COMMENTARY BY DR. DAVE SAMUEL
Humans impact wild animals in several ways. Some can be modified to lower those impacts. Others cannot be changed. Here are just a few of the unusual ways we impact the lives of wild creatures.
Natural gas exploration has gone up a great deal in recent years. Dr. Brittingham at Penn State University looked at the impacts from the noise of compressors that pressurize pipelines. No question, those compressors are loud and they run all the time. Brittingham put 80 nest boxes in an area and surrounded half of them with speakers playing recordings of compressors, and then observed the bluebirds and tree swallows that used the boxes for nesting. Both species hatched fewer eggs in the noisy boxes compared to birds in the quiet boxes. Once those fewer eggs hatched the parents spent less time incubating them than birds did in the quiet boxes.
The researchers weren’t sure if the sound drives birds from the nests, or if it discourages insect prey, forcing birds to spend more time foraging. We need those compressors, so watch for the industry to attempt to mitigate this problem.
Hunting shed antlers is a very popular activity. These hunts take place in the spring where people roam the hillsides and fields searching for shed antlers. Researchers in the west placed GPS collars on female and male bighorn sheep and mule deer to quantify movements before, during and after shed antler hunts. They compared behaviors for seven days before shed hunting, one to two days during the hunt, and seven days post-hunt. Female bighorn sheep did not change their movement patterns during shed hunts, but bighorn rams increased the distance they moved by 41%. They didn’t leave the area, they just moved around more.
Female mule deer increased distance moved by 97%. In fact, 54% of females moved a mean distance of 841 yards outside their home ranges during shed hunts. Male mule deer increased distance moved by 2 ½ times and 82% of males moved a mean distance of 1,382 yards outside their home range. Because of animal disturbance in winter, several Western states have regulations governing the times people can shed hunt, and there are also regulations governing where they can shed hunt.
The shed hunting season in Utah runs from Feb. 1 to April 15 and you need a certificate from the game department to shed hunt. In most of Colorado, you can’t hunt sheds from Jan. 1 to April 30. In Wyoming, you can’t shed hunt until May. It’s all about protecting wildlife during critical winter months.
Remember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Caribbean 10 years ago? An explosion on an oil platform led to a 3-month spill of 134 million gallons of oil. It remains the largest oil spill in U. S. history. The impacts on wildlife and habitat were huge, and still going on. Recent studies show that bottlenose dolphins in Louisiana’s offshore waters continue to have compromised immune systems, even if they were born after the spill. This makes them susceptible to diseases. Researchers aren’t sure if the dolphins are still impacted by the environment or if they are impacted by eating prey that is affected by the oil. The spill is the gift that keeps on giving.
Invasive species are becoming a huge problem for native wildlife in Florida. Citizens either dumped unwanted pet reptiles into the wild, or they escaped. Either way, the number of invasives keeps growing. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has now banned over a dozen non-native reptile species. As of February you cannot import, breed, or possess Burmese pythons, reticulated pythons, green anacondas, norther African pythons, southern African pythons, amethystine pythons, scrub pythons, Nile monitors, green iguanas and all tegu species. Eliminating these species is impossible so control efforts are underway. It’s probably too late to save some of our native wildlife.
