08 July 2010
The fewer Island marmots there are, the crankier they get
By Sandra Mcculloch, Times Colonist
When they were facing extinction, the 25 or so Vancouver Island marmots remaining in the wild were cranky, uncommunicative and aloof.
That's one of the findings of research published in the latest edition of the Journal of Animal Ecology, written by biologists Justin Brashares, Jeffery Werner and Anthony Sinclair, who were based at the University of B.C. during the study.
The research, carried out from 2001 to 2005, focused on a phenomenon called the Alee effect -- the social meltdown of animal populations that sometimes occurs when their numbers are dwindling.
At the time of the research, the number of Vancouver Island marmots left was at their lowest. But thanks to a captive breeding program involving four Canadian zoos and animal rehabilitation centres, the population has since rebounded to several hundred. The Vancouver Island marmot recovery teams expect the target of 500 marmots will be reached by next summer.
"What Alee said was ... if you reduce a population, particularly for social animals, you can get to a point where their sociality breaks down and they don't get the benefit of having big families or big social groups anymore and that can put them in a spiral to extinction," said Brashares from the University of California at Berkeley, where he now works, earlier this week.
Marmots rely on each other to whistle their alarm calls, signalling predatory eagles overhead or the approach of wolves, "and this is how a marmot colony works," said Brashares. "So what happens when there's only one member in a colony? There's no one watching your back, basically."
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Posted by Pinar Aybar at 0:46
21 April 2010
Howler Monkey Census Reveals Population Holding Steady
Long before dawn on March 19 and 20, Katie Milton and a group of stalwart volunteers, each armed with flashlight and compass, spread out into the jungle to find 35 predetermined listening stations marked on their maps of the island.
Just before sunrise, howler monkeys launch into a chorus of howls, roars and barks. From 5:15 am until 6:30 am, each volunteer recorded the time and direction of these vocalizations and estimated the distance to each group that they could hear from their stations. As they walked back to the lab in the early morning light they noted locations of any monkey groups they saw.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:58
16 February 2010
Professor Honored for Outstanding Contributions to Bird Conservation Biology
The American Orinthologists' Union has awarded Professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Steven R. Beissinger the 2009 William Brewster Memorial Award for his innovative contributions, outstanding research productivity, and long-standing dedication to conservation biology of birds in the Western Hemisphere.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:00
12 January 2004
Survival vs Recovery: a Biologist and an Economist Discuss the Endangered Species Act
by Kathryn Stelljes
Steven Beissinger and David Sunding teach conservation biology and environmental economics at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources. Both have extensive experience with endangered species and relevant legislation. As the Endangered Species Act reached its 30th anniversary, the two reflected upon the Act, its impacts, and its future. The Act was signed into law on December 28, 1973, and is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Today there are 1,263 species listed as federally endangered or threatened, including 517 animals and 746 plants. This includes 288 species that live in California.
“The Endangered Species Act is the only place in the law where we’ve given existence rights, in essence, to nonhuman species,†said conservation biologist Steven Beissinger. He added that other legislation protects specific types of species in specific habitats, such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the Forest Management Act, but the Endangered Species Act provides a unique nexus for all public—and to some extent private—lands regarding the taking or potential to impact a species.
Further, he noted that California is an endangered species hotspot.
“Outside of the state of Hawaii, we have the largest numbers of threatened and endangered species. At the same time, one out of every 9 people in the U.S. lives in California,†Beissinger said. “There are cataclysmic forces coming together from two different directions here.â€
But evaluating the success of the Act is difficult.
“Few species come off the list or are down-listed from endangered to threatened,†said natural resource economist David Sunding. “By this one measure, the Act has not been as successful as everyone had hoped 30 years ago. On the other hand, we haven’t had as many species go over the precipice, either. There are a lot of species that are on life support, but at least they’re alive. That is an accomplishment of the Act and I think it’s something that people should be thankful for,†he said.
“But that illustrates there is a real difference between keeping a species alive and returning a species to a viable population,†Sunding continued. “Recovery is much harder to implement and it takes a lot more resources.â€
Beissinger agrees.
“A key point for agencies in interpreting the Act is to ‘do no harm’. Federal agencies spend far more time trying not to harm species than they do on recovering them,†he said. “People like to evaluate the Act on what’s delisted. We could have the best act in the world but not have the tools and the funding to implement it, so species would never get delisted.â€
Beissinger said he’s participated in several recovery teams but questions the value of some of their products. “A recovery plan is a nice document, and the administration loves them because it shows they’ve accomplished something. But do the recovery actions identifiied in the plan actually get done? No, not even a lot of the first priorities,†he said.
