A Threat to the Winter Refuge of Whooping Cranes?

If you have been following weather news in North America, you may be aware that Texas is in the midst of a prolonged drought that is extreme even by that state's standards. That drought has been exacerbated by one of the hottest summers on record. That situation is unpleasant for the people who live there and sets up battles over water rights. One of them concerns the winter residence of endangered Whooping Cranes.

Whooping Cranes at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge / USFWS

The western migratory population of Whooping Cranes breeds in Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Canada and migrates south to Aransas NWR for the winter. The refuge protects freshwater and brackish marshes where the cranes can forage. Unfortunately these marshes are now threatened by the recent drought to the extent that their water chemistry is changing. Conservationists are seeking to change water usage upstream along the Guadeloupe River to protect the cranes' winter home.

In drought-stricken Texas, heavy water use by chemical plants, refineries, and cities has left less fresh water for estuaries downstream, helping raise salinity levels in the coastal marsh 175 miles southwest of Houston. So environmentalists have sued state regulators to restrict water use along the river to protect the habitat of the last wild flock of whooping cranes that spend each winter there. But Dow Chemical (DOW), with a plant just upstream from the cranes, says it was there first. Citing the state’s first-come-first-served water-use regulations, Dow claims permits dating back to the 1940s allow it to use as much of the Guadalupe River’s output as it wants.

All this will be aired in federal court in December in a case that threatens to upend long-standing water rights....

Due to Texas’ historic drought, the Guadalupe’s flow is down by more than 60 percent at Victoria, roughly 20 miles upstream from the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, the cranes’ winter range. In September the refuge’s marshes were three times saltier than normal. The birds migrate from Canada each year to spend the winter feeding on crabs and berries along the Texas coast. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service counted 571 wild and captive whooping cranes in July 2010. The Aransas group makes up half that number and is the world’s last migrating flock that can sustain itself in the wild.

The coastline from just east of the cranes’ refuge to the Louisiana border bristles with the world’s largest concentration of petrochemical and refining complexes, many of which rely on river water. An association including owners of five petrochemical plants near the refuge, including Dow, DuPont (DD) and Lyondell Basell (LYB), several power plants, and a nearby steel mill, have sided with Texas authorities to defend the allocation system, while some coastal towns and businesses that rely on healthy bays and estuaries support the environmentalists.

The two sides are far apart. LaMarriol Smith, the river authority’s spokeswoman, says that giving more water to the cranes “could basically wipe out economic development, especially in the lower end of the basin.” Yet Charles Smith, a county commissioner in Aransas County, counters that his county’s economy depends on tourists who fish, hunt, and bird watch along the coast and commercial fishing that relies on proper salinity levels maintained by adequate freshwater inflows. Says Smith: “Estuaries are the most productive zones on the planet—the cradle of life—and I think our cradle is being robbed.

It should be noted that this is not a simple conflict between birds and petrochemical companies. There are residents upstream who need drinking water, and there are fishermen downstream whose livelihoods depend on healthy estuaries. Ecotourism provides an additional economic incentive to maintain the estuaries. The endangered status of the Whooping Cranes may be the legal tool used to save the marshes, but if the suit succeeds, they are unlikely to be the only beneficiaries of a change in water rights.

ESA Protection for Foreign Bird Species

Slender-billed Curlew

Last week the US Fish and Wildlife Service added several birds that occur mainly outside the United States to the Endangered Species List. Such listings mainly serve to enforce trade restrictions, though they may have other benefits such as funding or coordination of conservation activities for their recovery.

The first decision involved four parrot species:

The Service finds that listing the Philippine and yellow-crested cockatoo as endangered, and listing the white cockatoo as threatened, is warranted and is issuing proposed rules to list these species. In addition, the Service is proposing a special rule for the white cockatoo. If adopted, the proposed special rule would allow import, export and interstate commerce of certain white cockatoos without a permit under the ESA, provided the provisions of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Wild Bird Conservation Act (WBCA) are met. The Service finds that listing is not warranted for the crimson shining parrot. The not warranted status for the crimson shining parrot is a final agency action.

