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• California’s Missing Monarchs: Scientists Work to Reverse a Worrisome Trend

  

  USFWS Photo by Brett Billings Figure 1 from The Xerces Society’s Conservation Status and Ecology of the Monarch Butterfly in the United States (PDF) For residents of many coastal California towns, the colorful Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus plexippus) migration has been a welcome wintertime sight for generations. The beautiful and distinctive orange-and-black patterned insects have historically congregated at more than 400 known sites in the Golden State. Visitors flock to see them, and some towns – such as Pacific Grove, Big Sur and Pismo Beach -- have built entire economies around the return of the butterflies. The life history of the Monarch butterfly is fascinating in that none of the individuals that arrive each winter have ever been there before. Each year, the Monarchs that were born throughout western North America flutter to the warmer climates of the California coast, typically in mid-October, but sometimes as early as September. They form dense masses high in the trees, where they remain relatively dormant (scientifically known as reproductive diapause) until February or March, when flowers with nectar and the milkweed needed by their young ...

• Conserving the Short-eared Owl: An Opportunity for Citizen Scientists

  

  Short Eared Owl. Courtesy of the National Digital Library. Short Eared Owl. Courtesy of the National Digital Library. Short Eared Owl. Courtesy of the National Digital Library. Short Eared Owl. Courtesy of the National Digital Library. A team of raptor biologists is working on a study of western populations of the Short-eared Owl – and are inviting members of the public to help collect and contribute important data as “citizen scientists.” The project, known as the Western Asio Flammeus Landscape Study (WAfLS), is being conducted across eight western states, including Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, in addition to California. The purpose of the study is to determine the reasons for the sharp decline in Short-eared Owl populations – more than 60 percent over the last four decades across their western range. “This project is a really unique and exciting collaborative effort to understand the species population on a very large scale,” said Carie Battistone, CDFW’s raptor biologist and WAfLS’ California State Volunteer Coordinator. “Given how wide-ranging – and in some cases, remote – the owls’ habitat is, we rely heavily on volunteers ...

• Badly Burned Ursines Get Back on their Feet – Thanks to Teamwork and Fish Skin

  

  The tilapia skin is visible on the bottom of the bear's paw. Veterinarians perform an ultrasound to check on the progress of the second bear's pregnancy. Acupuncture needles assist with pain management. After placing the second bear, the team moved the first bear to another location where another man-made den awaited. CDFW staff work together to build a makeshift den for a soft release in Los Padres National Forest. A soft release involves putting the bear in a den to simulate hibernation, and leaving it to wake up on its own. Two talented veterinarians, an environmental scientist and several dedicated staff members at the CDFW Wildlife Investigations Lab recently put their heads and their resources together to help heal a pair of adult bears that were badly burned in the Thomas Fire. The bears, which were treated at the same time as a young mountain lion with similar, less severe burn injuries, were released back to the wild last Thursday, after several weeks of intensive – and unusual – care. CDFW Senior Wildlife Veterinarian Dr. Deana Clifford was acting manager of the Wildlife Investigations Lab ...

• CDFW Pilot Study Establishing Foundation for Enhanced Study of Porcupines

  

  Porcupine1: NRVP participants Greg Moore, Mike Maulhardt, Charles Brown and Ben Smith volunteered to service and maintain porcupine stations at Red Lake Wildlife Area. Not to put too fine a point on it, but studying California’s porcupines hasn’t traditionally been a high priority for CDFW. Wildlife research funding is limited, especially for non-game species, and species listed as threatened or endangered are typically given top priority. That means that scientists sometimes need to be creative – and frugal – in their efforts to survey and manage non-listed, non-game species. Stacy Anderson, a CDFW senior environmental scientist specialist based in Rancho Cordova, recently conducted a pilot project that does just that. Anderson developed an interest in the North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) in 2017, after acknowledging that anecdotal evidence seems to indicate their numbers are on the decline. Porcupines have historically inhabited diverse habitats including Humboldt County, along the Sacramento River, in the Coast Ranges, the Klamath Mountains, the southern Cascades, the Modoc Plateau and the Sierra Nevada. But in her conversations with unit biologists and wildlife officers in some of these areas, ...

• Banking on a Future for California’s Natural Resources

  

  A California red-legged frog sits motionless at the edge of McClure pond at the Sparling Ranch Conservation Bank. Photo by Ashley Spratt/USFWS McClure pond is one of the most productive California red-legged frog ponds at the Sparling Ranch Conservation Bank. Like many of those on Sparling Ranch, it was named after the family who homesteaded in site in the late 1800s. Photo by Ashley Spratt/USFWS Since the mid-1980s, California has been using a system of conservation and mitigation banking to protect valuable natural resources and critical habitat for fish, wildlife and plants. These banks are generally large, connected, ecologically meaningful areas of preserved, restored, enhanced or constructed habitat (for example, wetlands) that are set aside for the express purpose of providing mitigation for project impacts. Conservation banks provide mitigation for impacts to listed species and habitats, while wetland mitigation banks primarily provide mitigation for wetland impacts. Together, they serve to prevent inadequate, fragmented reserves that can result when mitigation projects are carried out individually. Banks work by establishing credits for sensitive species or habitats found on a given site. These credits ...

• Survey Says: California Marine Anglers Help Scientists Collect Data

  

  If you’re an avid marine sport angler, you have most likely seen the smiling faces and brown polo shirts of California Recreational Fisheries Survey (CRFS) samplers. Since its inception in 2004, CRFS has grown into one of the state’s largest and most important survey efforts. Survey samplers are tasked with collecting data about both recreational fishing catch and effort. Annually, CRFS samplers make direct contact with 68,000 fishing parties at over 400 sampling sites between the California-Oregon state line to the California-Mexico border. A separate but related telephone survey effort contacts an additional 26,000 anglers. A program of this large scale is necessary because recreational fishing effort and success rates are highly dynamic – a large sample size is needed to adequately estimate catch and effort. Recreational fishing effort is also very challenging to predict, as it can be affected by many factors (weather, gas prices, time of year, fishing seasons, etc.). But the recreational sector accounts for a significant portion of overall marine harvest, so it’s essential to collect that data to produce reliable estimates of harvest. CRFS is ...