Tag: animals

Categories
Cottage Life

Can you spot it? New Pokemon-inspired guide helps people explore nature

Photo by mvc_stock/Shutterstock

As a kid, Natalie Rudkins and her family would pack up the car and drive two hours from her home in Barrie to visit a relative outside Bancroft, Ont. On her relative’s property was a pond where Rudkins spent her time squishing through the mud in search of leopard frogs, garter snakes, and crayfish. At night, she watched the curved wings of bats crest the dark sky. And sometimes, from a distance, she might spot a black bear stumbling through the nearby trees.

These moments sparked Rudkins’ interest in the natural world. During her environmental science degree at the University of Waterloo, Rudkins got into birding and botanizing; downloading apps to help her identify species. One of these apps was called Seek. The app challenged users to photograph different species to unlock achievements.

“It’s really gamified, and it’s a great way for people to find things,” Rudkins says.

This idea of gamifying wildlife spotting motivated Rudkins to create the Naturedex. Inspired by the Pokemon franchise, Rudkins, who now works for the Credit Valley Conservation Authority in Mississauga, created a nature guide that featured 151 different species from the Toronto area (the same number of species in the original Pokemon series).

“For this, I used species you could spot within 30 kilometres of Toronto’s city hall, which ends up being Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Markham, and Vaughan,” she says.

On the Naturedex is a picture of each species with several stats, including whether they’re endangered, how difficult it is to spot the species, and which season you’re most likely to see them.

Each species’ endangered status is based on published lists from the Toronto and Credit Valley Conservation Authorities. To communicate the status, Rudkins used emojis. “I thought that was a really easy way to get the message across,” she says.

If the species has a smiley face, it means they’re thriving in the Toronto area and aren’t a conservation concern. A frowning face means the species is at risk in urban areas. A sad face means the species is trending towards endangered. An angry face means the species is non-native to the area. And a neutral face means the conservation authorities have yet to rank the species’ endangered status.

When giving each species a difficulty ranking for observation, Rudkins used a star system, with one star being the least difficult to find and three stars being the most. She based the ranking on the citizen science platform iNaturalist, where users post photos of wildlife they’ve seen. A species with fewer photos meant a higher difficulty ranking.

“It ranged from like 5,000 to 6,000 observations for something like a monarch or a pigeon, all the way down to less than 50 for things like loons,” she says.

To use the Naturedex, Rudkins recommends printing the guide out and hanging it on a wall or fridge. You can then check off each species you see on the guide. Some of the more difficult species to spot include the bald eagle, common loon, and gray tree frog. Others, such as the trillium, can be difficult depending on the season. And the fish are tricky unless you spend a lot of time fishing.

Rudkins estimates that she saw about 120 of the species on the list last year. One of her favourites is the Virginia ctenucha moth. “I put it on the list in an attempt to demonstrate to people that not all moths are these little brown, uninteresting things. Months can actually be kind of cool looking,” she says. “It has these dark black wings and its shoulders are a vibrant, shiny blue, and its face is completely furry orange.”

If you decide to take the Naturedex challenge, Rudkins suggests using the app Seek to confirm your sightings. She also recommends the app Merlin, which can record and identify bird calls. “It’s a lot easier to see birds if you know what they are,” she says.

According to Rudkins, the two main rules of the Naturedex are to respect wildlife by not disturbing them and to have fun.

“My main intention was to use it as a way to lure people into an activity that I find interesting and valuable,” she says. “I want it to be a resource for people to start recognizing the things that are around them.”

Pokemon-inspired Game
Photo Courtesy of Natalie Rudkins

Categories
Cottage Life

Spring critter-proofing tips from the experts

By Amelia Martin/Shutterstock

Animals. Can’t live with ’em, can’t…no, wait. You can live with them—and at the cottage, you have to. Getting along with your human neighbours usually takes a little compromise; so does getting along with your animal neighbours. “When people pay me to help them deal with their wildlife conflicts, they’re also paying me to educate them,” says Gary Ure, the owner of Second Nature Wildlife Management in Gananoque, Ont. “You do have to co-exist with them. Part of that is understanding the biology of the animal.” The other part is realizing that easy solutions rarely work, but persistence and attention to detail does. You don’t have to be smarter than “nuisance” wildlife and cottage pests. You just have to be more determined. And, sometimes, you have to pick your battles.

1. PESKY PILEATED WOODPECKER

Typical MO  Hammers the life out of your siding, either to get at tasty carpenter ants, or while drumming in spring to establish territory and announce itself to mates.

What to do  Say thank you. If Woody is going after ants, he has informed you of a potential infestation. And rest assured that spring drumming won’t last through the summer. (At least not to the same degree: woodpeckers do peck wood.) But we get it—that’s not much consolation if a woodpecker destroys all the knots in your cedar. Like other birds, woodpeckers will become habituated to, and then ignore, most deterrents. But something that’s motion- or sound-activated could work, says Doug Tozer of Birds Canada.

2. CLEVER BEAR

Typical MO  Breaks into the cottage; ransacks it looking for food.

What to do  The best way to deal with a problem bear is to avoid creating one in the first place. Get rid of all bear attractants outside the cottage. That is, get rid of anything that smells remotely edible, unless you can store it in a bear-proof container. Also get rid of bear attractants inside the screened porch—gasoline, empty beer cans, fridges. (Don’t ever leave a bucket of fish inside the porch. Ask us how we know.) When there’s the possibility of food around, bears are tenacious and “will absolutely problem solve,” says Mike Webb, a wildlife management expert on Vancouver Island. They can learn how to open car doors. They can learn to recognize coolers and McDonald’s bags. “And once a bear starts to get food from a human source, it starts to view that food as its food,” he says. (A food-conditioned bear won’t necessarily attack, but you’re still best to not interrupt its meal.) Even if you or your lake neighbours have never had bear problems, it doesn’t mean that you never will. Black bears are more likely to turn to human food sources when their natural sources are low—for example, in the summer thanks to a poor berry crop, or in the fall when there’s an acorn shortage.  