The second batch included six other species:

The rule implements federal protections provided by the ESA for the Cantabrian capercaillie, Marquesan imperial pigeon, Eiao Marquesas reed-warbler, greater adjutant, Jerdon’s courser, and slender-billed curlew. Populations of each of these species are small, fragmented, and declining, making them particularly vulnerable to genetic threats associated with small populations and extinction....

Significant threats to these six foreign bird species include habitat loss, overutilization and inadequate existing regulatory mechanisms. Information on climate change was available for only one species, the slender-billed curlew; based on this information the Service found climate change to be a potential threat to this species.

Miami Blue / NPS

The listing activity included emergency listings for several butterflies with restricted ranges, including the endemic Miami Blue. An emergency listing protects a species for 240 days, during which time the agency has time to draft and publish a final listing.

The Miami blue is a small, coastal, non-migratory butterfly endemic to south Florida. Its geographic range once extended from the Dry Tortugas north along the Florida coasts to about St. Petersburg and Daytona, but it is now restricted to a few, small, remote islands within the Florida Keys. In making this emergency listing determination, the Service has carefully assessed the best scientific and commercial information available regarding the past, present, and future threats faced by the Miami blue butterfly....

The Miami blue butterfly is endangered due to the combined influences of habitat destruction and modification, herbivory of host plants by exotic green iguanas, accidental harm from humans, loss of genetic diversity, and catastrophic environmental events, such as hurricanes. Because of its small population size and restricted range, collection can severely impact the Miami blue.

Imminent threats now pose significant risk to the survival of the Miami blue. The Service believes emergency listing is necessary and, in this case, the normal listing timeframe is insufficient to prevent losses that may result in extinction. In addition, the Service has determined that designation of critical habitat for the Miami blue butterfly is not prudent because publishing maps and descriptions of critical habitat areas would widely announce the exact location of the butterfly to poachers, collectors, and vandals and may further facilitate disturbance and destruction of the butterfly’s habitat.

Emergency listings will also protect the Cassius Blue, Ceraunus Blue, and Nickerbean Blue butterflies, despite their wide ranges due to their similar appearance to the Miami Blue.

Comments Needed for Cape Hatteras Management Plan

Via The Drinking Bird, I read that the National Park Service is seeking comments on its management plan for off-road vehicle (ORV) use in Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The plan is the result of a long, contentious process and seeks to balance recreational ORV use on Cape Hatteras with the needs of wildlife, particularly beach-nesting Piping Plovers. An interim plan restricting ORV use has been in place for several years, and during that time populations of beach-nesting shorebirds have rebounded (pdf) after a decade of decline.

Since there is vocal and persistent opposition to any restrictions on ORV use, it is important that birders and other recreational visitors to the seashore make their voices heard during the public comment period.. Comments do not need to be long; a short comment should be enough to let federal officials know that there is public support for wildlife protection. Nate suggests including two points:

1) I support a regulation to manage ORV use within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

2) The regulation should include science-based protections for wildlife and vehicle-free areas for wildlife and pedestrians.

Submit comments here by September 6.

Study Confirms Importance of Red Knot Migratory Stopovers

As many readers know, Red Knots (Calidris canutus rufa) are in serious trouble.* Though they were once an abundant shorebird during spring migration on the Atlantic Coast, their population crashed in the 1990s. This winter, Red Knots suffered another setback, when a third of their current known population disappeared from the wintering grounds for reasons that are not entirely clear. The major crash in the 1990s has long been linked to food availability at migratory stopover sites.

During spring migration, Red Knots time their arrival in the Mid-Atlantic to coincide with the spawning of horseshoe crabs. Red Knots (and other shorebird species) eat the freshly-laid eggs to gain weight for the final leg of their journey, from the Mid-Atlantic to the Arctic, where the birds need to find mates and breed within a fairly short window of time. A major increase in the harvest of horseshoe crabs, due to their increasing use as bait for whelk fishing, reduced the availability of horseshoe crab eggs. While some shorebird populations remained stable or suffered small decreases, the Red Knot population crashed.

