rather than final rule, so it will undergo a public comment period first. If you wish to comment on the proposed listing, you can do so at www.regulations.gov until June 14, 2010. Once the Loggerhead is listed as endangered, the government will be required to designate critical habitat to protect feeding areas in the ocean and nesting areas on beaches.

‘Akeke‘e (Loxops caeruleirostris) / Painting by John Gerrard Keulemans

Second, 48 endemic species from the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i were listed as a group since they share habitats and have similar threats. This action addresses some of the backlog in listing petitions. An ecosystem approach is particularly suitable for Hawaii since so many vulnerable species occur in a relatively small area. It provides a way for the government to protect entire ecosystems rather than the narrow ranges where a species is known to be found. The USFWS plans to list new species by ecosystem on other islands in the next few years.

The 48 newly listed species (pdf) include 45 plants, 1 insect, and 2 birds. Among the 45 plants are several that have not been seen for several years, though they still exist in remote areas. One plant, Diellia manii, was considered extinct until its recent rediscovery. The insect is Drosophila sharpi, a Hawaiian picture-wing fly. The two birds are ‘Akeke‘e (Loxops caeruleirostris) and ‘Akikiki (Oreomystis bairdi). Both are Hawaiian honeycreepers and members of the finch family. They may be better known as Kaua'i 'Akepa and Kaua'i Creeper. These species had appeared stable until the mid-20th century, when both populations suffered precipitous declines. There are now about 3,500 'Akeke'e and 1,300 'Akikiki.

Along with listing the 48 endangered species, the USFWS designated critical habitat for 47 of them. The critical habitat covers 26,582 acres in six ecosystem types, 98% of which overlaps the critical habitat already designated for other endangered or threatened species. Most is on state-owned lands. Critical habitat was not designated for one palm species because it is a prized plant for collections; the USFWS was concerned that designating critical habitat might alert collectors to its location.

Endangered But Not Endangered

Greater Sage-Grouse / Photo by Dave Menke (USFWS)

In its Friday news dump, the US Fish and Wildlife Service finally announced whether it would list the Greater Sage-Grouse under the Endangered Species Act.

Salazar made the announcement in conjunction with a finding by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that, based on accumulated scientific data and new peer-reviewed information and analysis, the greater sage-grouse warrants the protection of the Endangered Species Act but that listing the species at this time is precluded by the need to address higher priority species first. The greater sage-grouse will be placed on the candidate list for future action, meaning the species would not receive statutory protection under the ESA and states would continue to be responsible for managing the bird....

Adding the species to the candidate list will allow the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies an opportunity to continue to work cooperatively with private landowners to conserve the candidate species. This includes financial and technical assistance, and the ability to develop conservation agreements that provide regulatory assurances to landowners who take actions to benefit the species. One such agreement was signed last month in western Idaho, encompassing an area of over half a million acres.

The agency also announced that there was insufficient evidence to treat the Mono Basin population of Greater Sage-Grouse as a separate subspecies. As a result, it will be handled together with Greater Sage-Grouse in other areas for listing purposes. This population is found in California and Nevada.

The decision leaves the Greater Sage-Grouse in the same administrative limbo as numerous other species, including the Red Knot. There are currently 249 candidate species for listing under the Endangered Species Act. In recent years, the candidate list seems to have become the most likely destination for endangered species petitions. It has some advantages as a designation in that the USFWS will coordinate voluntary conservation measures among federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private landowners. Its status will also be reviewed annually to monitor progress. The USFWS emphasizes these aspects in its press release. However, candidate species do not receive the full set of legal protections that endangered or threatened species receive. While the Greater Sage-Grouse will continue to receive protection from direct killings or nest destruction under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, it will not benefit from the Endangered Species Act's habitat protections. The USFWS will also not be legally compelled create and implement a recovery plan, which leaves conservation measures subject to the goodwill of whatever administration is in office.

Speaking of administrations, the Center for Biological Diversity pointed out that the Obama administration has listed only two species under the Endangered Species Act so far. This is lower than the Bush administration's annual average of 8 species listed. Both administrations have shown a marked departure from endangered species policy under the previous two administrations, which listed annual averages of 65 and 58, respectively. While the current administration has made some initial progress in rolling back the worst attacks on the Endangered Species Act, it needs to do a better job of extending the law's protections to the species that need it.

