Virginia man dies after bear shot in tree falls on him
Lester C Harvey, 58, rushed to two different hospitals after being struck by fallen animal in unusual accident
A Virginia man has died after a bear in a tree shot by one of his hunting partners fell on him, state wildlife officials said.
The bizarre, accidental death occurred 9 December in Lunenburg county, which is between Richmond and Danville, Virginia’s department of wildlife resources said in a statement.
A hunting group was following the bear when it ran up the tree, the department said. As the group retreated from the tree, a hunter shot the bear. The animal fell on to another hunter who was standing about 10ft from the bottom of the tree.
The department identified the man as Lester C Harvey, 58, of Phenix, Virginia. A member of the group rendered first aid before Harvey was rushed to two different hospitals. He died from his injuries on Friday, the wildlife department stated.
An obituary for Harvey, a married father of five with eight grandchildren, said he was a self-employed contractor and avid outdoorsman.
Similar incidents have occurred in recent years.
In 2018, a man in Alaska was critically injured after his hunting partner shot a bear on a ridge. The animal tumbled down a slope into the man, who was also struck by rocks dislodged by the bear.
Another man was injured in 2019 after his hunting partner shot a bear in a tree in North Carolina. The bear fell out of the tree and began biting the hunter. The man and the animal then tumbled off a cliff. The hunter was taken to a hospital, while the bear was later found dead.
Chimpanzees seen self-medicating with healing plants when sick or injured
The chimps sought out unappetizing plants with medicinal but little nutritional value, scientists said. The findings could be a pathway to novel human medicines.
The chimpanzee was sick. It had diarrhea and tapeworms — not unusual for a wild chimpanzee in the Budongo Forest of Uganda. What intrigued the watching research team was what the ape did about it.
Soon after its symptoms developed, the male traveled with two others away from the community’s home to a site in the forest with a particular type of tree. It collected some dead wood from the Alstonia boonei and chewed it. The plant has long been used in traditional medicine, and when the scientists tested it, they confirmed it had high antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. The chimp made a full recovery.
The chimp’s behavior was one of many instances observed over eight months that suggest chimpanzees could be using the forest as a natural drugstore. The study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS One, was carried out by a team led by Elodie Freymann of the University of Oxford and Fabien Schultz of Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany, which found that chimpanzees were consuming a variety of plants with medicinal effects but little other nutritional value, often when they had a health issue such as an injury or a parasite.
The findings offered strong support for “novel self-medicative behaviors in wild chimpanzees,” the researchers wrote, adding that further study of the animals’ behavior could “benefit our own species, potentially leading to the discovery of novel human medicines.”
The next area of investigation will be the “most interesting plant extracts” consumed by the chimpanzees, Schultz said in an email. There are “lots of ‘ifs,’” he said, but theoretically, “one day the knowledge of chimpanzees could save human lives.”
He was particularly interested in the potential application of the chimps’ go-to plants in addressing antibiotic-resistant bacteria and chronic inflammatory diseases — though he cautioned that there is a long road between this study and any possible drug breakthroughs.
The team observed two chimpanzee communities in the Budongo Forest for four months each. They tracked what the great apes ate and analyzed components of 13 plant species that seemed wholly unappetizing to a chimpanzee, such as bark and resin, to determine whether the materials had healing effects.
“Pharmacological results suggest that Budongo chimpanzees consume several species with potent medicinal properties,” the authors wrote.
Those struggling the most with parasites — something the scientists ascertained through testing their feces — had eaten plant material with the strongest antibacterial properties. An injured chimpanzee had eaten a fern with anti-inflammatory effects that was otherwise rarely consumed by the groups. All plant species, when tested in a laboratory, inhibited bacterial growth of E. coli, and some had been found in previous studies to have cancer-fighting or analgesic properties.
The authors noted that 11 of the 13 plant species had recorded uses in traditional medicine.
The researchers were surprised at the range of the ailments the chimps turned to plants for — and by the plants’ potency. “Maybe it shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise,” Freymann said in an email, “because the chimpanzees are incredibly smart and it makes perfect sense they would have figured out by now which plants can help them when ill or injured.”
She said the research showed it was “highly unlikely” the chimpanzees were eating the medicinal plants coincidentally as part of their diet. “In many of these cases, the ill or injured chimps sought out these resources when no other member of their group did,” she said.
The study adds to a body of research that suggests some animals may use plants or insects to self-medicate. Our closest cousins, the apes, have often played a starring role in this field, called zoopharmacognosy.
Last month, scientists published their observation in the journal Scientific Reports of an orangutan in Indonesia applying the juice and chewed-up leaves of a plant known for its medicinal effects to an injury on its face — which then healed without signs of infection. Two years ago, a different study of chimpanzees, in the Loango National Park in Gabon, said the animals had been seen repeatedly applying insects to wounds.
