DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 9, 2016

Update – Mexican Gray Wolf Release Lawsuit

Conservation groups step forward in support of the release of Mexican gray wolf pups into the wild. 

Defenders of Wildlife, the Center of Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance filed a motion to intervene on behalf of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (the Service) in federal court today, arguing that the state of New Mexico had no authority to block the release of Mexican gray wolf adults and pups into the wild.

On May 20, 2016, New Mexico sued the Service for releasing wolf pups, which are critical to Mexican gray wolf recovery. New Mexico’s lawsuit aims to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to recapture the released pups and return them to captivity and to ban future releases.

“All wolf releases from captivity are mission critical to the recovery of the most endangered gray wolf in the world,” said Eva Sargent, senior Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “New Mexico’s politically motivated lawsuit is a meritless, obstructionist attempt to usurp the Service’s authority in endangered species recovery, as provided for in the Endangered Species Act, our nation’s most important wildlife conservation law. We won’t stand for it. We need more wolves, less politics.”

Climate Change Killed Megafauna (really big land mammals)

Rapid increases in temperature over short periods of time appear to have resulted in the extinction of such animals as the woolly mammoth and glyptodon. 

Alfred Wallace, who wrote the first paper on evolution by natural selection with Charles Darwin, noted that “we live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared”. It’s one of the great historical whodunnits: what happened to the megafauna, and when did they disappear?

As with any good mystery, there are two main suspects: climate and humans.

The ice age of the northern hemisphere was not one long frigid wasteland. Instead, frozen conditions were punctuated by many short, rapid warming periods, known as interstadials, where temperatures would soar from 4 to 16˚C within just a few decades and last for hundreds to thousands of years. They represent some of the most profound climate changes detected in the recent geological past.

When we precisely compared the dates for European and American extinctions with climate records, we were amazed to find they coincided with the abrupt warming of the interstadials; in stark contrast there is a complete absence of extinctions at the height of the last ice age. As temperatures rose during the interstadials, dramatic shifts in global rainfall and vegetation patterns would have placed the megafauna under immense stress.

Tell that to Thomas Jefferson, who sent a major expedition out to find them.

In the late 18th century, the idea of extinction was only just beginning to be popularized by some thinkers (including Georges Cuvier). But Jefferson wasn't among the believers. In a pre-Darwinian age, extinction was a violation of religious ideals (God would not let animals go extinct) and secular ideals (the balance of nature could never be so significantly upset). For Jefferson in particular, extinction was just an unusual theory: "In fine, the bones exist," he wrote. "Therefore the animal has existed. The movements of nature are in a never-ending circle."

That's one of the reasons he sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their famous expedition.

Though the official purpose was to find new opportunities for commerce, Jefferson also had Lewis and Clark collect samples of the bones they found and search for any mysterious new animals.

Who Needs Zoos?

Apparently at least the two once captive rhinos who were sheltered in zoos prior to their return to the wild.   The result is a wild born black rhino.

The world’s rhinoceros population is seeing not one but two new and rare additions. In the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, an eastern black rhino gave birth to a baby girl named Mobo.

Prince William, was also “delighted” to hear the news of baby Mobo, a spokesperson told People. The Duke of Cambridge interacted with Mobo’s mother, Grumeti, when she lived in a wildlife park in Kent, England, where she was born.

In 2012, thanks to the Aspinall Foundation’s Back to the Wild program, Grumeti and two other eastern black rhinos were flown out of England to join the population in a protected reserve in Tanzania.

Back in her natural habitat, Grumeti mated with a fellow captive-born rhino named Jamie who had been translocated to Tanzania from the Dvur Kralove Zoo, Czech Republic in 2009. Following a 15-month gestation period, Mobo was born in mid-April, weighing 79 lbs.

The calf is the first eastern black rhino born in its natural habitat to a mother born and raised in Britain, People reported.

Dedicated People Make a Difference

When groups come together and understand each other, we can save species. 

Albatrosses are one of the most threatened groups of birds in the world. Every year, an estimated 100,000 albatrosses are incidentally killed on longline fishing hooks and trawl cables. This fishery mortality is the main driver of albatross population declines, and 15 of the 22 species of albatross are still threatened with extinction today.

A new report shows that since its launch in 2006, the Albatross Task Force has been extremely successful. Albatross bycatch has been reduced by 99% in the South African hake trawl fishery and experimental trials demonstrate at least 85% reductions in seabird bycatch are possible in six other fisheries where regulations that require the use of bird-safe methods on their boats are now in place.