Color-marked Piping Plovers

 Color-marked Piping Plover / Photo by Ann Maddock

Within the next few weeks, Piping Plovers will start arriving in the Mid-Atlantic states, either to stay and breed or to rest briefly en route to breeding grounds farther north. (Last year, I saw my first of the year on March 14 in New York.) This year, some of the plovers may be marked with colored leg bands as part of a migration study. A Piping Plover with a black flag near the top of its left leg, like the one above, is likely to be part of a population that winters in the Bahamas.

How may a sighting be reported? Simple. Report all sightings to CHERI GRATTO-TREVOR, Prairie and Northern Wildlife Research Centre, Environment Canada, 115 Perimeter Road, Saskatoon, SK S7N 0X4 Canada, EM: cheri.gratto-trevor@ec.gc.ca , noting the color and location of each band on the bird, and location and behaviour of the bird (on nest, brooding, foraging at migratory stop-over, etc.), as well as presumed sex of the bird, if possible.

What do color bands of The Bahamas plovers look like? They look like the three Bahamas plovers pictured above. All have a black flag on the upper left leg. Each have a single white band on one of the lower legs, right or left. Each have two color bands (neither of which is a white band) on the lower leg opposite the leg with the single white band. Colors used were: red, orange, yellow, white, light green, dark green, dark blue, and black. No metal bands were placed on any of The Bahamas birds; nor were color bands placed on the upper right legs of the birds.

So far only the only previously banded Piping Plover to be resighted belonged to the Great Lakes population. That bird, an adult female, was banded in 2005 on her breeding grounds in Michigan. She has returned to Michigan to nest each year since then but was not recorded elsewhere until she was seen in the Bahamas.

Of the 57 color-marked Piping Plovers that are part of the current study, 50 were observed again within 24 hours of being banded. Many were seen during subsequent weeks, but they will be leaving the Bahamas very soon. These birds could be part of the Great Lakes population, or they could migrate and breed elsewhere. If you notice any Piping Plovers with color bands this year, make sure to record the colors and positions of all the bands and report the sighting.

The Piping Plover is federally listed as endangered in the Great Lakes region and threatened in the Northern Great Plains and Atlantic Coast. While their status has been improving thanks to the recovery program, the species is still vulnerable. More information about where each of the populations migrates and breeds will assist recovery efforts.

More details on the project and how to report sightings, along with additional photos of banded plovers, are available at the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory blog.

Upcoming Citizen Science Projects: GBBC and Rusty Blackbirds

Rusty Blackbird / Photo by Vincent Lucas (leppyone)

If you are looking for reasons to keep birding this winter despite the cold weather, there are two great citizen science projects starting soon.

First, the second annual Rusty Blackbird Blitz is starting this weekend and will run through the middle of February. The Rusty Blackbird population has been in decline over the past few decades, for reasons that are not well understood. The goal of this survey is to learn more about their winter ecology and distribution. You can read some more about the goals of the blitz, and last year's results, at the Rusty Blackbird Working Group. Last year, the blitz got a good response from birders:

173 birders submitted 453 rusty blackbird surveys under the E-bird Blitz protocol. Of these individual reports, 249 sightings totaling 19,243 individuals were recorded. 204 surveys did not record any rusty blackbirds (but negative data are very valuable as well). Some of these reports were repeats from the same site. The number of unique sites is 215....

The number of rusty blackbird counts on E-bird greatly increased, probably largely due to the Blitz and the publicity surrounding the event. During the 7-16 February period, the number of counts increased from 70 to 262 between 2008 and 2009.

If you know of any good spots to find Rusty Blackbirds in winter, this would be a good time to visit them and report the sightings through eBird. Surveys are likely to be more productive in the southeastern states that form the core of the Rusty Blackbird's range.

Second, this winter's Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is coming very soon, February 12-15. The GBBC aims to survey the continent's avifauna in a single weekend by asking birders to count birds in their yards and neighborhoods and report the sightings online. Last year birders submitted over 93,600 checklists. The count is open to birders of every skill level, from the beginners to the most advanced. All sightings are reviewed – first by eBird's sophisticated filters and then by a team of volunteer regional reviewers – so you need not worry about wildly inaccurate sightings corrupting the database.