Isabelle Laumer, a primatologist and cognitive biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany who was the orangutan report’s lead author but was not involved in the PLOS One study, said in an interview that the new study has contributed “really important findings” that opened up avenues for further research.
“It’s always very fascinating to find out that our closest relatives are showing behaviors that we humans also show,” she said. “I think this study, again, points towards the similarities that we share.”
The authors of the PLOS One study called for strong conservation efforts to allow the continuation of such research, and to explore its potential benefits to humans in finding plants with medicinal properties. “It is imperative that we urgently prioritize the preservation of our wild forest pharmacies as well as our primate cousins who inhabit them,” they said.
I don't claim to know jack shit about wildlife management or how to go about keeping the big predators from taking down livestock.
What I do know (I think) - based solely on my casual observations of human behavior - is that it's likely to become quite a battle between the ranchers and the biologists who are trying to get wolves back into the circle-of-life mix here in Colorado.
It's been shown petty dramatically that wolves come in handy when you're trying to get a regional biome back into balance after humans have spent generations fucking it all up.
Anyway, Colorado Parks & Wildlife is re-introducing gray wolves in Northern Colorado.
CPW says it will not kill wolves after attacks on North Park rancher’s cattle
In the latest chapter of Don Gittleson’s fight to protect his livestock from wolves, Colorado Parks and Wildlife says he should continue using mitigation tools the rancher claims haven’t worked
After years of discussion and a formal letter asking for help, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has denied rancher Don Gittleson’s request for the agency to kill two wolves that have been preying on cattle on his Jackson County ranch.
Gittleson on Dec. 13 sent a letter to the agency requesting the lethal removal of the wolves, “so that they do not continue to affect the livelihood and mental well-being of the agriculture members of this state.”
Since December 2021, one of the wolves — No. 2101 — has killed or injured seven of Gittleson’s cows, including a calf last week, six of his neighbor’s cows and four working dogs. The other wolf — No. 2103 — killed three lambs at rancher Philip Anderson’s place. Both ranches are in North Park.
In his letter, Gittleson asserted the agency intentionally chose not to define what a “habitual depredating wolf/wolf pack is” and implored CPW “to stop talking and start managing.”
Under the Colorado Wolf Management Plan, a rancher can kill a wolf if they discover it “chronically depredating” their livestock, or if they are in an act of self defense or defense of human life. But the plan does not clearly define what makes a wolf “chronically depredating,” and says wildlife officials will make that determination on a case-by-case basis.
On Dec. 22, the agency determined it would not lethally remove the wolves chronically depredating on Gittleson’s cattle.
The reasoning in the letter, written by CPW director Jeff Davis, is that after considering the entire history of depredation events in Gittleson’s region, including the most recent ones in November and December, and considering “the change in pack dynamics over the preceding year when most of the pack left the area and did not return,” the “number and frequency of [depredations] has dropped.”
During an interview with The Colorado Sun, Kim Gittleson, who owns the Gittleson ranch with her husband, Don, expressed frustration.
“They tell us to reach out for help with mitigation, but in the year when we had the most problems (2022), we brought in donkeys, we brought horned cattle, we had fladry, we had cracker shells, we had so many things,” she said. “In addition, we spent every night from January through the end of May (physically present with their herd, protecting it). So I’m not sure what else they think we should be doing” to keep the wolves from depredating at their ranch.
In the letter from CPW, Davis said the agency “will continue to monitor the situation and collaborate with other ranchers in Jackson County and across the state to evaluate future actions.” He encouraged the Gittlesons to continue using the tools Kim mentioned and to collaborate with their local CPW staff.
But Kim said, “At every CPW meeting, we hear about how understaffed they are. But my husband runs 11,000 acres (on land leased from the Colorado State Land Board) and 200 cattle pretty much by himself. So I would challenge them to come spend a day in the life of the ranchers who they expect to step up to the plate and do more to protect their cattle from a predator that they’re forcing down our throats”
I'll try not to say anything like, "These people are chowing down - suckling at the government teat - and they have the gall to bitch about stuff the government is doing?"
“I understand it’s not CPW’s fault, it’s the voters,” she added. “But now it’s in their court. And the governor wants these things, so maybe he should step up with more funding.”
In an email to The Sun, CPW spokesperson Travis Duncan said the agency recently entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Colorado Department of Agriculture on expanding assistance to farmers and ranchers to avoid wolf predation, and that a budget request through the governor’s office to provide support to farmers and ranchers for nonlethal deterrence will be submitted Jan 2.