Funding is one obvious issue, but biological challenges exist as well.
“Even with a species like the California condor, which has received substantial resources, our ability to recover species is a great biological challenge because the population has been reduced to such a small number of individuals. Also, the factors that caused condors to become endangered have not been reversed,†Beissinger said. “The species we’ve been successful getting off the list have often been in situations where we’ve made a policy intervention that changed the environment across entire species ranges and across state and political boundaries, like eliminating DDT and some other pesticides.â€
The difference between survival and recovery is at the heart of three decades of contention between environmental groups, land owners, and industry.
“To be successful at recovering an endangered species, you often have to change the way land is used. Some land has to be set aside entirely, some land may need improvements, economic activities on other land may need to be changed or worked around,†said Sunding. “The basic problem with the Act from a regulatory point of view is that land use planning in this country has historically been one of the things under the purview of local governments.â€
“Land owners and communities have things that they want to do with their land, and putting the federal government in there with environmental oversight of proposed land use changes is pretty obviously going to lead to conflict,†Sunding said.
In addition, recovery is expensive.
“Take the case of the Coho salmon,†Sunding said. “To recover the species, we estimated a price tag of about 6 billion dollars, just in California, for one species.†This would involve dozens of counties and cities in the state and would require sweeping land use changes, including changing timber harvesting practices, acquiring water, decommissioning and paving forest roads, and cataloging the upper reaches of relevant watersheds. “In this budget environment,†Sunding said, “it’s very hard for me to imagine the state, even combined with the federal government, allocating 6 billion dollars to recover the Coho salmon. We can keep it from going extinct, but it is a public policy decision whether recovering this fish is worth that amount of money.â€
At the same time, nothing in the Act’s legislation provides funding for implementation.
“The Endangered Species Act has been cited as the biggest unfunded mandate passed by Congress in the last 50 years,†said Sunding. “The Clean Water Act, in contrast, is one of the biggest public works projects this country has ever undertaken. There were literally tens of billions of dollars allocated by the federal government to help private industry and governments deal with Clean Water Act requirements. Those funds have never flowed for endangered species. The Endangered Species Act, in other words, has only sticks and no carrots.â€
The funding situation is so dire that there has been a moratorium on listing new species for most of the time period since the Reagan administration.
Beissinger noted that the Fish and Wildlife Service is so backlogged that they invited him to a workshop to help them prioritize species that should be considered to begin the listing process. Approximately 117 animals and 139 plant species are candidates for listing but because they have not gone through the formal process, have no legal protection from the Act.
Beissinger says that only a few species have become extinct in the U.S. in spite of listing. “The first place they are disappearing is in Hawaii. The second place they’re going to disappear is here.â€
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:39
11 November 2009
Insect Museum Launches “Essig Brunch†on Fridays
[the stick insect Epidares nolimetangere from the rainforests of northwest Borneo, taken by Yu Zeng, a student in IB]
Instead of a big fuzzy panda bear beckoning as the symbol of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), how about the giant flower-loving fly, or better yet, the California night-stalking tiger beetle? Images of iconic creatures such as the panda are commonplace in our society, and like many of our most venerated animals (think dinosaurs, puppies, and birds), they are vertebrates. But when’s the last time you heard of a “Save the Bugs†campaign, or a movie about a cartoon millipede? Why this bias against the spineless? It could be because it’s a lot easier to cuddle with a cat or dog than a hairy pine borer (it’s a beetle), or because we ourselves are vertebrates, and, well, we like us and things similar to us. Whatever the reason, Berkeley’s entomology students are on a mission to gain a little respect for the insects and other arthropods that dominate the earth, and their first salvo is the creation of a no-spines-allowed seminar series.
If popularity was measured in terms of pure diversity, the insects would be prom queen. With 1 million documented species and an estimated 9 million more awaiting discovery and description, insects comprise half of all the known biodiversity on Earth. The University of California’s own Essig Museum of Entomology houses over 5 million of the Berkeley Natural History Museums’ 12 million specimens. One of these museums, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), runs a highly successful seminar series dubbed “MVZ Lunch†on Wednesday afternoons, drawing guest speakers from around the world to discuss their research on ecology and evolution. And while the entomology students enjoy attending these talks, they have decided to answer with a seminar of their own in order to bring a little taxonomic parity to the table.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 2:00
19 December 2005
Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food
by Sarah Yang
The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:21
06 July 2009
Growing young scientists in Tahiti
A University of California, Berkeley, project to catalog nearly every living thing on the Polynesian island of Moorea is enlisting the help of the island's 5th graders and showing them that science is not for foreigners only.
