Parachuting Beavers!

This week, I am attending the Localizing California Waters conference that is being held just outside Yosemite National Park and is organized by a group called Watershed Progressive. It is a great event and I have been learning a lot and meeting some really passionate people in the water world of California.

One of the talks I attended was about beavers and their role in ecosystems and habitat restoration (which is huge!). But one part of that talk was a particularly crazy story that I wanted to share. It is about parachuting beavers! And yes, this is a true story!

As humans expanded into new areas in the 1940s they began to run into beaver conflicts. One growing community in Idaho had a problem with a particular community of beavers that were routinely damaging houses and other property. These humans complained about this beaver community, and eventually it came to the attention of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

Beavers are native to the western USA, but they had been largely hunted out during the 1700s and 1800s for their fur. Therefore, there were large areas of the Idaho wilderness that had been beaver habitat, but had no beavers. This gave the Idaho Department of Fish and Game an idea for a solution to the human-beaver conflict. Take the beavers, and move them into some remote wilderness areas. But, this raised a problem: how were they going to get beavers into these remote areas? The answer? Drop them out of planes!

Crates, each containing a single beaver, dropped with parachutes into the Idaho Wilderness. Photo: Boise State Public Radio.

That’s right, in 1948, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game constructed a bunch of specially designed crates that would hold a beaver and protect it as it dropped through the air, and then would break open when they hit the ground. The crates also had parachutes attached to them.

A beaver emerging from its opened crate after a parachute-assisted landing. Photo: KTVB 7.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game then safely trapped the beavers that were causing problem for those humans. The result was a total of 76 captured beavers. These beavers were loaded into the specially designed crates, the crates were loaded on to planes, the planes were flown out over remote areas of the Idaho wilderness, and then the crates with their beaver passengers were dropped out of the planes and allowed to float down to the ground below! The first beaver to be dropped in such a manner was named Geronimo, and he and the rest of his beaver companions all but one survived their skydiving experience, and, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, went on to live their beaver-y lives.

I found this story to be so hilarious and absurd! Such a huge amount of effort to protect the property of a small group of humans that had moved into an area where the beavers were already living!

I am glad that the Idaho Department of Fish and Game decided to move the beavers instead of kill them, and I will say that the beavers probably ended up in a pretty good place, far from humans and in areas that were likely to make for good beaver homes. Since the beaver had been so decimated by over hunting, these beavers may have helped recolonize some of their former range.

The story gets crazier because in the 1950s, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife decided to emulate Idaho and also air dropped beavers into remote areas of wilderness. In California, the reason for parachuting beavers into the wilderness had nothing to do with beaver-human conflicts, but instead was to help reintroduce beavers to their historic range

So, all in all, a good story. But still a hilarious and absurd one as well.

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Watching a Douglas’s Squirrel Harvester

A Douglas’s Squirrel sitting on a branch. Photo: National Park Service

In his “Wilderness Essays,” John Muir said that the Douglas’s Squirrel “…is the most influential of the Sierra animals, quick mountain vigor and valor condensed, purely wild…”

And a couple of weeks ago, while my family and I camped in Kings Canyon National Park, I got to see how some of this influence is wielded.

In the early morning, I spent a bit of time wandering through the forest around the campground. As I was exploring, and watching Mountain Chickadees and Brown Creepers and Williamson’s Sapsuckers and White-headed Woodpeckers, I heard a thud of something hitting the ground close to me. I paused and then heard another thud. I looked up and high above my head I saw a Douglas’s Squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii) moving through the branches of a pine tree.

The forests of Kings Canyon National Park are filled with Douglas’s Squirrels! Photo: Aaron N.K. Haiman

The squirrel was moving from branch to branch checking the various cones. It would climb out to the tips of the branches where the cones grow and carefully and quickly assess each cone to come to a decision on whether or not it was ready to be harvested. If it was ripe enough, the squirrel nibbled away any pine needles blocking the base of the cone, and would then chew through the stem of the cone.

Once it had the cone off the branch, the cone would fall from the squirrel’s mouth and plummet to the ground. At first, I thought that the squirrel had accidently dropped the cone. However, after watching this process repeat a couple of times, I realized the squirrel was intentionally dropping the cones, and attentively watching where they fell. After observing the fall of a cone, the squirrel would scamper to the next cone.

I watched this process repeat again and again for over forty-five minutes. The squirrel was very strategic in how it went about its harvest. It was clearly working its way down the tree from highest branch to lowest. It would run out a branch to check the cones on it, harvest the cones that it wanted, then run back towards the trunk. Then it would jump to the next lowest branch and repeat the check-and-harvest process. In this way, it systematically checked every branch on the tree.