The memorandum directs the general assembly to appropriate or authorize money to CPW through the general fund, the species conservation fund, the nongame conservation and wildlife restoration fund along with the wildlife cash fund — except for money generated through the sales of hunting and fishing licenses or associated federal grants — to pay for this support.
It also says “it is the mutual desire of CDA and CPW to manage and recover gray wolf populations within Colorado while minimizing conflicts with livestock and agriculture producers.”
In a November news release, the Colorado agriculture department said it will work directly with producers to provide technical assistance for nonlethal prevention methods and develop appropriate, nonlethal livestock management strategies that minimize livestock-predator interactions.
It will also “advance the adoption of nonlethal management tools” among ranchers, collaborate and co-branded media responses and educational tools and conduct cross-training at least annually between CDA and CPW staff who work directly with impacted communities. The goal is to “improve communication, understanding of available programs at both agencies, and delivery of services and resources to impacted individuals and communities.”
But Kim said in years past, when USDA helped with fladry, they only used it on 40 acres. At the time, she said, “they told us that’s one of the biggest areas they’d ever done. They’re used to dealing with small farms and ranches, not like the ones we have in this valley. And, you know, we kept our cows in that 40-acre pasture until calving season. We ended up with one dead cow — from falling and not being able to get up — another, which my husband, with a torn bicep, was able to help, and quite a few cases of mastitis (a mammary gland infection), which we’ve never had but did because we kept them in such a small area.”
CPW completed its goal of releasing 10 wolves captured in Oregon onto the West Slope last Friday. A pair of those 10 were part of the large Five Points pack in Oregon that killed three livestock animals. In an email to The Sun, Duncan responded to claims that once a wolf preys on livestock they will continue to do so in the future, by saying any wolves that have been near livestock will have some history of depredation, including the pack in Oregon, but that it “does not mean they have a history of chronic depredation.”
“If a pack has infrequent depredation events, they should not be excluded as a source population, per the (Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management) plan,” he added.
As for what the Gittlesons are going to do if the wolves that have been attacking their cattle come back: “They keep telling us we can shoot them, but I guarantee you, the first person that shoots a wolf in Colorado is going to go through hell,” Kim said. “I think the governor is going to make (CPW) come after us as hard as they can.”
In an email to The Sun, CPW said it stands by regulations in the Colorado wolf management plan.
1) Abortion rights advocates won big victories in three states yesterday.
In Ohio: Voters passed a constitutional amendment to guarantee abortion access, making it the latest state to take this step since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year.
In Virginia: Democrats took control of the General Assembly, meaning they can stop Republicans, led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, from introducing new abortion limits.
In Kentucky: Voters reelected a Democratic governor who attacked his Republican opponent for supporting the deep-red state’s near-total ban on abortion.
2) Ivanka Trump will testify in her father’s New York civil fraud case today.
The details: She is not a defendant in this case. But she will be the state’s last witness following testimony from her father, Donald Trump, and two of her brothers.
In related news: The former president will skip a Republican primary debate in Miami tonight and host a rally nearby instead. The debate starts at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC News.
3) Israel’s endgame in the Gaza Strip is unclear after a month of war.
What to know: Israel’s prime minister said Monday that Israel would control Gaza’s postwar security for an “indefinite period,” which reportedly concerned U.S. officials.
In the U.S.: The House voted yesterday to censure the only Palestinian American member of Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), over her comments about the war.
4) The Supreme Court appears likely to allow gun bans for domestic abusers.
What happened? Justices seemed to agree yesterday that a federal statute preventing people under domestic-violence protective orders from possessing guns is constitutional.
Why it matters: This case is the first big test of the court’s ruling last year which requires judges to decide challenges to the Second Amendment by finding examples in history.
5) Northern Greenland’s ice sheets are rapidly retreating.
What to know: The vast floating ice shelves have lost 35% of their total volume since 1978, according to new research.
Why it’s worrying: The ice shelves hold back glaciers from flowing into the sea. If more are lost to warming oceans, it could lead to significant sea level rise.
In related news: Last month was the planet’s warmest October on record.
6) Nintendo is making the Legend of Zelda into a live-action movie.
The details: The creator of the wildly popular video game series, Shigeru Miyamoto, revealed yesterday that he’s working on the film but said it will “take time” to finish.
It will be tricky to pull off: The series’ main character, Link, doesn’t speak out loud. And the innovative games are famous for letting players choose their own pathways.
7) Cats might be more affectionate and articulate than we thought.
How we know: Researchers watched 150 hours of cat videos to learn more about how felines express themselves. They found that cats can make nearly 300 facial expressions.
What’s your cat saying? When cats are happy, they typically move their ears and whiskers forward and outward. When unhappy, they flatten their ears and lick their lips.
For years, the region’s killer whales have been bumping, biting and, in some cases, sinking boats. But many scientists caution not to ascribe motive to the animals.