5 misconceptions about bears

3. ARMY OF CARPENTER ANTS

Typical MO  Tunnels into damp wood to make their nests; alerts you to the fact that your cottage may have a moisture problem. (“See? We’re helping.”)

What to do  If you see one or two large ants, they might just be workers on a recon mission for food. You can let them go about their business. But if you’re seeing them frequently, you probably have a nest in the cottage. Locate it: check near windows or doors, in the bathroom, or in wall voids, and search for fine sawdust, a.k.a. frass. Carpenter ants don’t eat the wood as they excavate. They chew it up and spit it out, often outside the nest entrance. Getting rid of the ants using bait is unrealistic: “They don’t make bait for carpenter ants,” says Glen Robertson, the owner of Robertson Wildlife & Pest Control in Coldwater, Ont. Well, they do. It’s just that these are the fussiest of all ants and will merrily ignore bait in favour of any other crumb of food that they can find (so keep things clean). You don’t want to let a carpenter ant infestation get out of control—they cause structural damage. Call an expert.

4. PILE OF CLUSTER FLIES 

Typical MO  Moves into the cottage undetected in the fall, then emerges on mild winter or early spring days to confuse you. Why are you here, flies? There’s still snow on the ground. 

What to do  Nothing, unless you want to. Cluster flies, while disgusting, don’t breed indoors; they don’t bite; they don’t get into food. By the time prime cottage season has rolled around, “they’ll have just died or left,” says Steve Ball Sr., the owner of BugMaster Pest Control in Kelowna, B.C. But not before annoying the hell out of you with all of their clustering around windows, while buzzing really loudly, in between sluggishly flying through the cottage and crashing into stuff. Like your lampshades. And your face. “They’re the world’s worst fliers,” says Ball Sr. You can swat them and vacuum them up. Then, before next autumn, seal up any cracks and crevices where they can come in. Or hire an expert to spray the exterior of the cottage in the fall. Of course, they’ll use a general, non-selective insecticide. It will kill any insect that comes in contact with it, including, potentially, the beneficial ones.

5. DESTRUCTO RED SQUIRREL

Typical MO  Chews its way into your cottage through roof or attic vents; falls down the chimney; wanders through an open window.  

What to do  A loose red squirrel when you’re at the cottage is a non-problem. “Confine it to a room and open a window,” says Gary Ure. “People think, ‘Oh no, more are going to come in!’” They won’t. If that doesn’t work, you can set a live trap in the room, “and release it right out the door,” says Ure. “That particular squirrel? Your cottage is the last place he’ll come back to.” Far worse is if a single squirrel is trapped in your cottage for weeks when you’re not there to let it loose. One squirrel can cause bear-level destruction. And then die, leaving you to find its corpse. If you’re going to be away from the cottage for any length of time, make sure the chimney is capped; consider covering chewable screens with sturdier hardware cloth. “I’ve had clients who’ve pulled back the blankets on their bed to reveal a pile of bones and fur,” says Ure. Ack! Well, it’s better than a horse head.

Cottage Q&A: Relocating red squirrels

6. ANY AMOUNT OF SKUNKS

Typical MO  Hunker down underneath your deck or shed. And fill you with fear. Because skunk spray to the face!

What to do  Here’s what not to do: corner a skunk. Spraying “is usually their last resort,” says Gary Ure. Give them an escape route. They’ll take it. And watch their body language: skunks raise their tails and stamp their feet as a warning. If you suspect skunks are denning under the cottage in the spring, “ninety-nine per cent of the time it’s going to be a mother and babies,” says Ure. And the gang will probably leave by the end of June, in which case you can then safely skirt the underside of the building. Alternatively, you can make the space less cozy. Denning critters are drawn to dark, cluttered spaces, so clear out lumber or anything that you’re storing. If your skunk is a single adult male that has found himself a hidey-hole in one corner, you might have to take more labour-intensive measures. Remove deck boards to let in light; soak the area with a hose. Make him uncomfortable.

7. HUNGRY HUNGRY DEER

Typical MO  Eat every plant in your garden. Even the plants that are allegedly “deer-proof.”

What to do  Exclusion—surrounding your garden with an unjumpable, minimum eight-foot-high fence—is the best sure-fire way to protect it. Like many mammals, and the characters on The Walking Dead, deer base their diet on how starving they are. Ringing the herbs, flowers, or vegetables that you want to grow with deer-proof plants (smelly plants; thorny plants) can work. But it will fail in a situation where the deer population booms and food sources become scarce. Another option is to feed the deer with “sacrifice” plants that they’ll eagerly eat instead of the plants that you actually care about. Everybody wins! At least until the deer mow down all the sacrificial plants.

Wild Profile: Meet the yellow-bellied sapsucker

8. THIRSTY SAPSUCKER

Typical MO  Drills into your favourite tree in spring, creating sapwells to feed itself and other early-season migrants. 

What to do  Nothing. Sapsucker gotta do sapsucker. You can’t stop it. These woodpeckers target a particular tree and go to town on it because it produces plentiful sap, says bird expert Doug Tozer. “Think: you’ve found a great new coffee shop with coffee that’s cheap and really tasty. Would you never go back?” You could attempt to cover the damaged area with burlap, says Tozer, “but sapsuckers often just build wells elsewhere on the same tree.” Healthy, native trees can usually survive the woodpecker’s eat-a-thon, plus, as Tozer points out, it’ll give you a chance to ogle other pretty species drawn to the sap—the mourning cloak butterfly and the ruby-throated hummingbird.

9. PORCUPINE PORKING OUT

Typical MO  Skins the bark off your favourite tree and eats the cambium, the living part of it. 