In the time I spent watching it, this squirrel must have harvested and dropped at least twenty cones. In that time, it also took a break for a few minutes to stretch out on a branch and rest, it took a few shorter breaks to groom its fur, and it spent a bit of time calling out into the forest. I figured that once the squirrel had enough food down on the ground, it would come down and feast, but it never did. I had to carry on with my day, so I left the Douglas’s Squirrel to it’s.

When I returned home, I read up a bit on this harvesting behavior, and it turns out that my assumption that the squirrel would eat the fallen cones was wrong. Douglas’s Squirrels do harvest large numbers of cones, but they are for winter storage! Once the squirrel I was watching was done harvesting cones, it was probably going to come down to ground level and begin hiding all those cones away in various locations so that the squirrel can come back and dig them out once the snow is covering the ground and other food sources are scare.

Forests filled with, and shaped by, Douglas’s Squirrels. Photo: Aaron N.K. Haiman

And this is where a big chunk of that influence comes in because the squirrels never make it back to eat every cone that they stash. These uneaten cones, and the seeds they contain, are where new trees sprout, so by hiding cones and then leaving them, these squirrels are shaping the forest of the future! That is some serious influence!

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Are Humans Evolving?

Are humans still evolving? Have medical advances and the luxuries of modern life removed the pressures that natural selection might exert and so remove the driver for humans to change from generation to generation?

Sketch of the human forearm indicating the median artery (Image Credit: Professor Maciej Henneberg

Several examples can be pointed to which indicate that we humans are still evolving from increasing head size to the reduction in frequency of wisdom teeth. And a new example has just been discovered!

Researchers at Flinders University and the University of Adelaide (both in Adelaide, Australia) have discovered that some adult humans today have three arteries that bring blood to their forearm and hand, while the rest have only two. And the percentage of the population that has three is increasing. These results were published in the Journal of Anatomy in September 2020.

We all had three arteries in our forearms when in utero which are called the ulnar artery, the radial artery, and the median artery. But most adults only have two because the median artery (the one in the middle) generally disappears as a fetus develops. However, sometimes it never disappears, and adults will have a functioning median artery. This variation in development is where the researchers focused their attention.

Anatomists (people who study anatomy) have noted that the median artery disappears sometimes, but not always, for well over a hundred years. Some of these anatomists examined adults born in the 1880s and noted that about 10 percent of them still had their median artery and 90 percent has lost theirs. Researchers from those two universities in Australia mentioned above read these reports and wondered if those numbers had changed. They examined the forearms of adults born in the late 1900s and found that about 30 percent retained their median artery while the percent that lost their median artery was down to 70 percent.

Looking at those numbers, it might not seem very dramatic, but a 20 percent difference over just a few generations is pretty significant in evolutionary terms. If this rate of change continues, everyone born 80 years or more from now will have a median artery as adults. When most people have a median artery as adults, medical standards will need to change. At that point, having a median artery will be the normal condition, and no longer be considered a variant as it is today.

No one is sure why this trait is being favored. Having three arteries that feed the hand does allow for increased blood supply. While it might be tempting to try and explain this change as a reflection of how important hands are to our survival, that idea is not supported by any data. In fact, hands have been important for human survival since before we evolved into humans, so even the idea is a bit weak. Whatever pressures are causing natural selection to favor the retention of a median artery into adulthood is an interesting question that stands open.

This example of the median artery shows that humans are still evolving and that natural selection continues to influence our species even if we don’t understand why it may be occurring.

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Camping at Domingo Springs

I spent the 4th of July weekend camping with my family at one of my favorite spots. Domingo Spring in Lassen National Forest. I first visited this site during my graduate school work where I was recording the calls of Evening Grosbeaks, and I have returned regularly ever since. The campground, set among jumbled piles of volcanic rocks and large conifer trees, is immediately beside a wet meadow that Domingo Creek runs through. Near the entrance of the campground is the source of Domingo Creek, and the campground’s namesake, Domingo Spring. This spring is one of the few places I know of where one can drink right out of the land. In my mind, that makes this a very special spot, indeed. We also drove to Willow Lake for part of one day which was lovely. Willow Lake has a floating sphagnum bog where a couple of native species of carnivorous plants grow wild.

My brother birding Domingo Spring

The days we spent camping were filled with birds, a lake visit, walks throughout the surrounding meadows, lots of cooking over the fire, singing, talking politics, reading the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, drawing, and so much more! One bird encounter that was really wonderful was our neighbors in the campground. A pair of Cassin’s Vireos had a nest about 25 feet up a ponderosa pine tree at the edge of our campsite where four nestlings eagerly gobbled down each of the insects their parents delivered. Many Western Tanagers, including a lot of newly fledged birds, were also around this year.