Last year's GBBC documented the largest irruption of Pine Siskins in recent memory. Volunteers recorded 279,469 siskins on 18,528 checklists, which beat the previous high in 2005. White-winged Crossbills also set a record high last year, with 4,824 crossbills on 589 checklists.

The GBBC can spark some friendly competition since the website ranks states and localities by species, checklists, and number of birds. My area is not anywhere near the top. However, last year my town finished ninth in species and first in checklists among New Jersey localities. I hope we can keep it there again this year.

Further Evaluation of State Endangered Bird Lists in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

An at-risk but unlisted species, the Cerulean Warbler

Photo by Wikimedia user Mdf, used under a Creative Commons License

Last week, Jeffrey Wells of the Boreal Songbird Initiative published an interesting evaluation of state endangered species lists in PLoS ONE. (I wrote about the article here.) Looking primarily at birds, Wells and his co-authors found that states were effective at protecting species that were globally at-risk and for which they bear high responsibility. However, they also protect many species whose overall populations are secure but happen to be rare in a given state. In other words, resources might be wasted on stable populations when they could be better used on more vulnerable ones.

The Philadelphia Inquirer this week has a closer look how state wildlife agencies in this area handle their endangered and threatened species lists. Like the situation nationally, the local lists have uneven coverage: Pennsylvania lists Great Egret and Blackpoll Warbler, but not Cerulean Warbler; New Jersey lists Savannah Sparrow but not the more vulnerable Saltmarsh Sparrow. State officials argue that their mission is local rather than global biodiversity. Pennsylvania officials had a lot more to say than New Jersey officials, so I will quote them below.

"We have this mandate to maintain the health of Pennsylvania's environment, not the world," says Dan Brauning, wildlife diversity chief with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which has oversight for bird conservation.

"We're down to one site for black terns," he says. "What are we going to do, ignore it because it's fairly common in North Dakota? No." ...

Even if losing a niche species here wouldn't really destabilize a nationally abundant population, "Pennsylvania is a much better place with them than without them," says Brian J. Byrnes, Important Bird Area Coordinator for Audubon Pennsylvania.

They also argued that the state has programs that go beyond the species on their endangered species list.

In order to qualify for a new source of federal funds, states have had to devise "wildlife action plans" for conservation. "The mantra," Brauning says, is "to keep the species from becoming endangered." These plans, too, have lists; in both Pensylvania and New Jersey, the cerulean warbler is included.

Brauning says Pennsylvania dedicates about $300,000 annually toward nongame bird conservation. But federal funding for the state's wildlife action plan has averaged $1 million. That has allowed the state to actually spend more on the cerulean than it has on the sedge wren, which is listed in the state but is common nationally.

Innovative cerulean research is under way in the Allegheny National Forest, Brauning says, adding that in some cases, listing a bird might actually hamper research efforts. As each individual bird becomes more valuable, it's harder to rationalize, say, capturing a few to extract blood and feather samples to get health data. The risk of their dying is too great.

The State Wildlife Action Plans, by the way, is a good program and an important source of funding for local conservation efforts. (Each state has one, and all are posted at the link.) However, I am not sure that this federal funding program is really a replacement for state endangered species lists. Endangered species lists do play a role in funding priorities, but they are just as much about creating a legal framework for protecting species and their habitats from direct harm. It is great that the federal government is funding innovative Cerulan Warbler research through Pennsylvania's wildlife action plan – and I mean that seriously – but what will the state do when someone wants to clearcut a forest on private land that provides important Cerulean Warbler habitat? What will New Jersey do when more coastal developments impinge on Saltmarsh Sparrow habitat? Similar questions could be raised about numerous other species. To some extent these issues can be addressed through strategic land purchases, but states can only buy so much land, even with help from the federal government and private donors.

