WindStar Wildlife Institute Blog

Wildlife Suffers From Drought

FOR ALL intents and purposes, the drought that started months ago is still with us. Despite recent downpours, everything outdoors is still suffering.(Ring-necked Pheasant)

Wildlife survival cover has been pruned back by plant die-offs. Small-game species, most already critically endangered, have the least amount of cover to get through the winter. As deer, coyotes, machinery, men and dogs crush through what's left, small game becomes vulernable to starvation, weather and predation.

If the drought is followed by a crushingly cold and snowy winter such as the one in 1978, it will take years for small game to recover. Some populations haven't reached half the point they were before '78.

Even man-made habitat started disappearing when super early crops harvests began in late August. Unless a series of heavy rains come and stay to delay harvest, most crops will be out of the field by mid-October. With little escape cover bordering most fields, small game again gets whacked.

Many seeds and berries haven't matured, so critters seeking food will have a rough time when winter hits. Plants bearing fall sprouting seeds and berries may not survive into spring because of soil compaction and a lack of moisture. On good years, spilled and waste grain serves wildlife. Already many earlier harvested fields have sprouted, thus rendering waste grain useless for most dependent species.

There are pluses to drought conditions. When water in sloughs and ponds retreats, dormant vegetation sprouts. When water again returns, new vegetation provides cover and micro nutrients to aquatic species including waterfowl.

By drawing down water levels, nature enables predators to gorge, effectively keeping a correct balance. But when water levels are low all it takes is a prolonged freeze coupled with snow cover to deplete oxygen levels causing most bigger fish to go belly up.

If the Indiana adage is true about drought taking three years to run its cycle, expect more of the same.

Global warming is hurting wildlife everywhere. Perhaps the biggest losers are the creatures of the Arctic. Polar bears are losing more than half their cubs as their sheet ice disappears. According to the National Wildlife Federation, the ice habitat vanishes at a rate of 23,000 sq. miles yearly. This forces polar bears to swim farther and farther between sea ice and land to find food. Malnourished cubs drown because they can't keep up with their mothers and there's no place to haul out to rest.

Caribou, especially young calves, are drowned by the thousands as they attempt to cross rushing rivers that should be frozen. Rising water levels cover food and nesting sources of many migrating birds. In the lower 48 states, heat is stresing moose and impacting salmon runs. Grasslands are disappearing and the whole ecosystem is much imperiled.

Almost 63 percent of hunters and fishermen surveyed by the NWF believe global warming is impacting their past times. More than 70 percent of surveyed hunters and anglers say that stopping global warming should be a priority.

Phil Potter
Evansville, IN

You Need Caterpillars In Your Garden

CATERPILLARS are probably almost as despised as snakes in the gardener’s plot.  Although humans seem to have an innate fear of predatory animals, especially snakes, their fear of caterpillars stems from the misperception that caterpillars eat a gardener out of house and home.  In the yard that is landscaped properly for wildlife, however, this assertion is not true. Few will survive to adulthood due to predation by other organisms. Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillar
    
Caterpillars are the larvae of butterflies and moths.  Most of them chew the leaves of plants to get the nutrition they need to fuel their growth and reach maturity.  If all of our yards were “natural” areas, there would be a variety of plants and numerous specimens of each kind of plant for a female moth or butterfly to lay her eggs on. 

The females of many kinds of moths and butterflies would then place only a few eggs on each plant so that there would be plenty of food for their offspring.  These few caterpillars would not seriously harm their host plants so that it could flower and reproduce for the next generation of caterpillars.
    
But in the typical human’s yard, there is a clump of plants here and a different kind of clump of plants there, with each group containing very few plants.  A female looking for a particular kind of plant to lay her eggs on (many species of caterpillars are plant-specific) might have very few plants to choose from in the typical suburban landscape.  Out of desperation, she will have to lay her vast quantity of eggs on too few plants, thus causing severe damage to the plant and the possible starvation of the caterpillars.
    
So try to grow as many individuals of the same variety of plant as possible.  Then female moths and butterflies may lay very few eggs per plant and their caterpillars will not do any serious harm.  If you can not grow a large number of plants, it is still not wise to kill caterpillars if there are only a few, especially if you have not identified them.

Plants have evolved to sustain some insect “damage”, and, in fact, will recover quite nicely even if they are severely cut back by caterpillars.  By allowing caterpillars—even large numbers of them—to feed for a couple of weeks, you avoid depriving yourself of the future pleasure of viewing some of the loveliest winged creatures on Earth.

Marlene A. Condon
Author, Nature Friendly Garden
Crozet, VA

Snakes Are Good For Your Garden

SNAKES have a very bad reputation among many folks because people seem to inherently fear them.  That is really a shame because snakes are terribly important in the home garden. Black Snake is a common garden visitor
    
Perhaps the number one complaint of gardeners is that there are too many moles and voles.  The moles wreak havoc by making tunnels just under the surface of lawns, resulting in upraised areas of turf that are hard to mow over.  Voles, being herbivorous, sometimes eat gardeners’ plants.  But if folks would accept snakes in the yard, they would not have serious problems with moles and voles.
    