What to do  Porcupines are excellent climbers, so wrap the bottom of the trunk with something that’s hard to climb, such as metal flashing. (Wire mesh? Yeah, that’s basically a ladder for a porcupine.) Keep in mind that if you leave the flashing around a growing tree permanently, you could risk girdling it when the trunk gets too big, says Sylvia Greifenhagen, a forest health researcher with the MNRF. Plus, “direct sun on shiny flashing might cause the bark to warm up too much, causing sunscald, which is also damaging to the living bark.” Happily, “if the porky has only stripped bark from some of the upper branches, the tree will be okay,” says Greifenhagen. Prune to get rid of dead branches. Similarly, “small patches of stripped bark on the main stem will not kill the tree; the nutrient and water ‘highway’ has not been disconnected.” Trim small patches of ragged bark and let the wounds heal on their own.

10. A SINGLE RACCOON 

Typical MO  Knocks over your garbage cans. Oh, trash panda. But worse? Uses your attic like its own personal bathroom. Gross. And kind of insulting.

What to do  Determine how yours gained access. Unfortunately, raccoons don’t need an existing opening, or even anything chewable, to break in. They use their humanoid front paws to pry boards loose and pull apart flimsy soffit vents. “Raccoons have dexterity like you wouldn’t believe,” says B.C. wildlife expert Mike Webb. “And they can climb anything that isn’t cement.” They’re also very smart. “They remind me of the raptors in Jurassic Park.” They’ll methodically test your roof for weak spots until they find one. A single adult raccoon, coming and going only to use the bathroom, is easier to evict than a family. If you know the attic is empty, you can seal it up. But you’ll need to deal with the mess. Raccoons carry parasites, so this could be a Haz-Mat suit situation. “You may want to hire a professional company to do the cleanup,” says Webb.

11. GAGGLE OF CANADA GEESE

Typical MO  Gathers on your lawn or swim raft. And craps everywhere.

What to do  Ultimately, habitat modification is more effective than anything else. Geese eat grass, so, “having no lawn will help,” says Nathan Clements, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Federation in Regina. If you’re desperate to keep your lawn, mow less; geese prefer young shoots (old grass is fibrous and disgusting). As for the raft? “This is a tough one,” says Clements. The problem is twofold. One: geese are smart enough to know a sweet hangout when they see it. “A raft surrounded by water is essentially a predator-free island roost spot to a Canada goose,” says Kiel Drake of Birds Canada. Two: geese are smart enough to see through any of your tricks—don’t bother installing an owl decoy. “They’ll quickly learn to ignore inactive threats and hazing,” says Drake. Creating a physical barrier to the raft can work. You can DIY it by installing support posts in each corner and stringing lengths of rope around the perimeter that are removable when you want to use the raft. Drastic and excessive? Not really. “In some agricultural regions, pneumatic cannons are used to scare geese,” says Drake. “But I suspect that wouldn’t suit folks’ taste in cottage country.” 

12. FRANTICALLY! SWOOPING! BAT!

Typical MO  Gets into the living room, then proceeds to flap around, puzzled, not understanding that it could just go out the way that it came in.

What to do  One bat could mean lots of bats, so be alert for signs of an infestation—outside, you’d see them coming and going from your cottage at dusk and dawn, and you’d start to notice the foul stench of guano and urine. “Bats tend to arrive with the first insect hatch in the spring,” says Second Nature’s Gary Ure. Mama bats are looking for a place to call home to deliver and raise their babies. On the other hand, a single bat may have accidentally entered the cottage via the chimney—oops! As long as you know that the bat hasn’t come into contact with anyone (because rabies), just offer it a more obvious exit option—open a door or window—and be patient. If it refuses to move and simply clings to the wall, cover it with a plastic container—Ure suggests an empty Tupperware or a margarine tub—and slide a sturdy piece of cardboard, such as a flattened box, underneath. (Wear thick gloves.) Release it outdoors. Go catch yourself your body weight in mosquitoes and other nuisance bugs, little buddy!

Help! A bat has found its way into my cottage!

13. A MURDER OF CROWS

Typical MO  Caws incredibly loudly early in the morning while you’re trying to sleep. Are they screaming at you? Are they screaming at each other? Doesn’t matter. It murders your eardrums.

What to do  Buy ear plugs, and wait it out; crows get especially noisy during the spring breeding season (April to June) when they’re trying to advertise their territory. But crows, being very smart, are trainable. So repeatedly shooing them away could actually deter them, says Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who has studied crows for more than 30 years. That said, ultimately habitat modification is your best long-term option. Don’t make your property an appealing option for the crows. Get rid of accessible food sources: compost, garbage, and dog food. If you have bird feeders, switch to safflower seed, which crows don’t like as much.

14. HARMLESSLY TERRIFYING YELLOWJACKETS

Typical MO  Hover uncomfortably close; interfere with your outdoor meals; do unexplainable things like hide in the finger of a gardening glove, and then punish you for not somehow just knowing that they are inside.

What to do  Don’t freak out when a wasp comes near you. In most cases, ignore it, and it’ll go away. Caveat: at a late-season barbecue, yellowjackets are attracted to the food (their natural sources are dwindling). Simple DIY pop bottle yellowjacket traps baited with a sweet liquid can work, but Steve Ball Sr. recommends a “bag trap” such as Rescue! Disposable Yellowjacket Trap; it lures, then drowns, the wasps. “They contain pheromones of a queen,” he says. “I have seen those things absolutely full.” Hang the bags within 20 feet of an outdoor eating area. Traps might keep yellowjackets from crashing your parties, but it won’t stop
them from putting themselves in positions where they’re going to get squished. “In early spring, they explore all kinds of cavities when trying to establish a nest site,” says Rob Currie, a professor in the department of entomology at the University of Manitoba. “In mid-summer, they’re looking for food and can accidentally get trapped.” Oh. Well, fair enough.

15. SNAPPING TURTLE THAT’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU 

Typical MO  Largely ignores you, but startles you when you spot one swimming near your dock.