As I wrote in my previous post on this subject, protecting globally at-risk species, such as the 192 Critically Endangered birds, is primarily the job of the federal government rather than state governments. The federal government is better positioned to implement conservation measures across state borders and cooperate with neighboring countries. If funding is a constraint to listing and protecting more at-risk species, then the relevant budgets ought to be raised; as it now stands, wildlife conservation is a minuscule portion of the overall federal budget. Meanwhile states need to pick up some of the slack left by the federal government and re-evaluate whether their own species lists represent the best use of state resources.

International Year of Biodiversity

A critically-endangered bird species / USFWS Photo

The U.N. has declared 2010 an International Year of Biodiversity in the hope that greater awareness might stem the ongoing extinction crisis. Many conservationists consider the current crisis to be the earth's sixth mass extinction. The U.N.'s current effort follows in the wake of unsuccessful efforts to reduce biodiversity loss.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was agreed at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, alongside the climate change convention.

But it acquired its key global pledge during the Johannesburg summit of 2002, when governments agreed to achieve a "significant reduction" in the rate of biological diversity by 2010.

Conservation organisations acknowledge that despite some regional successes, the target is not going to be met; some analyses suggest that nature loss is accelerating rather than decelerating.

Stemming the tide of extinctions is important in its own right, but it takes on added significance since properly functioning ecosystems provide services that are expensive to replicate.

A large on-going UN-sponsored study into the economics of biodiversity suggests that deforestation alone costs the global economy $2-5 trillion each year.

In his speech at Monday's event, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director Achim Steiner is due to highlight problems caused by invasive species, and the potential for ecosystems such as forests and wetlands to absorb and store carbon from the air.

The UN hopes some kind of legally-binding treaty to curb biodiversity loss can be agreed at the CBD summit, held in Japan in October.

One element is due to be a long-awaited protocol under which the genetic resources of financially-poor but biodiversity-rich nations can be exploited in a way that brings benefits to all.

However, given the lack of appetite for legally-binding environmental agreements that key countries displayed at last month's climate summit in Copenhagen, it is unclear just what kind of deal might materialise on biodiversity.

After the dispiriting turn of events at Copenhagen, I do not have high hopes for what the coming biodiversity summit will produce. However, any improvement over the current state of affairs would be welcome, particularly if negotiators can find a fair way to reduce tropical deforestation.

To see which species are in danger of extinction, see the IUCN Red List, which is the most comprehensive catalogue of threatened species. Among the world's birds, 192 are considered Critically Endangered, an IUCN category indicating that a species has undergone rapid loss in its population and has a high likelihood of becoming extinct without immediate action. TIME also has a list of highly endangered creatures, but that list is more skewed towards large, charismatic mammals. The Endangered Species Print Project has an artistic way of looking at biodiversity loss.

Evaluating State Endangered Species Lists

Long-billed Curlew / Photo by Mike Baird

At a time when federal listings have been delayed and international standards are difficult to implement, state endangered species lists can play an important role in protecting at-risk species. That is, they can protect globally threatened species, especially ones for which their region bears high responsibility. Jeffrey Wells of the Boreal Songbird Initiative set out to assess how well state lists are identifying and protecting globally threatened species and the results were published this week as an article in PLoS ONE, "Global versus Local Conservation Focus of U.S. State Agency Endangered Bird Species Lists."

In the United States, 48 states maintain their own lists of species that are endangered, threatened, or of special concern. Wells uses 47 of these lists (excluding Hawaii) and divides the species into four categories based on their global risk of extinction and the degree to which a state bears responsibility for its global population. Global risk is based on assessments produced by Partners in Flight.

Percent of each state's E-T-SC bird species in each of four risk-responsibility categories. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008608.g002

The results show that states are effective at protecting those species that are at risk globally and for which states bear high responsibility. States also give protections to some species that are not at risk globally but are concentrated in their region. However, they also put a lot of effort into protecting secure but locally uncommon species that may not need help as much as the others. For example, state lists include such species as Double-crested Cormorant (2 states), Great Egret (12 states), Laughing Gull (2 states), Bank Swallow (3 states), Magnolia Warbler (2 states), and Dark-eyed Junco (3 states). Meanwhile, some globally threatened species are getting ignored, even when states bear some responsibility for maintaining that global population. Lesser Prairie-Chicken, Long-billed Curlew, Bendire's Thrasher, and Golden-winged Warbler are all listed in half or less of the states that comprise their ranges. Since none of them are federally listed either, those four receive no legal protections in the U.S. apart from what the Migratory Bird Treaty Act offers. My state, New Jersey, lists Savannah Sparrow (locally uncommon) but not Saltmarsh Sparrow (globally at-risk).

