Lawsuit Filed for Failure to Protect Mexican Gray Wolf

A coalition of environmentalists filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for its failure to protect the Mexican gray wolf, one of the most endangered species in North America, over recent decades, demanding that a better recovery plan be instilled, according to reports. (Photo : Flickr/Jim Clark/USFWS)

A coalition of environmentalists filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for its failure to protect the Mexican gray wolf, one of the most endangered species in North America, over recent decades, demanding that a better recovery plan be instilled, according to reports.

Currently, only 83 Mexican gray wolves and five breeding pairs exist in the wild. According to a new analysis released by the Center for Biological Diversity, the original 1982 recovery plan for the species is incomplete, and a newly drafted proposal from 2012 by the FWS was abandoned, leaving this wolf hanging out to dry.

Thus, the three nonprofit agencies Defenders of Wildlife, Wolf Conservation Center, and Endangered Wolf Center, along with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and retired federal wolf biologist David R. Parsons, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Mexican gray wolf. Their idea for a new and improved recovery plan would essentially be a blueprint for rebuilding the wolf population to sustainable levels, and is legally required under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

"The opportunity to recover the Mexican gray wolf is slipping away due to genetic problems and inadequate management policies, but the government still hasn't created the basic recovery blueprint that the law requires," Earthjustice attorney Timothy Preso, who is representing the groups, said in a press release. "We are asking a judge to order federal officials to develop a scientifically-grounded recovery plan before it is too late."

The Issues

Although their numbers have grown slowly, they remain the most endangered subspecies of wolf in the world. The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) - the "lobo" of Southwestern lore - once numbered in the thousands, but populations drastically declined in the United States by the mid-1980s due to hunting, trapping and poisoning.

(Photo : Flickr: Eric Kilby)

After being wiped out and with only a few animals remaining in Mexico (they typically range throughout the southwestern United States as well), Mexican gray wolves were bred in captivity and reintroduced in the wild in Arizona back in 1998. However, though conservationists have still fallen short of their goal to restore at least 100 wolves to the wild by 2006, Defenders of Wildlife notes, the reintroduction program is experiencing delays.

According to The Associated Press, politics, illegal killings, and other factors have hampered wolf recovery efforts. Disputes over management of the predators have also spurred numerous legal actions by environmentalists and ranchers.

Though there are only 83 of these wolves in the wild, some ranchers believe that is still too many, for fear that they will prey on their valuable cattle.

The Deadly Wait

Due to these issues, the CBD believes over the last 38 years FWS officials have been "dragging their feet on completing a recovery plan simply to appease state leaders and special interest groups opposed to sharing the landscape with wolves," notes CBD wolf advocate Michael Robinson in the press release. And this delay could be deadly for the Mexican gray wolf.

What's more, aside from legal removals due to conflicts with livestock, the current wolf population suffers from serious inbreeding, which makes them unable to adapt to environmental changes and the animals more vulnerable to disease.

Despite the lawsuit and series of complaints, the Service states on its website that recovery plans are "guidance documents, not regulatory documents."

But, as argued by Virginia Busch, executive director of the Endangered Wolf Center, and other conservationists behind the lawsuit, "Only by developing and implementing a comprehensive and legally compliant recovery plan reflecting the best available scientific information can Fish and Wildlife Service secure the future of the Mexican wolf, and establish management sufficient to restore this irreplaceable part of our wild natural heritage to the American landscape."

Fish Decline Means a Trashy Diet for Gulls

An analysis of nearly 150 years of data has revealed that seagulls are eating far more trash than they used to, leading to low fertility and population declines. Now, researchers are suggesting that this may have occurred because fish stocks are not as nearly as plentiful as they once were. (Photo : Pixabay)

An analysis of nearly 150 years of data has revealed that seagulls are eating far more trash than they used to, leading to low fertility and population declines. Now, researchers are suggesting that this may have occurred because fish stocks are not as nearly as plentiful as they once were.

That's at least according to a study recently published in the journal Global Change Biology, which details how researchers used 270 gull feather samples left to museums between 1860 and 2009 to measure fish intake.

Assessing ratios of the heavy isotopes carbon and nitrogen, researchers from the University of British Columbia, Environment Canada, and Queen's University in Canada discovered that the average gull diet has slowly been shifting to more fish and more supplemental garbage scavenging.

All the gull feather samples originated from seabirds that lived near the Salish Sea region off the coast of southwestern Canada and the northwestern United States.

Predictably, the gulls' observed change in diet was found to coincide with overfishing in the region by the early 1900s.

This overfishing drove the common eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) - a once staple meal for locals - to dangerously low numbers. That is why, while the overall eulachon population is considered to be stable, the fish in this particular region are considered threatened by Ecological Society of America and the NOAA Fisheries.

Interestingly, records indicate that despite local fish populations dropping, the gull populations actually grew between 1960 and 1986. The feather analysis indicates that this may be when trash became much more readily available, helping to support gulls, even while less nutritious than fish.

Field observations have found that while gull chicks today are being fed sand lance and herring, they are just as likely to be fed discarded food like chicken wings or French fries.

According to New Scientist, study author Louise Blight has also been involved in other research that found that gulls have been producing smaller and fewer eggs over the last few decades. She implies in her latest study that this could be attributed to the decline in gull diet quality.

The worry is that this work could have dire implications as pollution levels and climate change continue to threaten population numbers of fish across the world. The consequence - besides empty oceans - could be that seabirds wind up choking down more of our trash to survive.