A new study, published in the open access journal Ecosphere, confirms the importance of stopover habitats – and the food sources they provide – for migratory shorebirds. The study uses data collected during a multiyear banding project of shorebirds around Delaware Bay. (As readers may remember, I participated in one such banding session earlier this year.) The study used two types of data from the project: captured or recaptured birds with known identities and known weights and resighted birds with known identities but unknown weights. The project has been banding Red Knots and other shorebirds with metal bands since 1997; in 2003, it started tagging Red Knots with colored bands bearing alphanumeric codes that can be read with binoculars or a spotting scope.

The study used mathematical models to determine the relationships between spawning by horseshoe crabs and weight gain by Red Knots and between Red Knots' mass at departure and future survival. (You can read the study's methods section for a technical description of the models.) The results showed that how much weight Red Knots gain depends not so much on the overall horseshoe crab abundance but on the timing of horseshoe crabs are spawning. If horseshoe crabs spawn later than usual, Red Knots are not able to gain as much weight as they normally would because not enough eggs will be available before they have to depart for the Arctic. Weight gain at stopover sites is crucial since Red Knots with a light weight at departure were unlikely to be recaptured or resighted in subsequent years.

While the model found a correlation between weight gain and subsequent survival, it found a stronger relationship between survival and snow depth on the Red Knots' breeding grounds. Red Knots were more likely to survive from one year to the next if there was deeper snow on the ground when they arrived in the Arctic. The scientists offer several possible explanations. One is that greater snow depth means greater overall moisture, which increases the amount of invertebrate prey available for the Red Knots. Another is that lemming populations tend to crash in years with low snow depth, so in those years predators that normally eat lemmings might turn to shorebirds instead. Determining whether those or other hypotheses are correct will require further research in the Arctic.

The study reinforces the link between horseshoe crabs and Red Knots and the importance of Delaware Bay as a spring stopover site. All necessary efforts should be taken to ensure that the bay continues to provide adequate habitat and food for these long-distance migrants. Such efforts should include further restriction of horseshoe crab harvests, particularly in Delaware, which has continued to allow harvesting even though New Jersey has imposed an indefinite moratorium.

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Cited study:
McGowan, Conor P., James E. Hines, James D. Nichols, James E. Lyons, David R. Smith, Kevin S. Kalasz, Lawrence J. Niles, Amanda D. Dey, Nigel A. Clark, Philip W. Atkinson, Clive D. T. Minton, and William Kendall. (2011). Demographic consequences of migratory stopover: linking red knot survival to horseshoe crab spawning abundance. Ecosphere, 2 (art69) : 10.1890/ES11-00106.1

* For international readers, the IUCN ranks Red Knot as a species of least concern; the discrepancy is that there are multiple subspecies, and many of them are secure. However, the western Atlantic subspecies – the one that breeds in the North American Arctic, migrates along the Atlantic Coast of North America, and winters in Tierra del Fuego – is in serious danger of extinction.

Short-tailed Albatross Fledges

Short-tailed Albatross / USFWS Photo

The first Short-tailed Albatross born outside of Japan fledged this week on Eastern Island in Midway Atoll NWR.

The hatchling broke through its shell in January on Eastern Island, one of three small, flat, coral islands that comprise Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge over 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu. The parents of the Midway chick first paired up on the refuge four years ago. During that 2007-8 breeding season, they were observed spending only a little time together, but the following season, their time together increased. By the third season, they arrived at the Eastern Island breeding colony together and built a nest, but did not lay eggs. This breeding season, one of the pair was observed incubating a freshly laid egg on November 16, 2010. The pair has been under close observation ever since. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reports that the birds’ leg bands reveal that the male of the pair was hatched on the island of Torishima, Japan in 1987, while the female hatched there in 2003.

After the egg hatched in January, the parents spent the next five months bringing squid and flying fish to their chick every one to three days. In doing so, they logged tens of thousands of miles, likely soaring between Midway and the nutrient-rich feeding grounds some 1,000 miles to the northwest. While the parents were both away on one foraging trip, the chick was swept off its nest by the tsunami resulting from the catastrophic Japanese earthquake of 11 March.  It survived the ordeal, and in May, after months of steady feeding and growth, had lost most of its downy look and begun stretching and exercising its wings.

