CDP: Wildlife Clips: January 24, 2023
FWS Delays Lesser Prairie Chicken Protections. According to Politico, “The Fish and Wildlife Service will delay by two months implementation of a final rule listing the lesser prairie chicken for protection under the Endangered Species Act while it works to ensure livestock grazing plans and other voluntary protection measures are implemented correctly. The FWS final rule was scheduled to go into effect Tuesday. It lists the southern distinct lesser prairie chicken population in eastern New Mexico and the southwestern Texas Panhandle as an endangered species. The northern distinct population in the northeastern Texas Panhandle, southeastern Colorado, south-central Kansas and western Oklahoma is being listed as a threatened species (E&E News PM, Nov. 17, 2022).” [Politico, 1/23/23 (=)]
104 Miles Of Tennessee And Virginia Rivers Will Be Protected Under The Endangered Species Act. According to Local 3 News, “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a final rule to protect 104 miles of rivers in Tennessee and Virginia as critical habitat for the threatened sickle darter, a beautiful bronze fish threatened by pollution, mining, logging, and dams. The protection follows a 2010 petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and a 2015 agreement with the agency to protect the species. Critical habitat is essential for the sickle darter's survival; species with designated critical habitat are twice as likely to be recovering than those without it. The primary threats to this species are siltation from logging and development, water pollution from animal waste, domestic sewage, pesticides, and heavy metals from mining, as well as dams that have isolated populations and limited their movement.” [Local 3 News, 1/23/23 (=)]
Tiny Sickle Darter Starts Off A Big Year For Critical Habitat. According to Politico, “The Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday proposed identifying 104 river miles as critical habitat for the sickle darter, kicking off what could be upward of 100 such designations this year. Some will spark controversy, and others will not. Count the sickle darter among the latter. The proposed designated habitat comes more than a dozen years after environmentalists first petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the wee Southeastern fish under the Endangered Species Act. Last November, the agency declared the sickle darter to be threatened (Greenwire, Nov. 7, 2022).” [Politico, 1/23/23 (=)]
People Are Building Artificial Beaver Dams In Drought-Stricken Montana. According to Yale Climate Connections, “In southwest Montana, landowners, volunteers, and others are wading into streams and piling up sticks, branches, and sod to create artificial beaver dams. “And it’s immensely satisfying because if you’re working in the spring, you build these structures and you just see the water back up right away,” says Pedro Marques of the Big Hole Watershed Committee. He says beavers were once common in the region, and the dams they built slowed water and allowed it to soak into the soil, so the area was marshier. But fur trappers decimated the beaver population. And with fewer beaver dams, snow melt that trickled slowly into rivers and streams started flowing more quickly downstream.” [Yale Climate Connections, 1/23/23 (=)]
AP| Feds Deny Emergency Call To Slow Ships, Ease Whale Strikes. According to the AP, “The U.S. government has denied a request from a group of environmental organizations to immediately apply proposed ship-speed restrictions in an effort to save a vanishing species of whale. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is considering new rules designed to stop large ships from colliding with North Atlantic right whales. The whales number less than 340, and they are vulnerable to ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.” [AP, 1/23/23 (=)]
Snow Crab And Red King Crab Declines In 2022. According to Alaska Native News, “NOAA Fisheries—in close coordination with federal and state partners—is responsible for fostering healthy, productive, and sustainable marine fisheries. Our management process is based on science and conducted according to a process outlined in the Magnuson-Stevens Act. All of our stock assessments are subject to a public, transparent, rigorous, peer-review process. Our best available science indicates that the crash of the Bering Sea snow crab stock leading to the fishery closure was related to the 2019 heat wave in the North Pacific. That heat wave as well as earlier heat waves have been attributed to climate change.” [Alaska Native News, 1/23/23 (=)]
Fewer And Fewer Polar Bears As The Ice Melts. According to KXAN, “Climate change is noted across the country and around the world through the various intense weather that has occurred. One recent example of this is the atmospheric river that has bombarded California with one storm after another creating floods, mudslides and heavy snow. You don’t have to go far to find another example of the adverse effects of climate change. Up in the Arctic, temperatures have been rising at a rate that causes the ice to continue to melt. A report indicated the sea ice has lessened because the far northern climes have been warming four times faster than the rest of the world. Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean’s surface, forming in the winter of the Arctic and the Antarctic. It decreases some in the summer.” [KXAN, 1/23/23 (=)]
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