Showing posts with label Endangered Species. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Endangered Species. Show all posts
Saturday, July 30, 2022
Monday, December 20, 2021
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Friday, August 3, 2018
Oklahoma Breeding Bird Species Profile: Northern Bobwhite
The rotund, chicken-like Northern Bobwhite, or Bobwhite Quail, is an uncommon and declining species in many parts of the country, classified as endangered. This reduction is due to the fact that agricultural lands, which the bird favors, are also in the same state of affairs. A flocking species, males will sing from a low perch. If disturbed, the species will all flush together, similar to the habits of the Ring-necked Pheasant.
There are several related kin, including the Eastern, Great Plains, Masked, and Florida subspecies, noticeable differences in the adult males.
These birds, as breeders, enjoy a diverse cover which includes woodlands with a brushy understory, cover crops in the agricultural off-season, including grassy nesting cover, and cultivated crop areas with a food source, dusting areas similar to Wild Turkey habits, and a source of water.
Male Northern Bobwhite,
Great Plains and Texas subspecies
Photographed in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas
Bobwhites can sometimes breed quite early for their age, depending upon adequate conditions. Young and their parents stay together even after the young are old enough to carry on without them, and coveys are formed by non-breeding birds. Six birds are needed to form their circular roosting formations, which is natural for them both for the conservation of heat and for predator watch.
The diet is usually vegetable, seeds of undesirable weeds, especially ragweed, corn, acorns, sunflowers, and a number of other items. This bird is indispensable to farmers, as it picks up its food solely by scavenging many seeds of weeds. It also consumes its share of animals like the grasshopper, snails, locusts, slugs, and several others. It requires grit to be used as a digestion aid.
The biggest enemy of this bird is pesticide related, and the change in agricultural diversity, which causes destruction of its habitat. It has the same predator problem as most ground nesters, which includes rats, raccoons, domestic animals, snakes, and several others.
Female Northern Bobwhite,
Great Plains and Texas subspecies
Photographed in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas
The population has been declining, and an important help to the Masked Bobwhite has been the work of the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, OK. They have been raising chicks from the egg and relocating them to Southeast Arizona and New Mexico. Their decline was caused by cattle grazing practices, as fodder was unable to regenerate quickly enough. More than once, they were extirpated from their natural habitat, so several breeding facilities were brought on board by US Fish and Wildlife. Our Oklahoma facility is one of many trying to save this important and valued grassland bird, where it will never be forgotten.
Masked Bobwhite
Photographed in Southeast Arizona
The Northern Bobwhite hybridizes with the Scaled Quail in Kansas and Texas.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Friday, July 13, 2018
Signs of Progress For Whooping Cranes
Wild Whooping Cranes are native to Louisiana, and the populations have risen about thirty percent since the early 2000s. Loss of habitat and hunting nearly drove them to extinction but efforts are stronger than ever to keep the species alive. Caregivers are doing their best to keep the species alive by raising chicks in captivity and are being raised for released. Caregivers must disguise themselves in Whooping Crane costumes in order to keep the chicks from imprinting upon humans.
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Sunday, January 14, 2018
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Thursday, June 11, 2015
More Than 100 Scientists Call for a Halt to Tar Sands Oil Expansion
Canada's push to increase tar sands production will worsen the impacts of climate change, say scientists.
Giant dump trucks haul raw tar sands near Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, September 2014. (Photo: Todd Korol/Reuters)
Emily J. Gertz is TakePart's associate editor for environment and wildlife.
More than 100 North American scientists and academics have called for a halt to the expansion of tar sands development in Canada, saying that increasing the production and shipping of tar sands oil would cause irreparable damage to the climate and the environment.
“We offer a unified voice calling for a moratorium on new oil sands projects,” including oil extraction and pipeline construction, said Wendy Palen, a conservation biologist at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, during a call with reporters on Wednesday.
The government of the current Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, advocates a major expansion of the tar sands oil industry and has resisted cooperating on international talks to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Palen said their consensus was based on scientific evidence that expanding tar sand oil production would have catastrophic impacts, because burning that oil would increase the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere past 450 parts per million. This would increase global temperatures more than 2 degrees Centigrade above historic averages, and intensify the extreme weather, flooding, heat waves, and other impacts of climate changealready being felt worldwide.
“We’re not saying shut down current production” of oil sands, economist Mark Jaccard of Simon Fraser University told reporters on the call.
But proposals to increase production from the current average of 2 million barrels a day to as much as 9 million barrels are irresponsible, he said.
“What the research shows is that we should not be doubling down or quadrupling down on the barrels of oil per day,” Jaccard said. “We know how much carbon we can put into the atmosphere before we get to dangerous climate change. We’re near that limit already.”
Expanding the industry also would risk collapsing Alberta’s economy as oil becomes a less valuable commodity in a carbon-constrained world, he said. “Oil sands are an economic dead end because the climate is changing, and there will eventually be a North American or global charge for carbon,” he said.
The pipelines being proposed to transport more tar sands oil must also remain on the drawing board, the scientists said, because they threaten to contaminate boreal forests and wild rivers that are habitat for diverse wildlife, including salmon, caribou, and other endangered species.
These pipelines would “transform some of North America’s most pristine ecosystems into industrial landscapes,” said Thomas Sisk, a scientist at Northern Arizona University in the United States.
The scientists have put their statement online at www.oilsandsmoratorium.org. Cosigners include Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize–winning economist at Stanford University, as well as prominent U.S. climatologists James Hansen and Michael Mann.
“Canada needs to get with the program” to diversify its energy sources and curb the impacts of oil on the environment, said Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political scientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada. “Or we can go rogue, refuse to participate in a climate deal, and dig ourselves further into a climate hole.”
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