The orcas have done it again.
On Oct. 31, a pod of killer whales swarmed a Polish yacht sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar. For 45 minutes, the orcas hit the vessel’s rudder and damaged the boat, according to the company that operated it. Despite rescue efforts, the yacht never made it back to shore, sinking near the entrance of the Moroccan port of Tanger Med.
“The crew is safe, unharmed and sound,” the Polish tour company Morskie Mile wrote in a Facebook post describing the demise of its boat.
Since 2020, orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Iberian Peninsula have been bumping and biting boats — oftentimes, yachts — in dozens of incidents that have frightened mariners and confounded scientists.
A recent spate of killer whales sinking boats delighted online observers who anthropomorphize the marine mammals and hail them as working-class heroes.
Are the orcas really out to get us? What to know about recent attacks
Fishing vessels and motorboats have all had their run-ins with orcas in the region, though sailboats appear to be the most popular target, according to a 2022 study. The tour agency Morskie Mile did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
No one is quite sure what is prompting the orcas to go after vessels — whether the whales are simply being playful, or had a bad run-in with a boat in the past, prompting the aggressive behavior.
Some scientists say the incidents should not be called “attacks” at all, since the whale’s motives are unknown. Perpetuating the idea that whales are out for revenge, they fear, may lead to retaliation by boaters.
“We urge the media and public to avoid projecting narratives onto these animals,” a group of more than 30 scientists wrote in an open letter this summer. “In the absence of further evidence, people should not assume they understand the animals’ motivations.”
What we do know is that orcas are highly intelligent marine mammals that appear to learn from one another. Usually, that learned behavior is a hunting strategy, such as corralling and eating massive blue whales.
Other times, it is something stranger, such as when orcas near Seattle were observed “wearing” dead salmon as hats. Orcas, it turns out, can be victims of cultural fads, too.
One other thing is clear: Killer whales normally don’t hurt people. And humans are a bigger threat to them than they are to us.
Getting entangled in fishing gear or struck by speeding boats is a threat for all whales. With perhaps fewer than 40 individuals left, the orca population off the coasts of Spain, Portugal and Morocco is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
All the big-time "critters are wonderful - we need to treat them better" are pissin' in the wind. And maybe I missed something, but whre the fuck is the Colorado media on this one? Why am I seeing this in LA Times and USA Today, and not in the local papers?
So, yes - some times, humans are a fucking pestilence.
Bear euthanized after intestines blocked by paper towels, food wrappers, other human waste
Colorado Parks and Wildlife authorities euthanized a sick male black bear earlier this month in Telluride after the animal was suffering from "severe intestinal blockage" caused by eating human trash.
The 400-pound bear was showing signs of infection and could not digest food, CPW Area Wildlife Manager Rachel Sralla said a news release. Wildlife authorities founds items such as paper towels, disinfectant wipes and food wrappers in the bear.
“It all comes back to trash, which we talk about too often when it comes to bear conflicts in Colorado. The reason we had to put this bear down was to end its suffering that was caused by eating indigestible trash,” Sralla added.
CPW first received a report of a sick of injured bear near the river trail in Telluride on Sept. 9, the release says. Officers observed the bear and noticed it "acted feverish and had puffy eyes and discharge coming from its eyes and mouth."
Officers also determined the bear likely had severe abdominal pain, as the bear "displayed a humped position while walking and was reluctant to move," according to the release.
The decision to euthanize the bear was based on the behavior and condition of the bear, as well as to prevent the bear from suffering any further, CPW said. Officers conducted a full filed necropsy on the bear.
“The removal of the stomach and intestines showed that the bear was starving due to a plug of paper towels, disinfectant wipes, napkins, parts of plastic sacks and wax paper food wrappers in the pylorus,” said CPW District Wildlife Manager Mark Caddy in the release.
“This plug was accompanied by French fries, green beans, onions and peanuts. The small and large intestines were empty of matter. The intestines were enlarged due to bacteria in the beginning stages of decomposition, but we opened them up in several locations and found no digested food matter,” Caddy added.
“Telluride has an ordinance to address bear in trash issues,” Sralla said. “We need the community to follow that ordinance to be a better neighbor to our bears and prevent this type of incident from happening again.”
According to Telluride Municipal Code 7.04.230 and 7.12.030, "any refuse container that contains refuse that is attractive to bears or other wildlife shall be secured with a locking mechanism except when refuse is being deposited."
Failure to comply with the ordinance can result in a fine of $250 for the first offense and $500 for the second offense. A third offense will result in a summons to appear in municipal court, according to the news release.
More bad news about the mass extinction mess we've gotten ourselves into.