What to do  High five anyone around you. Snapper numbers are dwindling, and the fact that one is in your lake suggests that the water quality is good. And then be cool—it’s incredibly rare for a snapping turtle to bite a swimmer. “On land, they’re big, lumbering things,” says Sue Carstairs, the executive director of the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre. So biting is their only defense when they’re threatened. But in the water, they’re agile. “They’d rather just swim away,” says Carstairs. Even if a snapper does approach you, investigating, it’s not going to mistake your fingers for prey. Snapping turtles know what fish look like. They have eyes. Still, don’t attempt to feed or pet a snapping turtle; don’t pick it up by its tail and relocate to another part of the lake. We’re embarrassed for all of humanity having to give this kind of PSA. But people do ridiculous things.

This article was originally published in the March/April 2022 issue of Cottage Life.

Build it, fix it, get it done!

Get Dockside DIY, for tips on how to maintain your cottage…and then some

Sign up here

Categories
Cottage Life

The story behind the black lynx that went viral

Screenshot from ScienceAlert/YouTube

A grainy cellphone video of a leggy black cat sauntering through a residential yard near Whitehorse in August of 2020 was a lucky discovery for a Yukon biologist. The footage clearly reveals the distinctive pompom tail and oversized, cartoon-like hindquarters of a Canada lynx, a relatively common year-round resident of the boreal forest across the Canadian north. Only in this case, the lynx’s coat was soot-coloured, a first according to Yukon government senior wildlife biologist Thomas Jung.

Jung documented the sighting in a recent paper in Mammalia Journal, exploring the significance of variation in coat colour as a positive or negative trait in wildlife. Canada lynx are typically “silver grayish in winter and reddish brown in summer with dark spots,” Jung writes, “[with] black hairs on the tips of their tails and ears.” Paler-coloured individuals are occasionally observed, Jung adds, “suggestive of partial albinism.” 

Wider variations in colour occur in other mammals, such as the cream-coloured “Spirit Bear” variation of black bears on the British Columbia coast, with possible benefits such as temperature regulation or being better camouflaged. Jung says black bears in the Yukon are often tan or cinnamon-coloured, to better blend in with the region’s sparse forests. “It comes down to which colour works best in the habitat,” he says.

So-called “melanism” is caused by a genetic mutation causing the individual to produce an excess of melanin, a dark-coloured pigment. Dark-coloured big cats occur in humid tropics, where they may blend in better with the surrounding jungle. Jung’s literature review uncovered accounts of black ground squirrels sighted in burned over patches of boreal forest and similar occurrences in bobcats in New Brunswick, suggesting this melanism enables individuals to be camouflaged with charred timber. 

Yukon couple spots lynx family sunbathing in the middle of a highway

The melanistic lynx spotted near Whitehorse was the first record of such for the species, possibly for good reason. Jung doesn’t expect to see black lynx flourishing in the Canadian subarctic where a dark-coloured feline would be at a distinct disadvantage when stalking hares in the snowy winter. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the Yukon or northern Ontario,” he says, “lynx are grayish white because it works. To stalk and ambush their prey they need to be well camouflaged.”

Two shrieking lynx go head to head

Categories
Cottage Life

Threatened Western chorus frogs getting a boost (and how you can help)

Photo by Matt Jeppson/Shutterstock

In November 2021, Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault declared an emergency order that put an immediate halt on a residential development in Longueuil, Que., to protect the critical habitat of one of Canada’s threatened amphibian species—the western chorus frog.

While this was one of the few cases where the federal government applied the Species at Risk Act to cease development on private land, the Canadian Shield’s population of western chorus frog—in addition to many other closely related species—has declined over the past 60 years and continues to be an issue in Canada.

It was recently announced that the proposed route of Highway 413 in Ontario will impact the habitat of 11 species at risk, including the western chorus frog. The recent disappearance of this frog and its habitat—specially in portions of Ontario and Québec—has caused substantial concern and controversy.

Meet the chorus frog

As a behavioural ecologist specializing in acoustics and a reproductive endocrinologist who invented an injectable hormone mixture that induces frog breeding, we believe hope still exists. Habitat protection and restoration, advanced reproductive technologies and reintroduction procedures are all at our fingertips. This multifaceted approach could help slow further declines of chorus frogs and other amphibians.

Global and local threats

Despite its small size—measuring only two to three centimetres in length and often weighing less than two grams—the western chorus frog produces a loud, clear trill that is reminiscent of running a thumb across a plastic comb.

Historically, it was one of the most abundant amphibians in eastern Ontario and Québec. Now, it is found in only 10 per cent of their original range.

A dark brown frog with light brown markings
An adult female western chorus frog (Pseudacris triseriata).
(Chris Callaghan), Author provided

Amphibians, including the western chorus frog and other frogs, toads and salamanders, play critical ecological roles in the environment. They are vital pieces in the local food chain. They are also economically important, as they provide free pest control in residential areas by consuming insect species, such as mosquitoes and blackflies, without the need of pesticides that are potentially harmful to wildlife.

Across the world, these amphibian species are rapidly disappearing due to habitat loss, disease, pollution, harvesting, invasive species and climate change. Over 40 per cent of species are threatened with extinction. Amphibian declines are part of the sixth mass extinction event on Earth, on a scale that is approaching the loss of dinosaurs.

Captive breeding can aid reintroduction of frogs

One strategy for conserving declining species is to collect individuals from the wild and breed them in laboratory or captive settings.

This allows the offspring to grow without being threatened by predators, contaminants or other disturbances. The healthy offspring can then be released to boost numbers in the natural environment.

Along with Marc Mazerolle’s team at Laval University, we implemented this strategy through a recent collaborative effort with the Montreal Biodome and Sépaq (Société des établissements de plein air du Québec), with the goal of increasing the number of healthy individuals that can be released into appropriate restored natural sites to the benefit of all.