The full species list for birds included: Mallard, Common Nighthawk, Anna’s Hummingbird, Turkey Vulture, Great Horned Owl, Black-backed Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, White-headed Woodpecker, Pileated Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Western Wood-Pewee, Stellar’s Jay, Common Raven, Tree Swallow, Mountain Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, House Wren, American Robin, Cassin’s Vireo, Evening Grosbeak, Purple Finch, Cassin’s Finch, Song Sparrow, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird, Orange-crowned Warbler, MacGillivray’s Warbler, and Western Tanager.

My daughter holding a Pacific Tree Frog

We also had some nice herpetological encounters. I caught a small Mountain Gartersnake, and my wife and daughter caught a Pacific Tree Frog. Oddly, we did not see any gartersnakes are Willow Lake. In the past we have often seen them swimming in the lake as they hunt for minnows in the water, sometimes around our feet. This year, the water was much more turbid that it usually is (a result of the fairly recent snow melt?), and maybe this made the water less appealing as hunting grounds for the snakes that are pretty visual predators.

Mountain Gartersnake

Mammals we saw included Mule Deer, California Groundsquirrel, Golden-mantled Groundsquirrel, Douglas Squirrel, and Allen’s Chipmunk.

I very much look forward to the next time I return to Domingo Spring to enjoy the mountains and drink from the rocks.

 

 

 

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So You Think Being Transgender is Unnatural?

Homosexuality has been observed in just about every species it has been looked for. Transgender animals may not be widely known, but that may just be a matter of less interest in looking for them and/or writing about them.

There are certainly some animal examples that represent various forms of transgender animals in nature. One is the California Sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher) which is a fish that is born female, and then can become male later in life. Another example is found in the Green Frog (Rana clamitans) that reverses sex in response to various external factors, and this has been observed in other amphibians as well. But both of these examples are in lineages of animals that are pretty distantly related to us humans.

Photo of two lions one is male sex (left), one is female sex (right), but both display male characteristics.

Well, research published a couple of years ago in the African Journal of Ecology is an example much closer to us. In a paper by Gilfillan et al. from the University of Sussex, five lionesses in Botswana have been observed to grow manes, regularly roar and scent mark, mount other females, and display other very male-like behaviors such as killing the cubs of rival prides which females lions just about never do but is very common for male lions.

This is a mammal we are talking about.

Lions that are female in their reproductive organs, but male in behavior and in some aspects of their outward appearance.

In the wild. In nature.

So, do you still think being transgender is unnatural?

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Wild Horse Management

The management of wild horses and burros is a topic that I have felt strongly about for a long time. I can sympathize with those who see the horse as a symbol of the American West, of independence, and of strength and beauty. However, that sympathy does not last very long or go very far.

A group of wild horses in Nevada.

The wild horse and the wild burro in North America are invasive species. Plain and simple. As such, it is my opinion that those invasive populations should be controlled so as not to negatively impact native species or the overall health of the ecosystem.

The Wildlife Society has recently produced a short documentary called “Horse Rich & Dirt Poor” that lays out some of the issues surrounding horse management in the USA.

One of the points that the film makes is that under current policies and procedures, everyone (native mammals, native birds, native fish, native plants, the land itself, and even the wild horses and burros) is loosing.

Give this 15 minute video a watch, and think about where we are. Where do you think we should go? How do you think we should get there?

 

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Bats Under the Bypass

If you are in the Davis or West Sacramento area in the late summer or early fall, and have an evening to spare, go and find a spot where you can sit beside the Yolo Bypass Causeway. This is where highway I-80 crosses over the Yolo Bypass.

Streams of Mexican Free-tailed Bats over the Yolo Bypass

Just as the sun begins to set, you will see an amazing sight. Columns of bat will flood out from under the bypass and stream across the sky in sinuous ribbons. About a quarter of a million Mexican Free-tailed Bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) live under the bypass this time of year, and every night they pour out and spread across the surrounding area to find small flying insects to eat.

These bats are incredible! They can fly about about 100 miles per hour, making them among the fastest mammals in the world! Remember that Cheetahs are the fastest land-mammal, but bats have them beat by a healthy margin. These bats can fly as high as a mile above the ground, and can forage out distances of several miles from their night roost before returning around dawn to sleep. Using their sonar they can detect and pinpoint the exact position of little insects flying through the air and then capture those insects on the wing, at speed!

My wife, daughter, and I joined some friends and went out for an evening visit to see the bats about a month ago. I was a spectacular evening in the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area. We saw lots of Swainson’s Hawks; herons, egrets, and ibis galore; some of the biggest Western Saddlebags (which is a species of dragonfly) I have ever seen; and then we got to the causeway.