Insects are in dramatic decline in Colorado, 35-year-long study reveals
62% fewer insects were trapped in a pristine meadow near Gothic, a loss correlated with less winter snowfall, less summer rain and warmer temperatures
Nora Underwood, a Florida State University professor of ecology and evolution, sweeps her net for grasshoppers in a study plot at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic, Colorado on July 28, 2023. Underwood, her husband, Brian Inouye and father-in-law David Inouye, research the affect of climate change on the insect and flower species populations in the mountains near Crested Butte. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Dramatic insect declines previously reported around the world are also occurring in Colorado. Researchers with the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, or RMBL, report that flying insects in the mountains outside of Crested Butte have declined more than 60% since 1986.
The current research, published in the scientific journal Ecosphere, is noteworthy for the length of time covered and the relatively undisturbed mountain environment where it was conducted. The declines correlated with drier and warmer weather, suggesting an impact of climate change.
“Increasingly we are seeing insect declines in places that are more pristine, which is much more alarming,” said Julian Resasco, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado.
While historically seen as agricultural pests and personal nuisances, insects and other invertebrates (no backbone) are increasingly recognized for the vital services they provide in nature: pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling and sustenance for birds and other animals higher on the food chain. The continued decline of insect populations could have profound consequences for the environment, humans and other animals.
“We rely on insects for ecosystem services. We need them to be abundant and diverse,” Resasco said.
Concern about declining insect populations surged in 2017 after researchers reported that flying insects in Germany had declined by more than 75% over 27 years. That was followed by several studies mostly, but not uniformly, reporting alarming declines in insect populations around the world. The reality and the causes of insect decline are ongoing debates among entomologists.
For their study, the RMBL researchers set up a tentlike trap in the middle of a 27-acre meadow at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, 9,500 feet above sea level near the abandoned mining town of Gothic. Surrounded by the peaks and meadows of the Elk Mountains, the setting is stunning — and far removed from intensive agriculture, urban growth, pesticide use and other human activities that have been blamed for insect declines.
“We thought that it was important for us to look at a site that is free from all those influences,” said David Inouye, co-author on the research paper, and a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland.
Two days a week, the researchers capture flying insects — mostly bees, wasps and flies. They count and dry the insects, weigh them and divide them into several broad groupings. Since 1984, researchers have captured and recorded data about the insects every week of every subalpine summer for 40 years.
“If you want to see a long-term trend, you need decades of data,” Inouye said. Insect populations can fluctuate several fold from year to year. Data collected over a longer period helps identify less dramatic long-term trends. The current study is the longest controlled study of insects in Colorado and one of the longest in the United States.
The project has lasted so long that it has relied on three generations of scientists. Authors on the paper include the now-deceased originator of the work, Michael Soulé; David Inouye, who is spending his 53rd season at the laboratory this summer; and David’s son, Brian Inouye, and daughter-in-law, Nora Underwood, both professors of ecology and evolution at Florida State University.
The paper analyzes 35 years of data, from 1986 through the summer of 2020. The researchers documented a 62% decline in the number of insects captured and a 49% decline in their total weight over the period. The insect decline was correlated with less winter snowfall, less summer rain and warmer temperatures.
Average annual snowfall at the laboratory fell sharply during the study period, to 344 inches per year from 463 inches. Abundant winter snow cover provides protective insulation to overwintering insects. Average summer rainfall did not change significantly during the study’s 35 years, but years of low summer rainfall had fewer insects. Summer rainfall promotes plant growth that feeds many insects. Average temperature rose about 2 degrees Fahrenheit during the study period and was correlated with the insect decline, although less so than precipitation.
“Changes in precipitation and warmer temperatures are expected to continue under climate change,” the researchers wrote in their report. “Thus, continued insect declines might be expected even in relatively undisturbed habitats.”
“We should be concerned,” Underwood said. “There are a lot of cascading effects of insects.”
Fewer insects can mean less food for other animals, fewer flowers pollinated and fewer nutrients recycled through the environment. Underwood does have faith in the resilience of nature and is not predicting an imminent insect apocalypse or deserts in the mountains. But she notes that the study documents big changes occurring to important players in the environment with likely, but unknown, impacts occurring as climate change continues.
Underwood invokes the rivet hypothesis by famed biologist Paul Ehrlich, for whom both she and Brian worked during summers when he came to RMBL. An airplane has thousands of rivets holding it together. You can remove one rivet without causing any trouble. But if you keep removing rivets — or insects — eventually the plane will fall apart and crash. No one knows which is the crucial rivet, and maybe it is best to keep as many as possible.
David Inouye believes the insect declines in Colorado and around the nation may have already rippled through the environment. In 2019, researchers reported an alarming 29% decline in North American birds, a net loss of 3 billion birds, since 1970. Birds that feed on insects were a prominent portion of those losses. Around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, researchers have likewise documented a striking decline in white-crowned sparrows, an insect-eating bird whose distinctive call is heard less often than in past years.
