Wildlife Roundup: the Good News

This month’s news about wildlife and wildlife habitat that you can feel good about:

• Scotland just announced an ambitious plan to create the Great Trossachs Forest by systematically restoring over 24,000 acres of forest, grassland, and wetland habitat in western Scotland. The project will take two centuries to fully realize (they have to grow new forests in many places) and will encompass Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.

• As I previously mentioned, Canada is pursuing a reintroduction effort of black footed ferrets into the Grasslands National Park.  The first ferrets in the program were just released.
• The larvae of a rare English marsh moth has been recorded in record numbers at the Saltfleetby-Theddlethorpe Dunes National Nature Reserve in Lincolnshire, England.  Farther south, an armature naturalist recently found a small Ranunculus moth in her Norfolk county garden.  The species was believed to be extinct in county, having been last recorded in 1913.  The article goes onto to quote Jim Wheeler, “Norfolk recorder of moths” (really? that’s a job?) as saying ““It's been a very good years for moths. Lots of species have appeared that we haven't seen for a while.”
• Twenty thousand endangered cutthroat trout, the only species of trout native to the Colorado River, have been released in Utah.  The release of the fingerlings into the Colorado is part of ongoing attempts to help recover the fish.
• Nepal has expanded protected tiger habitat in its Bardia National Park by 900 square kilometers (about 350 square miles).  Nepal also announced that it would beef up of its regulatory and law enforcement efforts aimed at conserving the country’s tiger population.

• Scientific American’s John Platt reports that rare birds are doing well in Britain these days, which is consistent with some of the good news we’ve been reporting here for the last several months: “Of the 63 rarest U.K. bird species (those with fewer than 1,000 breeding pairs), nearly 60 percent have seen population increases. They include the osprey, corncrake, avocet, cirl bunting and stone-curlew, all of which have enjoyed the benefits of focused conservation programs.” 
• Gurney’s pitta, an endangered bird found in Thailand and Myanmar (and once thought to be extinct in the wild) is rebounding.  Scientists now believe that there are probably 20,000 breeding pairs of Gourney’s pitta in Myanmar along—double the population previously assessed.

Giving Credit Where It’s Due (And Pointing Out When It’s Not)

As I’ve noted, the last couple of weeks have been good ones for the polar bear, with the Obama Administration proposing both the designation of over 200,000 square miles of critical habitat the bear and increased international restrictions on polar bear trophy hunting and commercial trade.  The Administration—and, especially Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s team—deserve a lot of credit for these moves.  Well, NRDC believes in giving credit where it’s due.  So today we are running this print ad in Washington, D.C.:

At the same time, all has not been rosy at the Department of the Interior.  While the Secretary has been taking some good steps on polar bears, the Minerals Management Service continues to approve offshore oil and gas exploration in their Alaska habitat. 

The Department of the Interior has also pressed forward with stripping Endangered Species Act protections from the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf.  That decision allowed Montana and Idaho to open hunting seasons on these still-imperiled animals.  The result has been devastating, particularly to some wolf packs who live the border of Yellowstone National Park.  NRDC is challenging these actions in court.  That means the Obama Administration still has the power to reverse course, agree to relist the wolf, and call off the wolf hunt.

So far, neither Secretary Salazar nor President Obama have evinced much interest revisiting their misguided gray wolf policy.  So now we’re raising money to run another ad:

If you want to contribute to help run this ad, you can go here.

Overall, the Obama Administration has been a huge step forward for the environment.  From global warming policy, to public health, the Administration has already done a lot of commendable work.  But they don’t always make the correct call.  When they do the right thing, we’re going to let them know, and say “thanks.”  When do do the wrong thing?  We’ll be there as well.

Investor’s Business Daily Misleads on Polar Bears

Investor’s Business Daily just published a foolish editorial about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's recent proposal to designate over 200,000 square miles of Alaskan coast and sea ice as “critical habitat” for the State’s beleaguered polar bear population.  The editorial doesn’t contain much in the way of actual substance, and what substance it does have is mostly bunk.  Here’s a sample:

The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

Wrong.  In fact, not even close to being right.  The global population of polar bears is thought to number between 20,000 and 25,000 individuals.  No scientist of whom I’m aware suggests that this number has increased since 2006, when “An Inconvenient Truth” was released.  Way back in 2005, of the 19 recognized polar bear sub-populations, 5 were thought to be declining, only 2 were thought be increasing, and five were thought to be stable.  As for the rest, we simply didn’t know.  One of those declining populations, by the way, is in the Southern Beaufort Sea, where much of Alaska’s polar bears are located.  Today, the situation has only deteriorated.

The editorial also states:

One of the nine critical errors Judge Michael Burton found in Gore's film was the claim that polar bears were drowning while searching for ice melted by global warming. The only drowned polar bears the court said it was aware of were four that died following a storm.

Well, I can’t speak to Judge Burton’s ruling, but as a factual matter this is also wrong.  In 2005 scientists did indeed spot four drowned polar bears in the Beaufort Sea during regular transect surveys of the area and following an intense storm.  But based on extrapolation from the area surveyed, they estimate that as many as 27 bears could have died.  It was the first time in over a quarter-century that such a mass-drowning event had ever been recorded.  In 2008 a large number of swimming bears was also reported in the same area.  As sea ice continues to retreat farther from land and the distance polar bears need to swim grows, such mass drowning events are projected to increase, not only in the Beaufort Sea, but in other places as well.

If Investor Business Daily wants to editorialize about designating critical habitat for the polar bear, fine.  But guys, get your facts straight first.