Two years into the project, adult chorus frogs have been successfully bred in captivity. Hundreds of tadpoles have been reared to froglets and released in constructed wetlands for the species. Some of the introduced individuals survived their first winter and adult males could be heard calling for females this past spring. These methods can be applied to species around the world.

The critical role of awareness and conservation

The first step is to spread awareness to emphasize the importance of amphibians and the speed at which species are declining. There are several resources and citizen science projects dedicate to the protection of amphibians, such as Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation and Amphibian Survival Alliance.

Protection of wetlands from destruction and pollution is one of the best ways to help. Wetlands are critical to the survival of amphibians. During the construction of housing developments and infrastructure—such as the proposed Highway 413—wetlands are often drained or filled in. Wetlands host many beautiful bird and plant species, not only amphibians, and they act as the earth’s filter to increase water quality.

A wetland
Wetlands act as typical habitats for western chorus frogs and other amphibians.
(Jeffrey P. Ethier), Author provided

Being careful while walking or driving near wetlands is another way to help on an individual level. Avoid disturbing breeding amphibians. Leave the tadpoles in the water. Observe and enjoy watching them grow legs and climb out of the water for the first time! Protecting the local ponds near your home can also contribute to this conservation.

You can also participate in public forums and let your community know that you support sustainable and responsible land use that keeps wetland habitats connected and protects critical areas for threatened species. Form volunteer groups to help protect frogs as they migrate over roads in the spring breeding season, as seen in other countries. We all have the power to make a positive difference in the protection of amphibians.The Conversation

Jeffrey P. Ethier, PhD candidate, Department of Biology, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa and Vance L Trudeau, Professor, Department of Biology, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If looks could kill these frogs would stop bugs in their tracks

Categories
Cottage Life

Connecting fragmented habitat is essential for wolverine conservation

Photo by Erik Mandre / Shutterstock

Present day wolverines, which emerged during the ice age, have been declining globally despite their many adaptions to live in challenging, rugged environments.

These large land-dwelling weasels evolved to scramble up trees and climb steep, snowy mountains. Wolverines’ snowshoe-like paws, heavy frost-resistant fur and powerful muscles let them thrive in some of the coldest places on Earth. Their sharp claws and strong jaws allow them to feast on carcasses and hunt species of all sizes from ground squirrels to elk.

While wolverines have been filmed hunting caribou in Norway and observed battling black bears over food in Yellowstone, they are extremely vulnerable, rarely seen and hard to study. Wolverine numbers are declining globally due to heavy trapping and predator killing by humans as well as habitat loss, climate change and various other factors. Scientists estimate there are more than 10,000 wolverines in Canada, but population densities vary a lot and numbers are difficult to estimate.

Our 20 years of synthesized research about wolverines shows that the best ways to protect remaining wolverine populations are to reduce trapping, minimize predator control pressures, and connect the large blocks of intact habitat they need to survive.

Not as resilient as you might think

Wolverines are private, generally solitary, species. They are slow to reproduce and have an average of two cubs, or kits, every two to three years.

They are naturally low in number and defend territories as large as 500-1,000 square kilometres, or sometimes more. These traits make them vulnerable to human impacts around the world.

Since the Europeans colonized North America, fur trapping and landscape development shrank the wolverine range drastically. South of the wide Arctic range, wolverines can be found only in the western boreal forest and mountains. But they used to live from coast to coast and as far south as New Mexico.

Today, in the United States, only around 300 remain in the lower 48 states — mainly in the snowy strongholds and high elevations of the mountain ranges. Wolverines are restricted to northern countries in Eurasia and are killed as predators of reindeer herds in Fennoscandia.

A map of the wolverine distribution in North America.
Wolverine distribution in North America.
(Environment Canada)

As tough as they are, wolverines are sometimes eaten by other big predators. As scavengers, taking food from a hungry bear or pack of wolves is a risky lifestyle. Their habitat is degraded by resource development, including forestry, oil and gas, and roads. People still trap wolverines in Canada, often far too heavily. They can also be sensitive to recreation.

All this human activity makes life better for wolverines’ competitors—coyotes. Where coyotes exploit developed landscapes, they come into conflict with wolverines, and in these fights, wolverines lose.

Piled on those problems is the impact of climate change on wolverine habitat. The cold, snowy refuges that wolverines have sought south of the Arctic are now thawing. Wolverines need snow to cache food, to raise their vulnerable kits safely and to keep lowland competitors away. The one-two punch of landscape change and climate change are making matters worse for wolverines.

Sneak a peek at animals using wildlife overpasses

Building blocks for wolverine conservation

Wolverines need large, connected blocks of intact habitat to survive. The only way to protect them in the long run is to help protect and connect their fragmented blocks of habitat.

A scenic mountainous green landscape
Prime wolverine habitat near Revelstoke, B.C. in summer. Wolverines need large areas of intact, connected habitat to survive.
(Mirjam Barrueto/WolverineWatch.org), Author provided

Creating more protected areas and managing human activity within and next to them will help. Protecting “climate refugia”—the last bastions of cold wolverine habitat—is an important priority. Landscape planning to connect mountain refuges across busy degraded valley bottoms is sorely needed, especially in southern Canada and the United States

Work to maintain or improve ecological connectivity is happening in some places, such as from Yellowstone to Yukon and other areas in the world.

Roads and industrial development cut up major sections of prime habitat. We can fight habitat fragmentation by making better decisions about road-building, including when to decommission roads built for resource extraction and mitigating the effects of traffic on wolverines and other wildlife. Habitat protection, connectivity, and restoration are critical for wolverines.

5 tips for avoiding collisions with wildlife on the road

We also need transboundary co-ordination. We need to think across larger landscapes, especially regions that still support wolverines on both sides of a border—like between Canada and the United States or between Norway and Sweden.

No longer ignorant nor blissful

Globally, governments have insufficiently protected wolverines.