Insects and white-crowned sparrows are just one of several changes that David Inouye has observed in his decades at the laboratory. Moose and fox now live there year-round, and a Wyoming ground squirrel has moved up from lower-elevation Almont, to Crested Butte and now the laboratory. Ticks and mosquitoes that can carry West Nile virus have also appeared around the laboratory in recent years. Wildflowers are blooming earlier.
“I think in the long term, most people are going to find those changes undesirable,” he said.
Migration is the norm. Thinking there's something we can do to stop it is one of humankind's great modern delusions.
We can mitigate, and we can compensate, and we can do some things to make it less necessary - but it won't be stopped. The herds will migrate following food and better opportunities for the survival of their species. Humans included. Get ready.
The ‘Devil Bird’ Lands in New York, With More Likely to Come
Anhingas, water birds with snakelike necks, have turned up in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and far upstate, a sign of shifting ranges for birds from the South.
For two weeks, a strange bird has perched in Brooklyn over the treetops of one of the Three Sisters Islands in Prospect Park Lake. It shows no signs of heading back to the place it most likely came from in the South.
Meet the anhinga, a large water bird with a snaky neck that has joined other high-profile vagrant birds in recent years by making a rare appearance outside of its typical migration range.
The bird’s name comes from the Tupi Indian language of Brazil and means “devil bird.” And according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, it’s not from around here: Anhingas in the United States generally range from the Southern states along the gulf coast to Texas, stretching into the Carolinas in the summer.
The Prospect Park anhinga is the first devil bird observed in Kings County, and only the second sighting in New York City since 1992. When Radka Osickova first spotted it with the Brooklyn Bird Club, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“What kind of a weird heron is that over there?” she recalls asking.
Researchers say that this rogue anhinga didn’t merely veer off course, but that it was taking advantage of a habitat that was newly available to it because of rising temperatures.
Longtime bird-watchers have noted other unusual feathered visitors in Prospect Park in recent months.
“Some of the species include summer tanager, yellow-throated warbler, Acadian flycatcher (now nesting in the park) and others,” said Tom Stephenson, a Brooklyn birder, in an email. “We’ve also seen a number of unusual Western species in Brooklyn, including Townsend’s warbler and Swainson’s hawk.”
Kenn Kaufman, a bird expert and field guide author, says we’re seeing a broad pattern emerging with Southern birds in search of new nesting territories.
“In evolutionary terms, these far-flung wanderers might be viewed as testing the limits,” Mr. Kaufman said.
The anhinga in Brooklyn may be on its own, but there were earlier indications that the species had been making forays much farther north. Days before the sighting in Brooklyn, Timothy Wing spotted another anhinga outside his car window in Rome, N.Y., about 180 miles north of New York City.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I assumed was a double-crested cormorant sitting on a log in the canal on my left,” said Mr. Wing, a bird enthusiast. “The color for the head and neck was much lighter than a typical cormorant, and it didn’t seem right.”
He pulled over and took a closer look with a spare set of binoculars he keeps in his car.
“To my amazement, I saw multiple anhingas sitting on a log, and many others up in the trees along the opposite bank of the canal,” he said.
After taking photos with his cellphone, Mr. Wing confirmed his sighting with a friend. They counted 22 anhingas and logged them into eBird, the online bird observation database.
“It was truly an incredible sight to behold,” he said.
Mr. Kaufman shares Mr. Wing’s enthusiasm for the rare encounter, while noting the growing number of anhingas seen in the Middle Atlantic States.
“Viewed in isolation, the flock upstate seems utterly astounding,” Mr. Kaufman said. “And it is, in the context of New York State records.”
Since the initial sighting in Brooklyn, throngs of delighted birders have visited Prospect Park hoping to catch a peek.
“While we’re excited to see the anhinga to N.Y.C., please watch from a distance and respect its space,” said Sarah Aucoin, the chief of education and wildlife for the New York City parks department. “It may not be from around here, but it’s still a wild animal for us to respect.”
Extinction crisis puts 1 million species on the verge of disappearing By Julia Janicki, Katy Daigle, and Sudev Kiyada
Nature is in crisis, and it’s only getting worse. As species vanish at a rate not seen in 10 million years, more than 1 million species are currently on the brink.
Humans are driving this extinction crisis through activities that take over animal habitats, pollute nature and fuel global warming. A new global deal to protect nature agreed on Dec. 19 has the potential to help, and scientists are urging the world’s nations to ensure the deal is a success.
When an animal species is lost, a whole set of characteristics disappears along with it - genes, behaviors, activities and interactions with other plants and animals that may have taken thousands or millions - even billions - of years to evolve.