While conducting research for his thesis and for the Moorea Biocode Project, ESPM graduate student Brad Balukjian has been teaching 5th graders at the Paopao Primary School about biodiversity and introducing them to the scientific study of the plants and animals they see every day.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:22
09 July 2009
Theory provides more precise estimates of large-area biodiversity
Ask biologists how many species live in a pond, a grassland, a mountain range or on the entire planet, and the answers get increasingly vague. Hence the wide range of estimates for the planet's biodiversity, predicted to be between 2 million and 50 million species.
A new way of estimating species richness reported this month in the journal Ecology Letters by ecologist John Harte and colleagues, will make such estimates more precise for habitats of all sizes and types, from deserts to tropical rainforests.
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Posted by Susan Sabry at 5:22
28 January 2009
Successful habitat conservation may depend heavily on non-conserved land
Most habitat conservation efforts focus on preserving large patches of wild landscapes, but it seems that conservationists would do well to improve the habitat quality of the surrounding land, as well.
The findings of two CNR researchers published recently in the Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contain several take-home lessons for conservation biologists and land managers.
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Posted by Cyril at 4:04
28 January 2009
Video: Honey Bee Pollination Crisis - Professor Claire Kremen at the Commonwealth Club
Monoculture farming leaves us highly dependent on honey bees, whose pollination affects 75 percent of fruits and vegetables and 30 percent of all food production. However, managed hives are being wiped out by colony collapse disorder at an alarming rate.
Professor Claire Kremen discusses how wild bees can boost the effectiveness of managed hives and play a critical role in pollinating the crops that keep California's economy humming.
Watch the video below or download the podcast.
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Posted by Cyril at 1:36
12 December 2008
Study Underscores Impact of Court Imposed Water Pumping Restrictions
A study prepared by Berkeley Economic Consulting, under the direction of David Sunding, professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, outlines the statewide economic and water supply implications of ongoing water pumping restrictions imposed by federal courts in California to protect the Delta smelt. In early December, 2008, environmental and sport-fishing groups filed suit to force the complete and total shutdown of delta water pumping operations.
According to the study, statewide economic impacts can exceed $1 billion per year during drought years such as those currently facing the state, and may well exceed $3 billion should the state enter a prolonged dry period. Additionally, the report documents the severe water supply implications of the Court's orders. Even during average and wet periods the Court imposed restrictions exacerbate ongoing drought conditions by limiting the ability of water managers to replenish water storage facilities and groundwater reserves. The net result is a significant additional blow to the state economy and a greatly reduced ability to respond to severe drought and other emergencies.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:56
17 October 2008
Warming in Yosemite National Park sends small mammals packing to higher and cooler elevations
Global warming is causing major shifts in the range of small mammals in Yosemite National Park, one of the nation's treasures that was set aside as a public trust 144 years ago, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
The study, published in the Oct. 10 issue of Science, compared small mammal populations in the park today versus 90 years ago and found that mammals like shrews, mice and ground squirrels have moved to higher elevations or reduced their ranges in response to warmer temperatures, essentially shuffling the species living together in any one spot.
"We didn't set out to study the effects of climate change, but to see what has changed and why" since the last full-scale survey in Yosemite in 1918, said study leader Craig Moritz, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and director of the campus's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. "But the most dramatic finding in the Yosemite transect was the upward elevational shift of species. When we asked ourselves, "What changed?" it hit us between the eyes: the climate."
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Posted by Cyril at 0:08
21 July 2008
Outdoor enthusiasts scaring off native carnivores in parks
BERKELEY — Even a quiet stroll in the park can dramatically change natural ecosystems, according to a new study by conservation biologists. These findings could have important implications for land management policies.
The study compared parks in the San Francisco Bay Area that allow only quiet recreation such as hiking or dog walking with nearby nature reserves that allow no public access. Evidence of some native carnivore populations - coyote and bobcat - was more than five times lower in parks that allow public access than in neighboring reserves where humans don't tread, the researchers report.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:08
10 April 2008
New Madagascar conservation map protects maximum number of species in biodiversity hot spot
BERKELEY – An international team of researchers has developed a remarkable new roadmap for finding and protecting the best remaining holdouts for thousands of rare species that live only in Madagascar, considered one of the most significant biodiversity hot spots in the world.
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Posted by Cyril at 0:45
06 May 2008
New study analyzes why endangered parrot population isn't recovering
BERKELEY – The population of wild Puerto Rican parrots, among the most endangered birds in the world, has languished for decades, with several dozen remaining birds unable to break through the bottleneck that prevents their numbers from growing.