When we arrived, the sun was still a touch above the horizon, so we had some time to stand around the dirt road that runs parallel to I-80 and chat and watch the sunset. We got a very nice surprise when an adult Peregrine Falcon flew past and landed in the top of a tree a little ways to the west of us. I was so excited to see this bird that, in turning around for a better look, I clumsily stepped on my wife toes (sorry sweetheart)!

Mexican Free-tailed Bats as they leave from under the Yolo Causeway.

As the light began to fade, we started seeing little movements under the causeway. The first bats were starting to move. Interestingly, the bats do not wake up, take flight, and simply fly out from under the causeway wherever they happen to be. Instead, they wake up, take flight, and then fly directly under the causeway for a few hundred yards before turning a sharp left, and lifting up into the open sky. I have no idea why they decide to do this, but volunteers at the Wildlife Area know it is gong to happen so consistently, that they can tell you exactly which tree the bats will fly out near.

The numbers of bats moving under the causeway built and built until there were bats streaming along between the support pillars. Then they made that left, and out in to open they came! A snaking stream of bats began raising and twisting into the sky! Thousands and thousands of bats following one another out from where they had been sleeping to look for food. As we watched the seemingly endless flow of bats, we got a very cool surprise. That Peregrine Falcon that we had seen earlier came back. It started strafing through the flow of bats. It was hunting bats!

I have seen this behavior of raptors hunting bats as they leave their night roost on video before, and it is pretty spectacular to see on a screen. Seeing it in real life was thrilling! After a couple of passes, the Peregrine made a quick move to one side, and suddenly it had a bat in one talon! It flew off and out of sight carrying it’s dinnertime snack.

The rest of the bats were generally nonplussed by the Peregrine attack, and keep streaming and streaming into the coming night.

Finally, the last bat that was going to leave had departed, and the darkness was getting deep enough that we would not have been able to see the bats fl by even if they were there, so we piled back into our cars and headed for home.

All in all, a terrific way to spend and evening!

 

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The Lassen Pack

The California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) recently announced the discovery of a new pack of Gray Wolves living in California! Named the Lassen Pack, they are a mated pair and three young pups.

After getting reports of suspected wolf activity in Lassen National Forest, CDFW worked extensively to track their activity and were eventually able to find and capture the adult female in June of 2017. She was found to be a healthy 75 lbs and still nursing! After collecting some genetic samples and attaching a tracking collar to her, she was released. After her release, a U.S. Forest Service trail cam in the area captured photos of her with three young pups!

The three pups of the Lassen Pack playing in front of a trail cam.

This is the second pack of wolves that have taken up residence in the state. In 2015-16 a pair of wolves settled down in Siskiyou County and birthed 5 pups to form the Shasta Pack. That pack has not been seen as a whole since mid-2016, but one of the pups was spotted in Nevada becoming that states first wolf visitor since 1922!

This new pack is descended from the wolves living in southern Oregon called the Imnaha Pack (the Shasta are also descended from the Imnaha Pack), and mark a new chapter in the story of wolf recovery in California.

And wolf recovery is going well in states other than California. There are currently about 1,700 wolves in the western U.S.A. Most of these animals are living in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.

It is continually exciting to see this species, that was missing from the ecosystem for so long, return to its native range.

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Information is Important

Information is important. With information each of us as individuals, and our society as a whole, can learn about the world. With information, we can all make decisions that make sense. With information, we can all discuss ideas.

Without information none of that is possible. Without information, we are, at best, at the mercy of our current, limited knowledge, and our base instincts. Without information we are, at worst, at the mercy of the limited knowledge and instincts of someone else.

This is why the gag order, and insistence that all reports and data be pre-screened before release to the public, issued by the President to the EPA are so concerning to me, and I think should be so concerning everyone else. This is exactly the kind of action that limits access to, and spread of, information. It will only hamper all of our abilities to operate as rational, critically thinking individuals. It is the kind of action that is put in place to control what we, as citizens, know and when we know it. This is censorship and it has no place in science or a free society.

#thisisnotnormal

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A New Visitor

Allow me to introduce you to OR-25, the most recent wolf visitor to the great state of California. This very handsome 3-year-old fellow recently left his Imnaha Pack in eastern Oregon. He decided to walk south and, just last week, crossed into California where he has been hanging out in Modoc County. His arrival, along with OR-7 who visited for most of 2012 before settling just north of the California/Oregon border to have babies and the Shasta Pack that has established itself in Siskiyou County in 2015, may indicate that wolves are starting a trend of dispersal and range expansion into this state. If this expansion continues, we who live in California may be lucky enough to encounter these long-lost members of our state’s wilderness. I am certainly hoping for it!

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