Whatever role that species played within an ecosystem is lost too, whether that’s pollinating certain plants, churning nutrients in soil, fertilizing forests or keeping other animal populations in check, among other things. If that function was crucial to the health of an ecosystem, the animals’ disappearance can cause a landscape to transform.
This is the case with “foundation species” that play a key part in structuring communities, such as corals, or “keystone species” like beavers that have a big impact on their environments, relative to their numbers.
Lose too many species and the results could be catastrophic, leading an entire system to collapse.
Gone forever
In the last five centuries, hundreds of unique animals have vanished across the world, such as the flightless Dodo bird killed off from the island of Mauritius in the late 1600s.
In many cases, humans were to blame - first by fishing or hunting, as was the case with South Africa’s zebra subspecies Quagga hunted to its end in the late 19th century - and more recently through activities that pollute, disrupt or take over wild habitats. Endlings
Before a species goes extinct, it may already be considered “functionally extinct” – with not enough individuals left to ensure the species survives. More recent extinctions have allowed humans to interact with some species’ last known individuals, known as “endlings”. When they go, that’s the end of those evolutionary lines.
“Toughie” Rabb’s Fringe-Limbed tree frog Toughie was the last known individual of the Rabb’s Fringe-Limbed tree frog. All but a few dozen of his species had been wiped out by chytrid fungus in the wild in Panama. And eventually, Toughie was the last. In his enclosure at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, he was calling out in vain for a mate that didn’t exist. He died in 2016.
“Martha” Passenger pigeon Martha’s story is a cautionary tale for conservation: in the 1850s there were still millions of passenger pigeons, but they were eventually hunted to extinction as conservation measures were taken only after the species was past the point of no return. Martha was the last individual of the passenger pigeon. She died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.
“George” Pinta Island tortoise Lonesome George, found in 1971, was Ecuador’s last Pinta Island tortoise. From the 17th century, some 200,000 individuals were hunted for their meat. Later, they struggled to compete for food after goats were brought to the island in the 1950s. Scientists tried to save the species through captive breeding before George died in 2012.
“Ben” Thylacine Benjamin was the world’s last known thylacine, a marsupial carnivore also known as the Tasmanian tiger. After Europeans arrived on the island, thylacine numbers quickly declined due to hunting, habitat loss and introduced disease. The animal was given protective status only two months before Benjamin died in 1936 in the Beaumaris Zoo in Tasmania.
On the brink
There are some species that could soon be reduced to their own endlings. The Northern white rhino subspecies, the second-largest land mammal after elephants, has no hope of recovery after the last male died in 2018. Only a female and her daughter are left.
The world’s smallest porpoise - Mexico’s critically endangered vaquita - is down to just 18 individuals in the wild, as populations have been ravaged by fishing nets.
These stories of endlings matter, scientists say, precisely because so many extinctions happen out of sight.
“Somewhere in the core of our humanity, we recognize these creatures, we’re touched by their story, and we feel compassion - and maybe also a moral compulsion - to help,” said Paula Ehrlich, president and CEO of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.
The Northern white rhino isn’t just a part of the world, she said. It’s a world unto itself - its own ecosystem - mowing fields through grazing, fertilizing lands where it walks, having insects land on its skin, and then with birds feeding off those insects.
“Understanding everything that an animal is and does for the world helps us understand that we, too, are a part of nature - and we need nature to survive,” Ehrlich said.
Extinction over time
The endlings mentioned above are well-known because scientists realized that these species were declining and attempted to save them. Many other species just fade away in the wild.
Scientists count 881 animal species as having gone extinct since around 1500, dating to the first records held by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – the global scientific authority on the status of nature and wildlife. That’s an extremely conservative estimate for species extinction over the last five centuries, though, as it represents only the cases resolved with a high degree of certainty.
If we include animal species that scientists suspect might be extinct, that number shoots up to 1,473. The bar is high for declaring a species extinct – a sobering task that scientists are already reluctant to do.
“It’s hard to prove the negative, to prove you can’t find it,” said Sean O’Brien, an ecologist who heads the NatureServe nonprofit working to establish definitive data on North American species. “And it’s emotional. A botanist doesn’t want to declare it extinct because it feels like a failure.” So scientists might take longer trying to find the species before making the call.
Among terrestrial vertebrates, or land animals with a backbone, 322 species have been declared extinct since 1500. Add in the number of possibly extinct species and the tally comes to 573.
For moisture-loving amphibians, vulnerable to both pollution and drought, things are looking particularly bleak - with the extinction rate escalating over the last few decades. Only 37 species have been declared extinct with a high degree of certainty since 1500. But scientists suspect more than 100 others have disappeared over the last 30-40 years, according to a 2015 study in the journal Science Advances.
