Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/category/wildlife/page/2/)
This broad category encompasses fish. It is further divided on the main menu with tags for mammals, insects, amphibians, birds, mussels, invaders and endangered wildlife.
By Dylan Engels
Michigan’s wolf population has grown since the animal was listed as an endangered species a half-century ago, and that raises some concerns. Meanwhile, a new study from the National Park Service and the University of Wisconsin looks at how the reintroduction of wolves on Isle Royale has affected the diets of two other island predators, the American marten and the fox.
By Anna Barnes
A new book from a Rogers City-area writer collects tales of the contentious issue of the presence or absence of cougars in the Northern Lower Peninsula and UP.
By Clara Lincolnhol
Chris Compton, owner of a company called Goose Busters, has spent nearly 30 years addressing human-goose conflicts. Over the years, the goose population has continued to grow, especially in more populated areas, he said.
“We have them all over,” he said. “They’re building up in Lansing quite a bit. Ann Arbor’s a big area. Troy, Detroit, Rochester Hills and Auburn Hills too.”
That also means there’s a lot of goose poop. One adult goose can produce up to two pounds of feces a day. Too much waste could cause environmental problems, research shows.
By Ruth Thornton
Gary Groff fondly remembers hunting all day on his grandfather’s land as a boy. “For my dad’s life he could not believe that I could go out there before daylight and come back after dark,” he said.
Now retired for many years, he still hunts the central Michigan property with friends. The parcel is partially wooded and partially farmed, but the farmland is poor. “The soil is sandier than heck,” Groff said, and the farmer who rented it did not make much money from the crops.
So, a few years ago, they enrolled the parcel in a government set-aside program and seeded it with native grasses and wildflowers. Now, the farmer “gets paid more for leaving it idle than he does for farming,” Groff said.
The program is one of many by state and federal agencies to restore grasslands and native prairies in Michigan.
By Eric Freedman
Capital News Service
Remember the canary in the coal mine? If the caged canary died, that was an urgent early warning for miners that the air was too dangerous to breathe and to get above-ground as quickly as possible. Now there’s evidence from Southeast Michigan that the American robin can provide an early warning about dangerous lead levels in the soil. A new study in the journal “Urban Ecosystems” found that high blood lead levels in robins can accurately predict where soil is contaminated.
Exposure of children to lead is linked to damage to their nervous system and brain, learning and behavioral problems, and speech and hearing problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is relatively little knowledge about the health impacts of blood lead levels on songbirds such as robins.
By Ruth Thornton
Gray wolves could thrive in the eastern United States well beyond their current range in the Great Lakes region, but they might have a hard time reaching other suitable habitats without human intervention, researchers say. Wolves once had the largest known range of any land mammal but they were nearly exterminated in the United States in the early 1900s after persecution by humans.
Their population only recovered after they were placed under federal protection in the 1970s. They have since recolonized some areas where they once flourished, including in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
A 2022 study analyzed which areas in the eastern U.S. still have suitable habitat for wolves and are connected enough to each other so wolves might be able to travel between them.
To do that, the researchers used survey data collected between 2018 and 2020 by biologists working for the natural resource departments in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
They then modeled the characteristics of the habitats where wolves were found and predicted where else in the eastern U.S. large tracts of suitable areas occur. They also modeled how connected to each other those areas are. They found that six areas had good habitat and were large enough to sustain wolves, but the animals occur in only one of them, the western Great Lakes.
By Victor Wooddell
Capital News Service
Animal shelters in Michigan are at capacity, even while facing staff and resource shortages. According to experts, more animals are being abandoned and too few pet owners are having their animals spayed or neutered. In 2020, adoption rates soared due to pandemic-related stay-at-home orders across the country, according to an article in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Medicine. A study by the American Humane Association found a dramatic increase in the rate at which previously adopted animals are being returned. Shelter directors in Michigan say that results in long waiting lists for kennel space and more abandoned animals, with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic making the situation worse.
By Anna Rossow
Capital News Service
Some residents across Michigan are becoming more familiar with unexpected visitors roaming the streets. Coyote sightings in residential neighborhoods have become more common due to the canines’ drive for food and quick adaptability skills, experts say. Coyotes prey on rabbits, chipmunks and squirrels, small animals that enter in and out of urban and suburban areas. According to Michigan Wildlife Solutions, a pest control company in Fenton, coyotes traditionally stay in wooded, secluded regions, but have become increasingly comfortable with entering residential areas. They typically weigh around 25 pounds, with lanky legs and a fluffy coat.
The Poweshiek skipperling has disappeared from most of Michigan’s prairies. Now scientists are raising them in zoos for release back into the wild. By Ruth Thornton
Standing next to a converted hoop house in one of the back areas of John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, David Pavlik points to a line of small cloth-covered cages filled with yellow black-eyed Susans and small orange butterflies. “These cages out here are females that have already bred in the facility,” Pavlik said. “They’re out here in the sun laying eggs.”
Pavlik, a research assistant with Michigan State University, is part of an international partnership racing to save a small, inconspicuous butterfly known as the Poweshiek skipperling that was once so common in Midwest prairies that collectors largely ignored them.
By Eric Freedman
Capital News Service
The mighty oak may be in trouble in the Great Lakes region – and climate change is largely to blame. A mix of factors is in play, including rising temperatures, more severe and intense rainstorms, increasing susceptibility to plant-eating animals and vulnerability to disease-causing microorganisms, a new study from Michigan Technological University says. “Oaks have evolved a range of adaptations to dry and hot conditions and have an increased range of suitable habitat with climate change,” according to the study in the journal Forests. They were a pioneer species in the Great Lakes region before widespread European settlement, said Amanda Stump, the lead author of the research, and can do well with extreme temperatures. Even so, the study warns, warmer winters, extreme weather events, diseases and extended ranges of herbivores “may still put oaks at risk.”
And that can jeopardize what Stump describes as the important role oaks play in supplying food – acorns – in the fall for bears, turkeys, birds and other wildlife.