To a certain extent, it is not really the job of state wildlife agencies to assess and protect based on global risk. That is a task that should belong to the federal government, which has greater resources and more connections to international wildlife agencies for cooperation. However, many globally at-risk species fail to reach even the federal endangered list, let alone benefit from conservation actions. (According to Wells, 16 bird species listed on the IUCN Redlist are not present on the U.S. federal list.) In that context, perhaps states should take a greater role in protecting species based on their global risk of extinction, rather than local criteria.

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Wells, J., Robertson, B., Rosenberg, K., & Mehlman, D. (2010). Global versus Local Conservation Focus of U.S. State Agency Endangered Bird Species Lists PLoS ONE, 5 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008608

Eight New Species Proposed as Endangered

This morning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released updates on several Endangered Species Act proposals. First, it withdrew the proposed listing for Cook's Petrel.

The world population for Cook’s petrel is currently estimated to be approximately 1,300,000 individuals, with an increasing population trend due to predator eradication efforts. In addition, the Service found evidence of active support for the conservation of this species that has also contributed to its increasing numbers. The proposal was originally published in the December 17, 2007, Federal Register.

Second, the FWS is proposing two South American species, the Galápagos Petrel and the Heinroth’s Shearwater, to be listed as threatened.

Primary factors found to cause population declines in both species include predation by introduced rats, cats, pigs, and dogs and non-native invasive plants....

The Galápagos petrel is a large, long-winged gadfly petrel that is endemic to the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador.  The Heinroth’s shearwater is a small, dark brown shearwater that occurs from the Bismarck Archipelago and the seas around Bougainville Island to the east of Papua New Guinea and the island of Kolombangara in the Solomon Islands.

Third, six species from Europe, Asia, and Africa are being proposed as endangered species.

The following species are proposed to be protected as endangered: the Cantabrian capercaillie, the Marquesan imperial pigeon, the Eiao Polynesian warbler, the greater adjutant, Jerdon’s courser and the slender-billed curlew....

The primary factors causing the population declines vary by species, but include habitat loss and modification, overutilization (e.g., hunting, collection), inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms, and other natural and manmade factors, including pesticide use and disturbance.

All of the proposed new listings are for foreign species. These listings have little direct conservation effect but put restrictions on trade of birds and bird parts.

New Trouble for Asian Vultures

During the past decade, several Asian vulture species lost most of their populations due to the harmful effects of diclofenac, a veterinary drug. Some species declined by as much as 90%. That drug has since been removed from the market. Unfortunately, one replacement, ketoprofen, is not an improvement since it causes birds to die of kidney failure.

The research, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, shows that ketoprofen is lethal to the birds in the dosages that would be administered to livestock to reduce pain and swelling of those animals suffering from rheumatism or arthritis. Worryingly, researchers have already recorded the drug in one in 200 carcasses in southern Asia, with 70% of those occurring in potentially lethal concentrations.

The authors add that ketoprofen could already be contributing to further declines of the remaining vulture populations caused by diclofenac, and this is a trend likely to increase if ketoprofen replaces diclofenac. In addition to ketoprofen and diclofenac, other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs sold by veterinary pharmacies for treating livestock include meloxicam, phenylbutazone, analgin, nimesulide, flunixin and ibuprofen. Just three of these have been tested to determine their effects on vultures. Diclofenac and ketoprofen cause lethal kidney failure and only meloxicam is known to be safe.

Meloxicam is known to be safe for vultures and is not covered by a patent, so it ought to be the top choice as an alternative to diclofenac. As one of the biologists said, it would be helpful to have more medication options available, but they really need to be tested in advance. With several species in such a precarious state, there is little room for error.