Ecological Opportunity Prompts Tool Use Among Primates

Only does ecological opportunity, rather than necessity, prompt tool use among non-human primates, according to recent research.
(Photo : Kathelijine Kroops)

Scientists had assumed that like humans, primates would use tools in times of hardship, for instance when food was scarce. But a surprising new finding indicates that that's not the case. Only does ecological opportunity, rather than necessity, prompt tool use among these non-humans, according to recent research.

Primates use all kinds of tools in the wild to acquire food resources. For example, chimpanzees use stones to crack open nuts and sticks to harvest aggressive army ants. Orangutans also use stick tools to prey on insects, as well as to extract seeds from fruits. Bearded capuchin monkeys that live in savannah-like environments also use a variety of tools also employ the stone method for nuts while utilizing sticks to dig for tubers.

But these primates did not invent such tools because they needed to - a realization that seemed counterintuitive to researchers. Rather than prompted by food scarcity like they previously thought, tool use is simply determined by the local environment. When chimps, orangutans and bearded capuchin monkeys alike encounter calorie-rich but hard-to-reach foodstuffs, such as nuts and honey, it seems to act as an incentive for an ingenious use of materials.

"By ecological opportunity, we mean the likelihood of encountering tool materials and resources whose exploitation requires the use of tools. We showed that these ecological opportunities influence the occurrence of tool use. The resources extracted using tools, such as nuts and honey, are among the richest in primate habitats. Hence, extraction pays off, and not just during times of food scarcity," Dr. Kathelijne Koops of the University of Cambridge said in a statement.

The idea that the environment is a bigger influence on primates than originally believed changes the "method of exclusion" argument - the theory that simple ecological and genetic differences alone cannot account for the variation in behavior between humans and non-human primates - such as tool use.

"Given our close genetic links to our primate cousins, their tool use may provide valuable insights into how humans developed their extraordinary material culture and technology," Koops added.

The findings are published in the journal Biology Letters.

Smart Fish Don't Have 'Tunnel Vision'

Researchers have determined that many fish, like the relatively tiny zebrafish, are actually very good at focusing on multiple objects simultaneously, understanding what they are seeing and interacting with these objects in displays that contradict the popular impression of a "three-second memory." (Photo : wiki CC0)

Researchers have determined that many fish, like the relatively tiny zebrafish, are actually very good at focusing on multiple objects simultaneously, understanding what they are seeing and interacting with these objects in displays that contradict the popular impression of a "three-second memory."

Evidence that fish are a lot more intelligent than we once believed has been piling up in recent years, with Nature World News reporting on a great many of these discoveries. Researchers have determined that fish feel pain much like we do, and even boast differing personalities that influence how likely they are to get caught on an angler's hook.

It was even recently determined that territorial fish can tell the difference between their reflection and an actual rival, indicating that many older studies of fish behavior may be wrong.

In the latest of these revealing works, researchers found that fish boast "parallel vision search" - the ability to pick out one object among many, meaning they might be some effective "Where's Waldo" players swimming in our oceans.

The study, which was published in the journal PLOS One, details how 11 adult zebrafish were presented with different visual stimuli, in the form of different colored circles on a computer monitor, over a period of 144 hours. The fish were taught to associate food with a red disk, and then placed that disk among other distracting disks.

No matter how many items the researchers added to the scene to distract the fish, they had no problem identifying the red disk at the same speed every time.

"Although vision seems simple and quick, it involves a lot of computational power to figure out where things are in a crowded environment," lead study author Michael Proulx said in a statement. "It is incredible to discover that the zebrafish brain, with its small size and simple structure, can seemingly find a target visually without getting slower."

Co-author Matthew Parker added that this indicated that the zebrafish were far from reaching their intellectual limit for assessing and understanding their environment.

"Fish don't deserve their reputation as the stupid branch of the animal family tree," he said. "The more research we do, the more we find out that they are capable of quite complex learning and problem solving."

Hummingbird Secrets Revealed with Tiny Tags

Some of the hummingbird's secrets, from travel to life span, are being revealed with tiny tags researchers have been using to gather data for the past decade, according to new research.
(Photo : Flickr: Curt Hart)

Some of the hummingbird's secrets, from travel to life span, are being revealed with tiny tags researchers have been using to gather data for the past decade, according to new research.

They may be the smallest bird in the world, but hummingbirds are also among the fastest. These backyard favorites - able to outperform even tiny, advanced micro-helicopters - can flit their wings up to 35 mph, or 200 times per second. We know they are fast, but there is still a lot scientists don't know about these elusive individuals.

Now thanks to various researchers that have spent years perfecting the banding technique, which is simply placing a band on the bird's leg and using it to track them, hummingbirds are finally giving up some of their secrets.

For example, astonishing migrations have been found, The Associated Press (AP) reports, with one Rufous hummingbird reportedly visiting Florida one winter just to show up the following summer more than 3,500 miles away in southeast Alaska. What's more, some of these typically tropical birds have been discovered wintering in areas where temperatures drop below zero degrees.

"We're learning a lot about hummingbirds through banding we never would have learned otherwise," Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the bird banding laboratory for the US Geological Survey's (USGS) Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, told the AP.

Hummingbirds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but they can be captured with the use of federal and state permits. Even with 225 bird banders in the United States catching the tiny, long-tongued birds, there is still much more researchers don't know about them.

In terms of their migrations, for instance, it's not clear if hummingbirds fly hundreds of miles at a time or fly in 30-mile increments, stopping to give themselves time to refuel. Also, scientists still have difficulty estimating their population numbers, Defenders of Wildlife notes, since there are many different species spanning a large geographic area. There are more than 300 species of hummingbirds, fluttering from southeastern Alaska all the way to southern Chile.