Sweden’s predator stewardship program is an exception and British Columbia has stopped wolverine trapping in small locales.

Otherwise, large-scale wolverine conservation has been on the back burner. In the U.S., a petition to list wolverines on the federal Endangered Species Act was thwarted. Canada lacks a federal management plan and British Columbia’s most recent wolverine plan is from 1989, while Alberta lists the species in the “data deficient” category.

A wolverine in a camera trap surrounded by trees and a snow covered ground.
A wolverine at a research station in southeastern British Columbia. We know a lot about wolverines. All we have to do is use the knowledge and act fast.
(Mirjam Barrueto/WolverineWatch.org), Author provided

For years it seemed like not much was known about wolverines, and policymakers have rested on wolverines’ mystery to excuse inaction.

The truth is, science knows a lot about wolverines. Research from around the world clearly shows what we need to do.

Wolverines may have evolved in the cold but the heat is on us to act now. We must use the research compiled over the past two decades to make the changes needed to conserve wolverines.The Conversation

Jason T Fisher is an adjunct professor and head of the Applied Conservation Macro Ecology Lab, at the University of Victoria. Aerin Jacob is an adjunct professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at the University of Northern British Columbia.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Categories
Cottage Life

Male mice are terrified of bananas according to new study

Photo by Karel Bock/Shutterstock.com

The stink of skunk on the family dog, the stench of burnt campfire popcorn, and the odour of a septic tank pump-out—there are undoubtedly some smells that can easily skyrocket a cottage owner’s stress levels. But humans aren’t the only members of the animal kingdom to get stink stress. Researchers from McGill University have uncovered an unusual stink-induced stressor for a certain critter: it turns out that male mice are stressed by the smell of bananas.

“Stress affects almost every biological and and behavioural phenomena,” says the co-author of the study, Dr. Jeffrey Mogil, a professor in the department of psychology at McGill University and the E. P. Taylor Chair in pain studies.

Animals behave differently depending on whether their stress levels are high or low, says Mogil. For scientists whose research includes lab animals like mice, an unknown environmental stressor could end up skewing the results of their experiment.

“I think it’s really important to try to figure out all the stressors and all the confounds we can find so research in the future is better,” says Mogil.

It was students from McGill University who first noticed that male mice were behaving oddly in the laboratory. “I’ve learned over the years that when my students notice something we should follow it up,” says Mogil.

A series of experiments showed that the male mice were reacting to the presence of pregnant and lactating female mice also housed in the laboratory. The main offender for the stress turned out to be a chemical in the urine of the female mice called n-pentyl-acetate.

Male mice are known to kill the offspring of other mice. The researchers think that the n-pentyl-acetate is being used by pregnant and lactating female mice to send an aggressive and stinky message to males: back off.

“This is a new form of social signalling that’s never been described before,” says Mogil. “Mice signal to each other all the time through smell, but there are very few examples of females signalling to males on a topic that doesn’t involve sex. The message here is that there might be a fight.”

N-pentyl-acetate happens to be very similar in structure to isopentyl acetate, the chemical that gives bananas their signature odour. The researchers found that banana oil produced the same stress reaction in male mice as the female urine. “The fact that it’s banana smell that seems to be the most important chemo-signal is funny,” says Mogil.

If you’re hoping the researchers stumbled upon the secret key to halting rodent infestations, think again. The smell only works on male mice, points out Mogil—which isn’t much use if females come around. “We’re certainly not suggesting that anyone try to control mice in their house with bananas,” he says. Best to save your bananas for banana bread.

Categories
Cottage Life

Funding for chimney owners—and chimney swifts

Photo by Ron D’Entremont

Cottages are seen as a ‘home away from home’, a place to relax, recharge, and rejuvenate. But they can also provide a home for wildlife. The chimney swift, a small grey cigar-shaped bird that preys on mosquitoes and other flying insects, has adapted to roost and nest in human-made structures—preferring, as the name suggests, chimneys. However, chimney swifts in Canada are in major trouble; over 90% of the population has declined since 1970.

To help conserve the species, Birds Canada, with financial support from Environment and Climate Change Canada, has launched the Chimney Swift Chimney Restoration Fund. Owners of structures in need of repair and used by chimney swifts for nesting and roosting can apply for financial support from the fund. The fund may provide up to 50% of the total cost of the restoration project, while ensuring that the repairs continue to allow chimney swifts to use the structure for nesting and roosting.

Chimney swifts tend to occupy buildings that were built before 1960, says Véronique Connolly, coordinator for the Chimney Swift Fund. As aging chimneys fall apart or are capped or demolished, the chimney swifts lose out on valuable habitat.

“Often chimney owners don’t have the financial resources to repair a chimney. Sometimes it’s easier just to demolish it,” says Connolly.

Chimney swifts seek out chimneys built with rough materials like brick, stone, or concrete. “Chimney swifts can’t perch like birds that you would see on telephone wires,” says Natasha Barlow, a projects biologist for Birds Canada. Their back toes can swivel forward though, helping the birds cling to rough surfaces, she says.

Those rough building materials also provide a nice attachment area for swifts to construct their nests. Chimney swifts use saliva to glue small twigs together and then adhere the nests onto interior chimney walls, says Andrew Coughlan, the Quebec director for Birds Canada.

Coughlan maintains that chimney swifts make good tenants. “They’re not particularly noisy, and they don’t make huge nests,” he says. ”Nests are very small—about four inches wide—so it’s not going to block the chimney or cause a fire hazard.”

Sharing your cottage or home with chimney swifts doesn’t mean ceding your chimney entirely to the birds, adds Barlow. Chimney swifts migrate south for the fall and winter, so homeowners are perfectly safe to use their fireplaces and chimneys as intended while the birds are away.

The application deadline for the fund is April 21, 2022. Applicants can visit the Chimney Swift Chimney Restoration Fund’s website for the full eligibility criteria and application process.