Darwin's Birds: Evolution and DNA in the Galápagos

Whether by chance or by design, this week witnessed the publication of two studies on birds from the islands made famous by Charles Darwin. The first concerns one of the best-known examples of evolution, the Galápagos finches. A married pair of biologists have been banding and tracking finches on Daphne Major for several decades. In 1981, they banded a medium ground-finch (Geospiza fortis) that was significantly larger than most other medium ground-finches on the island. Since then, its descendants, which have unusual beaks and songs, have stopped breeding with other medium ground-finches.

The fact that 5110's descendants haven't mixed could be because they differ from the natives. The Grants note that the descendants have a differently shaped beak from those native to Daphne Major. As finch beaks are vital in identifying potential mates, this could serve to keep them reproductively isolated.

5110's offspring also have the avian equivalent of a strange accent. These finches learn their songs from their father, and the Grants suggest that 5110 sang the songs from his birth home of Santa Cruz then modified his come-hither ballad by roughly copying the Daphne Major birds'. This imperfect copying, they suggest, has over time acted as a barrier to interbreeding.

Lukas Keller of the Zoological Museum at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, agrees that 5110's case is special. However, he thinks it may be possible to generalize to other species who learn behaviours such as singing in a similar way. "For me it's a very exciting paper," he says.

Whereas Darwin thought that a new species would take a considerable amount of time to appear, Keller says that this paper "shows how rapidly reproductive isolation can develop".

It is not yet clear that this is a new species, even though some headlines give that impression. However, it does provide a real-time view of how reproductive isolation and speciation can begin.

The second study reports on the feasibility of introducing a rare mockingbird into part of its former range. Darwin and his colleagues had collected specimens of the Floreana mockingbird (Mimus trifasciatus) from Floreana Island, part of the Galápagos archipelago. Due to human interference, the mockingbird became extinct on Floreana but survived on nearby islands. The Charles Darwin Foundation wants to bring the Floreana mockingbird back to Floreana. Before attempting to do so, they compared DNA samples from the remaining subpopulations to that of specimens collected by Darwin.

This revealed that the two sub-populations split from each other very recently. This split, the researchers said, was likely caused by the Floreana mockingbird becoming extinct.

Its extinction would have severed a "bridge" between the two populations - meaning that it was no longer possible for them to interbreed.

Even though they have evolved independently and become inbred, this study showed that the tiny sub-populations have retained much of the important "genetic variation" once found in the mockingbirds on Floreana.

This is good news for the survival of the species.

It has led the researchers to conclude that future conservation plans should focus on protecting "the two satellite populations in situ and establishing a single third population on Floreana".

This reintroduction could use birds from both islands, the researchers said, "to maximize genetic diversity".

I suppose one remaining question is whether the mockingbirds from these subpopulations will be inclined to interbreed after being separated for so long. That issue is not addressed in the BBC article, but the scientists seem confident enough that it may not actually be a problem.

Aside being fascinating examples of biodiversity in action, these two studies highlight the continued usefulness of bird research techniques that may seem dated. The mockingbird study showed the importance of museum collections as repositories of physical evidence for future generations of ornithologists. In this case, it provided DNA evidence for a study of subpopulations, a use that probably was not imagined by Darwin and his companions when they collected the specimens. The study of ground finches relied on bird banding to identify and track individual birds.

Brown Pelican Delisted

Brown Pelicans / Photo by B&M Photography

Yesterday, the Interior Department announced that Brown Pelicans have recovered and would no longer be protected as an endangered or threatened species. Its decline was caused by a combination of habitat loss and the widespread use of DDT. In the early years of the 20th century, it was hunted.

The brown pelican was first declared endangered in 1970 under the Endangered Species Preservation Act, a precursor to the current Endangered Species Act. Since then, thanks to a ban on DDT and efforts by states, conservation organizations, private citizens and many other partners, the bird has recovered. There are now more than 650,000 brown pelicans found across Florida and the Gulf and Pacific Coasts, as well as in the Caribbean and Latin America.

The Fish and Wildlife Service removed the brown pelican population in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and northward along the Atlantic Coast states from the list of endangered species in 1985. Today’s action removes the remaining population from the list....

Past efforts to protect the brown pelican actually led to the birth of the National Wildlife Refuge System more than a century ago in central Florida. German immigrant Paul Kroegel, appalled by the indiscriminate slaughter of pelicans for their feathers, approached President Theodore Roosevelt. This led Roosevelt to create the first National Wildlife Refuge at Pelican Island in 1903, when Kroegel was named the first refuge manager. Today, the system has grown to 550 national wildlife refuges, many of which have played key roles in the recovery of the brown pelican.