Anticipating its fledging, the chick was banded by FWS biologists on June 8. It has now left the island and is most likely headed in a northwesterly direction to the rich and productive waters near Hokkaido, Japan. On average, Short-tailed Albatrosses begin breeding at 6 years of age, but often begin prospecting at nesting sites several years earlier. So, it is our hope that this bird return in 4-6 years, and it could begin breeding by about 2017, provided it finds a mate.

Hopefully it will be the first of many Short-tailed Albatrosses to fledge on Eastern Island. The refuge is already home to the world's largest population of Laysan Albatrosses. This makes it a natural site to establish an alternate breeding location for an endangered albatross.

The endangered Short-tailed Albatross was once the most abundant of the North Pacific albatross species, numbering more than a million birds. It was decimated by feather hunting at the turn of the 20th Century, and by the late 1940s was thought to be extinct. In the early 1950s, ten pairs were discovered breeding on Torishima. The population has now reached 3,000 individuals, with some birds on the Senkaku Islands, but most still on Torishima.

Conservationists fear an eruption of the active volcano on Torishima could spell disaster. Starting in 2008, an international team led by Japan’s Yamashina Institute began translocating Short-tailed Albatross chicks to Mukojima Island to create a new “insurance” population. In 2011, 15 chicks were moved to Mukojima, bringing the total number translocated to 55. So far, seven of these birds have returned to Mukojima as non-breeding juveniles, an encouraging sign that they will return to breed when they reach maturity. Outside the breeding season, the Short-tailed Albatross ranges along the coasts of eastern Russia, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands, and occasionally off the Pacific Coast of North America.

It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a larger colony.

Red Knot to be Listed as Endangered in NJ

New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection is proposing to change the state's listing of Red Knot from threatened to endangered. The proposal is based on a few years of studying their population trends, but it was made more urgent by recent reports from South America:

In late February, biologists returned with sobering news from their annual trip to the bird's wintering grounds in Tierra del Fuego, Chile.

Immense flocks of red knots once swooped over the vast tidal mudflats, rich in tiny organisms that were a nonstop banquet. In recent years the number declined to 16,000, but remained stable.

Now, the count showed the population dropping again, to between 10,000 and 11,000.

"We're dismayed," said Larry Niles, former chief of the DEP endangered-species program, now a wildlife consultant. He has led red knot research for more than a decade.

The crew of more than a dozen international researchers had hoped for an uptick because conditions on Delaware Bay last spring were so favorable. The weather held, the crabs laid their eggs, the birds feasted.

Data from netted birds showed that nearly 80 percent were at or near ideal body weight, prime for breeding.

An online version of the state's proposal is here, for anyone who wants to read and comment on it. Comments must be received by March 19. It looks like comments have to be submitted by mail even though NJDEP asks for an electronic copy.

Five Species to Join New Jersey's Endangered List

New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection plans to add five new species to the state's Endangered Species List.

The DEP proposal, which will be presented to the Endangered and Nongame Species Advisory Committee today, would also reclassify eight other endangered species on the list so that they will only be considered endangered during certain times of the year.

Under the proposed changes, there will also be fewer categories for classifying species that do not rise to the level of endangered or threatened. Current classifications, such as "declining," "increasing" and "stable," would be eliminated and replaced by fewer categories such as "special concern," officials said....

The five species proposed for the list include three birds — the black rail, the golden-winged warbler and red knot — as well as the gray petaltail dragonfly. Also newly included on the list is the tiny Indiana bat, which has been on the federal endangered list since 1973.

The eight birds which are going to be reclassified, include the bald eagle, which has rebounded in recent years. Under the new plan, it would only be considered endangered during its breeding season from January to August. The rest of the year it would be classified as "threatened."

Unfortunately the DEP is also using the opportunity to reduce habitat protections.

The proposed changes would also reduce the need for protected habitat in New Jersey by about 31,000 acres — over 48 square miles — which could then be opened to economic development, the plan concludes.

"The net result of the proposed listing and de-listing is an overall reduction in lands protected as endangered and threatened species habitat," according to the plan. "The indirect effect is a potential for increased economic growth due to the net decrease in area determined to be potential threatened species habitat and thus restricted under other regulations."

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.