 

How two engineers fixed a leaning chimney

Backyard birding: how to help birds build nests on your property

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Cottage Life

Is the chickadee the most Canadian animal?

Photo by Rino Falvo / Shutterstock

This essay about the chickadee was originally published as part of “The Great Canadian Creature Feature” in the June/July issue of Cottage Life.

Chickadees are so abundant at backyard feeders and neighbourhood parks across Canada, it’s easy to forget that they are wild animals that live in almost every treed habitat in our country. Perhaps you’ve even seen one and thought, It’s just a chickadee. It’s a common bird, but that familiar sight is also an extraordinary one. Not only are chickadees an animal we can get close to, they are so emblematic of what it takes to thrive here that they deserve a new title: Canada’s National Animal.   

Let’s start up close, because we can bond with chickadees. They make eye contact, and if you can whistle, you can have a conversation with one; they will respond. As children, we learn to sing with them, “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee.” And if we’re patient, they will come to our hands. 

Chickadees are the central characters in my earliest wildlife memories. As a kid, I spent winter afternoons in our local forest holding out handfuls of sunflower seeds and willing them to come. I would stand until my fingers froze and my outstretched arm shook from the effort. Chickadees taught me the patience and stillness I would need when I became a guide and naturalist later in life, and I have never tired of them. As an adult, I return to the same forest, still waiting to feel the pinpricks of their tiny nails against my cold fingers. 

By feeding chickadees healthy seeds, we can deepen our connection with them and help them to survive the winter and improve their reproductive success. Yet they don’t become dependent on us—they never forget how to forage for themselves. Chickadees don’t migrate. They can handle winter—an essential trait for a national animal—and though they only weigh as much as two quarters, they can induce a controlled state of hypothermia to survive the cold nights. By morning, they’ll be flitting around again, drinking fresh water from melting icicles. 

Meet the black-capped chickadee

While these birds are charismatic and approachable, they’re also tough enough to meet the demands of Canada’s huge and wide-ranging habitats. They have some nifty adaptations to help with this: their legs are so strong that they can feed hanging upside down; they have extraordinary spatial memory for the food that they cache; and they use at least 16 different vocalizations including the intense “high zee” which warns of predators so effectively that other species of birds also listen and react. Like many songbirds, chickadees are short-lived (they rarely see their fourth birthday) and experience about 50 per cent mortality in their first year. One of their main strategies to survive the hardships of their short lives is the very thing that makes them so remarkable: curiosity. You only have to watch a chickadee for half an hour to see this for yourself. They never stop learning, and that—more than any other trait—is what makes them my top choice for Canada. They are always exploring. This makes them more than an animal we can learn about; it makes them a companion we can learn from. 

Zoom out from the cute little bird at your feeder and look at a map of Canada. You’ll find chickadees everywhere, in every province and territory: in Haida Gwaii, the Arctic coast, the fjords of Labrador, southwestern Nunavut, and downtown Toronto. We have five species: black-capped, mountain, gray-headed, boreal, and chestnut-backed. Between them, they have evolved to live in every major forest type in our country. They are all cavity nesters and partially dependent on tree seeds for winter forage, but they push those habitat requirements to the limit: some live at high elevations, others on the edges of the tundra.

10 feeder birds to attract this winter

So we might get to know chickadees for how common they are—our companion in nature, our national bird in the hand—but our moments with them might also be the closest encounters we will ever have with a wild animal. When you look one in the eye, you will see tenacity, intelligence, and poise— and an animal that knows our country better than we do.

Facts & Figures

How do you like my outfit? As with most birds that brave Canadian winters, chickadees can fluff out their feathers and trap a layer of insulating air around their bodies.

 A tall tale: Chickadees have long legs—longer than other perching birds. 

 Nothing says love like bugs: Courting male chickadees present females with large insects—protein, yum!—in order to woo them.

Read more essays from “The Great Canadian Creature Feature” to read more of our favourite writers making the case for their pick for the most Canadian animal in the June/July 2021 issue of Cottage Life. 

Categories
Cottage Life

Is the coywolf the most Canadian animal?

Photo by Fiona M. Donnelly / Shutterstock

This essay about the coywolf was originally published as part of “The Great Canadian Creature Feature” in the June/July issue of Cottage Life.

Animals are oblivious to national borders. Their habitats pay no heed to lines on a map; birds and herds migrate across them at will. They were roaming the landscape long before those lines were drawn anyway. No nation can ever truly lay claim to any one beast as its national animal. 

The coywolf is, quite possibly, the only known exception to this rule. It is the rarest of breeds: a new species of hybrid origin, a mammal forged before our eyes. The coywolf is younger than zoology, younger than even Canada itself, having emerged only in the last 75 to 100 years.  

The coywolf’s origins trace deep into Canada’s cottaging heartland. In the early 20th century, as North America’s population grew and its landscape was colonized, the eastern wolf population (Canis lycaons) was hit hard. Facing a habitat squeeze and eradication campaigns, the wolves headed north from the eastern seaboard and the St. Lawrence lowlands. By the 1950s their few remaining numbers had found safe haven in and around Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. That’s when they met up with some western coyotes (Canis latrans) who, facing similar habitat pressures, had migrated from the American midwest and the central plains region of Canada. 

So began the greatest-ever dirty weekend in the history of cottage country. For the coyotes, it was probably not love at first sight. The western gray wolf (Canis lupus) kills coyotes, so the idea of getting cozy with its eastern cousin probably seemed a bit dodgy. But eastern wolves, being significantly smaller than western ones, were a lot less intimidating. They were also eagerly seeking to diversify the gene pool, so they’d have been in a welcoming frame of mind. Plus both were new to the area, and there’s no better icebreaker than “where you from?” 