With removal of the brown pelican from the list of threatened and endangered species, federal agencies will no longer be required to consult with the Service to ensure any action they authorize, fund, or carry out will not harm the species. However, additional federal laws, such as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Lacey Act, will continue to protect the brown pelican, its nests and its eggs.

It is encouraging to see endangered species recover and move off the endangered species list. There have been a few high-profile removals of recovered species over the past decade or so – peregrine falcon and bald eagle come to mind. However, there have also been a few in which delisting was premature. The travails of gray wolves since their delisting have been particularly saddening. I hope that the future of brown pelicans has more in common with peregrine falcons and bald eagles than gray wolves; luckily there is not a lobby for hunting pelicans. According to Audubon California, there is still some reason for concern, especially from the effects of oil and sewage spills on coastal habitats.

From a broader perspective, this delisting comes at a time when many species are still at risk. This week Mongabay.com reported that (so far) the Obama administration is listing endangered species at an even slower pace than the Bush administration. This may be partly due to delays in getting officials confirmed by the Senate, and perhaps also the administrative foot-dragging during the last administration played a role in backing up the queue. However, these candidate species need to be listed soon so that they, like the brown pelican, have a chance at recovery.

Albatrosses Threatened by Commercial Fishing

Many albatross species are in decline because of their interaction with commercial deep sea fishing. Albatrosses are attracted to the same bait used to catch fish. When they attempt to grab and eat bait, they often become entangled in the fishing lines and drown. As a result, 18 seabird species are threatened with extinction. Another 19 seabird species are at risk.

A conference this week will consider ways to reduce these accidental killings along with their main business of setting tuna quotas.

USFWS Releases Updated List of Candidate Species

Yesterday the US Fish and Wildlife Service released an updated list of candidates for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Candidates for endangered species listing meet the requirements for listing but have not been listed because other species have a higher priority. These species will not benefit from ESA protections, but their listing as candidates should encourage federal land managers and other stakeholders to reduce threats and conserve the species. This year, four species were removed from the list and five were added. Another eight (not specified in the press release) had their priority level changed.

The four species removed from candidate status are two plants from Puerto Rico - Calliandra locoensis and Calyptranthes estremerae; the troglobitic groundwater shrimp found in Puerto Rico, Barbuda, and the Dominican Republic; and the fat whorled pondsnail from Utah. The Service removed these species after a review of the information found that they do not face threats to an extent that ESA protection is needed.

Today’s notice also identifies five new candidate species: the Florida bonneted bat, currently found at 12 locations in central/south Florida; therabbitsfoot mussel, found in only 49 streams in AL, AR, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MS, MO, OH, OK, PA, TN, and WV; the Kentucky gladecress (Leavenworthia exigua var. laciniata), a plant found in Bullitt and Jefferson Counties, KY; the Florida bristle fern (Trichomanes punctatum floridanum), found in small areas of Miami-Dade and Sumter Counties, FL; and the diamond darter, a small fish found only in portions of the Elk River, WV.

Several bird species are currently listed as candidate species, including the Red Knot pictured above. Here is the full list of candidates; I meant to include the candidate birds here, but the database was not responding when I wrote the post.

Where Do Albatrosses Find the Plastic?

Most readers of this blog have probably already seen Chris Jordan's sad photos of dead albatross chicks that ingested too much plastic. The albatrosses featured at that page were found on the Midway Atoll. Their parents found bits of plastic, thought they were food, and brought them back to feed to their chicks. Some albatross chicks regurgitate the plastic later, but many suffer detrimental effects. A chick that ate too much plastic would eventually starve to death, as these chicks did.

So where do they find the plastic? Albatrosses forage by wandering great distances over the ocean and picking up likely prey items. The bits of plastic were most likely floating in the well-documented garbage patches of the Pacific Ocean. A new paper in PLoS ONE suggests that the problem for Laysan Albatrosses is far worse in the western Pacific than in the eastern Pacific.

