Wildlife

Sex, water and rock and roll: Sturgeon spawn while singing on the rocks

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How does a scientist use sound to save a 150-million-year-old fish? In Wisconsin, Ron Bruch and Chris Bocast are trying to help restore sturgeon stock by listening for the sound they make when spawning that some call “thunder.” The sound can be heard here. “It’s a real low frequency, you can almost feel it instead of hear it,” said Bruch, fish supervisor with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “One of the important measures of success is knowing your stock is spawning.”

Bocast, a University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral student in acoustic ecology, discovered the sound while working on an audio book about sturgeons.

Echo

Gray wolves in western Great Lakes region no longer endangered starting next month

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has removed gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region from the federal endangered species list. The western Great Lakes region includes Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and portions of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The delisting takes effect Jan. 27. State departments will manage wolves after the delisting.

Echo

Population of endangered Great Lakes bird remains stable

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Michigan officials listened to the sweet songs of Kirtland’s warblers throughout the state in June — and the chorus was a positive one. The population of the endangered birds remains steady, according to the annual survey by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Environment. Officials surveyed in mid-June when the birds defend their nesting territories.  Birds are detected by listening for their songs — as their singing can be heard for up to a quarter mile.  Since only males are belting out songs, populations are estimated by doubling the number of singers

The 2011 survey documented 1,805 singing males, which is approximately what the population has been in recent years.  The bird made a strong comeback after singing male populations hit a low in 1974 and 1987, when only 167  were observed. Warblers nest on the ground in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario —but most prominently in northern Michigan’s jack pine forests.  The population declined rapidly as modern fire suppression stopped the natural wildfires that provided the barren landscape and young jack pines that warblers love to nest in. State and federal officials now harvest and replant approximately 3,000 acres of jack pine trees a year to mimic natural processes.  Large prescribed burns aren’t safe or economical in northern Michigan, according to the state officials.

Wildlife

Lake Erie water snake slithers off the endangered species list

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A nonpoisonous Lake Erie water snake is no longer listed as a federally endangered species. The snake’s numbers plunged as more people settled Lake Erie’s western islands, according to the Toledo Blade. Populations rebounded after federal and state agencies protected inland and shoreline hibernation and breeding grounds. Earning federal protection in 1999, the water snake is the 23rd species to be delisted, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wildlife

Endangered species protection is proposed for two freshwater mussels

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Two funny-named species of freshwater mussels currently found in rivers of the Great Lake states were recently proposed for Endangered Species Act protection.

The rayed bean and snuffbox mussels were recently proposed to be listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Chemical contaminants, sedimentation, nonpoint source pollution and mining are threats to their habitat’s water quality, according to the service.

Wildlife

Warbler increases Great Lakes presence

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The number of Kirtland’s warblers recorded in the Great Lakes region in 2009 was the highest since a census of the birds began in 1951.

The rare bird faces challenges from climate change and funding for its protection.

It lives only in parts of Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario.

Echo

Rhetoric on protecting wolves flawed

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(WI) Wisconsin State Journal – Wisconsin’s timber wolves went back on the federal endangered species list in late June for the third time in 27 months. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has considered them anything but endangered the past five years. More

Echo

Eels edging toward extinction in Lake Ontario

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(NY) Newsday – The American eel has for millennia carried out a remarkable survival saga, swimming thousands of miles of ocean to reach Lake Ontario, where it matures the swims back to its ocean birthplace to spawn and die. But after 125 million years, the eel is struggling to run the gauntlet that humans have thrown in its way and is vanishing from the St. Lawrence River-Lake Ontario system, say New York and Canadian scientists. Scientists estimate when the Onondaga Indians fished the lake centuries ago, there were up to 60 million eels thriving in the Lake Ontario system. As recently as the 1980s, the American eel population in Lake Ontario topped 10 million eels, according to harvest studies.