Snakes are the prime predators of these small animals because they can slither right down into their underground dens to catch them.  A snake is the only animal with the proper anatomy to easily go into burrows.  Thus snakes are much more effective than any of the products on the market that are sold for killing or repelling moles and voles, and some of these products are horribly inhumane.
    
You should recognize that there are always going to be some moles and voles in your yard which is how it should be.  A yard without moles is a yard that will be overpopulated by beetle grubs that can harm your grass or other plants when an overpopulation of these insects feed upon the roots.  A yard that has no voles—that help limit the overpopulation of plants—is a yard that will require weeding.
    
Snakes also help to limit populations of other kinds of animals that may not be problematic for people and that homeowners may prefer not to have eaten, such as bird eggs or nestlings.  However, such predation is absolutely necessary in our world (see the January, 2007, issue of Windstar's Wildlife Garden Weekly).  We wildlife lovers have big hearts and we do not generally like to witness predation, but we have no choice but to accept nature on its own terms.
    
You should watch where you are going to avoid stepping on snakes or any other kinds of animals that may be underfoot.  And never reach into areas that you can not see into.  A yard full of wildlife is a yard to enjoy but also one in which you need to be alert.  You need not be afraid, just careful and aware.

Marlene A. Condon
Author, Nature Friendly Garden
Crozet, VA

Don’t Clean Out Your Little Pond

WATER gardens have become popular with homeowners in the past few years.  If these artificial bodies of water are maintained in an ecologically correct manner, they become ponds in the truest sense of the word.  Native wildlife will move right in and coexist with any goldfish and snails that you may have placed into your watery environment.
    
Most, if not all, homeowners are delighted when this happens.  However, when fall comes, they clean out their ponds as they are instructed to do by the garden centers that sell the equipment and plants that you need to make a water garden, and in following years, homeowners wonder where all of the wildlife went.  The sad answer is that when you clean your little artificial pond, you throw the baby (wildlife) out with the (bath) water!
    
If your water “garden” becomes a “pond” full of wildlife, you should not treat this manmade feature as an aquarium that needs a great deal of maintenance, but rather as the natural system that it has become.
    
You should remove as many free-floating leaves and stems as possible, but do not worry about getting out everything.  In nature, debris settles to the bottom of ponds where it decays into a nutrient-rich muck where animals hibernate out of sight of predators that remain active all through the cold months of the year.  For example, adult frogs as well as tadpoles that have not yet matured will settle down into this muck where they hope they will not be found and eaten.  If you clean the pond, there is no place for these animals to hide.
    
Therefore, you should let the muck build up for a few years and only remove some of it after it has become several inches deep.  Do this by pushing a plastic (glass might break) measuring cup down through the water carefully (so you do not hurt any of the animals) and scoop up the muck.  Check to make sure there are no animals in it by first pouring the muck into a shallow plastic container, such as a dishwashing pan.  Then deposit this nutrient-rich material around your plants.  Do this a few times (only once per day as the fine sediment will cloud the water) in September every year and you can continue to enjoy wildlife.

Marlene A. Condon
Author, Nature Friendly Garden
Crozet, VA

Bear Bites Biker With Dogs

A MOUNTAIN biker was attacked by a Black Bear last week while riding through a Kitsap County park with his two dogs.

The 51-year-old man came upon the bear at about noon during a ride through the trails at Banner Forest Heritage Park in Olalla, WA, said Ron Powers, battalion chief for South Kitsap Fire and Rescue. The man's dogs were in front of him on the trail when he heard them barking. He came around a blind corner and was face to face with the bear, Powers said.

The bear immediately charged the man, who picked up his bike and attempted to protect himself with it. Reaching through the bike, the bear tore at the man's arm, face, back, neck and ear, Powers said.

"And then, for some reason, the bear stops," Powers said. The man was able to get on his bike and ride out of the forest, where he found two people who called 911. Paramedics treated the man and took him to St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma. His condition was not released, but Powers said he was in "pretty bad shape."

One of the dogs, skittish after the attack, bit a bystander, Powers said. The other dog was not found. The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office blocked off the two entrances to the park and attempted to evacuate it. A state Department of Fish and Wildlife officer was gathering a team of dogs, with the intent of finding the bear and euthanizing it.

Another mountain biker who was leaving the park had reported seeing a Black Bear with two cubs earlier in the day.

"It's quite likely it's the same bear," Powers said. "The reason it was so aggressive was because of the two cubs."

Banner Forest Heritage Park, a woodsy, 635-acre park outside the town of Olalla, is known for its extensive trail system and is a popular place for horseback riding, hiking and mountain biking.

Christina Siderius
Seattle Times
Seattle, WA