The authors studied two albatross breeding populations, one at Oahu in Hawaii and the other at Kure, 2,150 km to the northwest. They tagged adults in each colony with geolocators to track their movements during and after the breeding season. As the chicks fledged, they collected and examined the chicks' boluses, regurgitated material that includes any non-digestible items that the chicks swallowed. This could include bones, beaks of squid, or plastics.

Data from the geolocators showed that the adults from the two colonies foraged in different parts of the Pacific. The Kure colony mostly foraged to the north and west of Kure; Oahu albatrosses foraged to the north and east.

Contours show the foraging ranges for albatrosses on Kure Atoll (blue) and Oahu (red) during the a) incubation b) chick guard c) post-guard and d) non-breeding stages.

Examination of the boluses showed that chicks on Kure ingested and regurgitated a far greater amount of plastic than chicks on Oahu.

Comparison of a) natural food mass, b) plastic mass, c) # plastic pieces and d) average plastic piece mass from Laysan albatross boluses on Kure and Oahu.

From the article:

The finding that birds breeding on Kure Atoll fed their chicks, on average, ten times more plastic than birds breeding on Oahu suggests that putative Western Garbage Patch where the majority of Kure birds foraged may in fact be a just as much of a threat to marine life as the frequently discussed Eastern Garbage Patch. Furthermore, every bolus examined from Kure Atoll contained multiple pieces of fishing paraphernalia, while only two boluses on Oahu contained any evidence of fishing line or tools (despite recreational fishing adjacent to the breeding colony on Oahu), suggesting that the threat from fisheries not only comes from bycatch for this species but also from the consumption of fishing gear. It is unclear whether the Western Garbage Patch contains more trash than the Eastern Garbage Patch, or if the size and composition of the pieces are easier for the birds to ingest compared to those found in the Eastern Garbage Patch in addition to the finding that albatrosses from Kure spend a greater proportion of time foraging in this area.

The authors also raise a third possible explanation. The colony at Kure has a higher population density, so adults there may need to be less selective in choosing food items.

Whether this will help scientists prevent albatrosses from ingesting so much plastic remains to be seen. There is such a tremendous amount of plastic floating in the Pacific that there seems to be little hope of removing it. Perhaps someone will find an alternative solution. In the long term, reducing plastic use and plastic waste should cut down on albatross deaths. My hope is that albatrosses will eventually learn to distinguish plastic from food.

Images are reproduced from PLoS ONE and link to the originals.

Bald Ibis Shot

The Northern Bald Ibis is one of the most endangered bird species in the world, with two small wild populations in Morocco and the Middle East. The Middle Eastern flock constitutes of only a handful of birds. One of them was recently shot by a hunter in Saudi Arabia.

Formerly, the range of this species extended across parts of southern and central Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. It even features in the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt. Following a huge population and range decline, the bulk of the wild population of 210 birds now occurs in Morocco, but a tiny population was rediscovered in 2002, in Syria.

A satellite-tracking project led by BirdLife International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in collaboration with the Desert Commission of the Syrian Government, established that the Syrian adults migrate to the Ethiopian highlands each winter, but the wintering area of younger birds remains a mystery. This migration across the deserts of the Middle East to north-east Africa puts these birds under threat from the region’s many hunters.

Researchers from BirdLife, the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) and IUCN, trying to find out more about the movements of the young birds, fitted two birds with satellite tags, and it is one of these birds – a female – which was shot.

And of course, with a species this threatened, hunting is hardly the only threat.

Three birds from a semi-captive population in Turkey were released last year to see if they would migrate. They flew south as far as Jordan, but subsequently were found dead. Initially, it was feared they had been poisoned, but later it was realised that the birds had been electrocuted, emphasising that other threats can have a devastating impact on the future of the Northern Bald Ibis in the Middle East.

More satellite-tagged birds released from Turkey this year, flew south as far as Saudi Arabia but they too disappeared not much more than 100 km from where the Syrian bird was shot. Although their fate has not been established, researchers believe these birds too may have succumbed to hunters.

Hunting of bald ibises is banned in Saudi Arabia, but clearly the ban does not stop it.

Blog Note: This week I will be in Cape May to assist with raptor banding. Blogging might be light at times, but I will post as often as possible.