A new study by an international team sheds light on the factors influencing the stalled growth of this parrot's population and, in turn, provides an analytical tool that could help pinpoint the biggest factors hindering the recovery of other endangered species.
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Posted by Cyril at 0:02
16 July 2007
VIDEO: Claire Kremen and Gordon Frankie on Better Bees
California farmers depend on bees to pollinate the state's multi-million dollar fruit and nut crops, but last season thousands of bee colonies disappeared around the country.
The KQED science program Quest recently featured CNR ecologist Claire Kremen, and her research on bee pollination. In addition, an online-only special features the urban bees of entomologist Gordon Frankie.
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Posted by Cyril at 3:28
11 April 2007
Bees keep her busy as a, well, a bee
Public curiosity about bees kept UC Berkeley graduate student Alex Harmon-Threatt on her toes at an annual wildflower festival at the Sunol-Ohlone Regional Wilderness, south of Livermore, on April 7. Kids and adults alike peered through her magnifying glass at a collection of native wild bee species on display: bumblebees, mining bees, sunflower bees, leaf-cutter bees, yellow-faced bees — even bees that "land on you lightly and drink your sweat," she told incredulous young visitors.
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Posted by Cyril at 4:45
09 April 2007
Turning back the demographic hands of time for an endangered species
In the News & Views blog of the Ecological Society of America, Professor Steve Beissinger discusses his and Zachariah Peery’s Feb 07article Reconstructing the historic demography of an endangered seabird.
He writes:
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Posted by Cyril at 1:40
07 March 2007
A world without bees is a world without chocolate
From The San Francisco Chronicle [original URL]
By Alison Rood
When Professor Gordon Frankie wants to impress schoolchildren with the importance of bees, he lays out an array of foods such as berries, grapes, pears and chocolate alongside a couple of dried-out tortillas and rice cakes and asks them which foods they prefer.
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Posted by Cyril at 3:33
07 February 2007
Biologists shed light on health of marbled murrelet population in early 1900s
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To better understand why an endangered seabird's numbers plummeted over the past century, researchers at CNR turned to museums for help.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:40
02 December 2006
Undergrad Matt Stuckey uses DNA to understand butterfly evolution in the Sierra
Matthew Stuckey, fourth year in Environmental Economics and Policy and Conservation Resource Studies, is researching how the butterfly Colias behrii colonized the Sierra Nevada.
Through mentorship with Professor George Roderick and graduate student Sean Schoville, Stuckey has been working on cloning nuclear genes to assess genetic variation within and among populations of C. behrii.
Roderick’s team is using genetics to understand how organisms have colonized new areas. SPUR funds have helped provide chemicals and lab supplies necessary for molecular cloning – a technique essential for Stukey’s research.
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Posted by Cyril at 0:49
14 December 2006
Video: Pest Affecting Honeybees, Food Supply
Watch Video
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Posted by Cyril at 0:18
13 December 2006
Researchers barcode DNA of 6,000 fungi species in Venice museum
In the storerooms of a Venice, Italy, museum, a University of California, Berkeley, scholar and Italian experts are at work on a rare collection, but the objects aren't Renaissance paintings or the art of ancient glassblowers. Instead, the team is collecting samples from the largest and best preserved collection of fungi in Italy to create an unprecedented DNA database.
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Posted by Cyril at 2:52
25 October 2006
Pollinators help one-third of world's crop production
Pollinators such as bees, birds and bats affect 35 percent of the world's crop production, increasing the output of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide, finds a new study published Oct. 25 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences and co-authored by a conservation biologist from ESPM.
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Posted by Cyril at 6:11
05 July 2006
Bushmeat: Illegally hunted animals turn up in Western markets
Baboons, duiker antelopes and cane rats are available by the pound in markets in major cities in North America and Europe, reports ESPM professor Justin Brashares.
While the meat showing up in cities from New York to London represent just a sliver of the illegal bushmeat trade, it highlights the strong demand that still exists for illegally hunted meat, the ecologist says.
Bushmeat (wild animals hunted for food) can be problematic when the animals killed are endangered or carrying disease. Most concern about bushmeat centres on western and central Africa, where great apes are among the animals eaten, and where it represents a serious threat to many animal populations.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:59
19 December 2005
Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food
The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
The results, to be published online by early March 2006 in the journal Conservation Biology, suggest that feeding further down the food web may have played a role in low levels of reproduction observed in contemporary murrelet populations, and has likely contributed to the seabirds' listing as an endangered species, the researchers said.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 4:43
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