13 things you didn’t know about coyotes

The courtship turned out to be quick, and the marriage mind-blowingly successful. Their offspring are acknowledged by scientists as a species of hybrid origin: zoologists call them “eastern coyotes” and the rest of us call them “coywolves.” (For taxonomy nerds, they are known as “Canis latrans var.,” or “coyote variant.”) Coywolf is the better name, given that the species is a perfect fusion of its ancestors’ inherent traits, to the point of practically wielding mutant superpowers. 

The coywolf’s size falls somewhere between wolves and coyotes, weighing in at roughly 45 pounds on average—small enough for stealth and agility, but big enough to throw its weight around. They can be loners or travel in packs. They can hunt together to take down deer, or subsist happily on rabbits, birds, and berries, or shop for groceries, ie., raid a chicken coop. 

But perhaps their most remarkable trait is their habitat adaptability: they can live anywhere. And at a time when the combined pressures of ongoing habitat loss and accelerating climate change are putting more and more species at risk, the coywolf is kicking everybody’s ass. Like wolves, they are comfortable in the wild, but like coyotes, they’re not perturbed by human settlement. They happily nest and hunt amid rolling hills, farmland, and even in urban areas. Across eastern Canada and the New England states and as far south as Virginia, the “coyotes” people keep seeing in their backyards are most likely Algonquin Park coywolves, busy reconquering the continent. 

So in addition to being made in this country, the coywolf’s traits are clearly and distinctively Canadian. We all love our big-city amenities, as well as the joys of escaping them. We know how to nest in any habitat; there’s no landscape we can’t call home. We can get along with just about anyone, and we believe there is strength in diversity. Truly, we are all coywolves.

 

Facts & figures

​​ Let’s talk about sex, baby: Unlike some other hybrid species—mules, hinnies, ligres—coywolves are fertile and can reproduce.

And the winner is… Scientists call coywolves “the most adaptable mammals on the planet.” 

 A wolf in alternate clothing: For a long time, people thought coywolves were just large coyotes.

 

Read more essays from “The Great Canadian Creature Feature” to read more of our favourite writers making the case for their pick for the most Canadian animal in the June/July 2021 issue of Cottage Life.

 

Categories
Cottage Life

Is the coywolf the most Canadian animal?

Photo by Fiona M. Donnelly / Shutterstock

This essay about the coywolf was originally published as part of “The Great Canadian Creature Feature” in the June/July issue of Cottage Life.

Animals are oblivious to national borders. Their habitats pay no heed to lines on a map; birds and herds migrate across them at will. They were roaming the landscape long before those lines were drawn anyway. No nation can ever truly lay claim to any one beast as its national animal. 

The coywolf is, quite possibly, the only known exception to this rule. It is the rarest of breeds: a new species of hybrid origin, a mammal forged before our eyes. The coywolf is younger than zoology, younger than even Canada itself, having emerged only in the last 75 to 100 years.  

The coywolf’s origins trace deep into Canada’s cottaging heartland. In the early 20th century, as North America’s population grew and its landscape was colonized, the eastern wolf population (Canis lycaons) was hit hard. Facing a habitat squeeze and eradication campaigns, the wolves headed north from the eastern seaboard and the St. Lawrence lowlands. By the 1950s their few remaining numbers had found safe haven in and around Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. That’s when they met up with some western coyotes (Canis latrans) who, facing similar habitat pressures, had migrated from the American midwest and the central plains region of Canada. 

So began the greatest-ever dirty weekend in the history of cottage country. For the coyotes, it was probably not love at first sight. The western gray wolf (Canis lupus) kills coyotes, so the idea of getting cozy with its eastern cousin probably seemed a bit dodgy. But eastern wolves, being significantly smaller than western ones, were a lot less intimidating. They were also eagerly seeking to diversify the gene pool, so they’d have been in a welcoming frame of mind. Plus both were new to the area, and there’s no better icebreaker than “where you from?” 

13 things you didn’t know about coyotes

The courtship turned out to be quick, and the marriage mind-blowingly successful. Their offspring are acknowledged by scientists as a species of hybrid origin: zoologists call them “eastern coyotes” and the rest of us call them “coywolves.” (For taxonomy nerds, they are known as “Canis latrans var.,” or “coyote variant.”) Coywolf is the better name, given that the species is a perfect fusion of its ancestors’ inherent traits, to the point of practically wielding mutant superpowers. 

The coywolf’s size falls somewhere between wolves and coyotes, weighing in at roughly 45 pounds on average—small enough for stealth and agility, but big enough to throw its weight around. They can be loners or travel in packs. They can hunt together to take down deer, or subsist happily on rabbits, birds, and berries, or shop for groceries, ie., raid a chicken coop. 

But perhaps their most remarkable trait is their habitat adaptability: they can live anywhere. And at a time when the combined pressures of ongoing habitat loss and accelerating climate change are putting more and more species at risk, the coywolf is kicking everybody’s ass. Like wolves, they are comfortable in the wild, but like coyotes, they’re not perturbed by human settlement. They happily nest and hunt amid rolling hills, farmland, and even in urban areas. Across eastern Canada and the New England states and as far south as Virginia, the “coyotes” people keep seeing in their backyards are most likely Algonquin Park coywolves, busy reconquering the continent. 

So in addition to being made in this country, the coywolf’s traits are clearly and distinctively Canadian. We all love our big-city amenities, as well as the joys of escaping them. We know how to nest in any habitat; there’s no landscape we can’t call home. We can get along with just about anyone, and we believe there is strength in diversity. Truly, we are all coywolves.

 

Facts & figures

​​ Let’s talk about sex, baby: Unlike some other hybrid species—mules, hinnies, ligres—coywolves are fertile and can reproduce.

And the winner is… Scientists call coywolves “the most adaptable mammals on the planet.” 

 A wolf in alternate clothing: For a long time, people thought coywolves were just large coyotes.

 

Read more essays from “The Great Canadian Creature Feature” to read more of our favourite writers making the case for their pick for the most Canadian animal in the June/July 2021 issue of Cottage Life.