The records of last sightings increase over time, especially from the mid-19th century start of the Industrial Revolution. That shows animals have been at increasing peril, but also that our knowledge of nature has increased as we study and survey more species.
There are many notable species among those that have vanished since 1500. The dodo was last seen in 1662, within 65 years of it first being recorded. The Pinta Island tortoise was last seen in the wild in 1972.
The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird was last seen in 1985 on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi and later declared extinct, along with it the ʻōʻō genus and the Mohoidae family – marking the only extinction of an entire avian family in modern times.
Some vanishings have inspired public outcry, such as the 2016 extinction declaration for the tiny Christmas Island pipistrelle bat species, last seen in 2009. It was Australia’s first recorded mammal extinction in 50 years.
Others like the Chiriqui Harlequin Frog, declared extinct in 2019 after last being seen 23 years earlier, become symbols of nature in crisis. The Panamanian frog was wiped out by the same fungus that felled Toughie’s kind.
Losing hundreds of species over 500 or so years may not seem significant when there are millions more still living on the planet. But in fact, the speed at which species are now vanishing is unprecedented in the last 10 million years.
“We are losing species now faster than they can evolve,” O’Brien said.
Mass extinctions
The number of vertebrates that have gone extinct over the last 100 years should have taken 800 - 10,000 years
Plenty of animals have gone extinct naturally or due to causes unrelated to human activity. In a healthy environment, as species die off naturally, new species evolve – and an evolutionary balance is maintained.
This turnover relies on what scientists consider a normal or background extinction rate.
But when the extinction rate jumps so high that more than 75% of the world’s species go extinct within the relatively short time frame of less than 2 million years, this is considered a mass extinction event.
That’s happened five times over the last half-billion years, which we know through studying Earth’s fossil record - with layers upon layers of sediment having buried the remains of animals over time. When a layer with a large and diverse number of animals is found, scientists can see that a mass die-off occurred.
Through other evidence in the geological record, researchers can help deduce what likely caused the die-off. For example, the Permian-Triassic extinction event some 250 million years ago – also known as the Great Dying – saw up to 96% of Earth’s species disappear. With the record showing vast lands were covered in lava, while clouds of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide caused acid rain and global warming, scientists theorize that volcanic activity likely caused the wipeout.
And with the planet’s last mass extinction about 66 million years ago, when about 76% of all life forms including dinosaurs vanished, scientists have figured out that volcanic activity had again increased global temperatures before an asteroid slammed into the planet, causing superheating followed by rapid cooling – pushing already-stressed species over the edge.
Scientists warn we have entered a sixth mass extinction. And with climate change, humans are now engineering conditions similar to those that drove past die-offs, scientists say.
Under a normal extinction rate scenario, it would have taken at least 800 years and up to 10,000 years for the high number of vertebrate extinctions that we’ve seen in the last century, according to the 2015 paper in Science Advances.
“Despite our best efforts, the extinction rate is still estimated to be 1,000 times higher than before humans entered the stage,” Ehrlich said. “At this rate, half will be gone by the end of the century.”
Unknown and still under threat
Animal species vulnerable to endangerment in the near future more than 40,000 species are threatened with extinction
As bad as it seems, scientists say the reality is likely even worse. Looking only at species extinctions doesn’t give the full picture, partly because scientists are so conservative in saying a species is gone. For example, even though Toughie was the last known individual of his kind, the IUCN lists his species still as “critically endangered, possibly extinct.”
More importantly, there is a vast reservoir of species that we have yet to discover. Scientists have identified some 1.2 million species in the world, but estimate there are about 8.7 million. That leaves roughly 7.5 million species that we think are out there but know nothing about – including whether or not they’re in trouble.
“Knowing what we do about the impact of climate change and habitat loss, it’s hard to imagine that thousands if not millions of species are not in the process of going extinct right now,” O’Brien said.
A look at the number of “threatened” species as well as population trends can offer more insight into the declining state of the world’s biodiversity.
Among terrestrial vertebrates, amphibians are in the most trouble, with over 40% of species threatened, many of them heading towards extinction. The golden toad, found in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, is the poster child of amphibian extinctions, not only because it was stunningly beautiful, but also because it was declared extinct only two decades after being described.
The IUCN uses a range of categories to describe the state of a species, as a way of identifying which are in trouble and when to help. But a species being listed as “least concern” or “near threatened” doesn’t mean its populations are stable. African lions, for example, have been listed for decades as “vulnerable,” but their numbers dropped 43% in 1993-2014, when the last population data was available. The decline of one or more populations of a species can mark the start of a trend toward extinction.
The IUCN lists 4,898 species of terrestrial vertebrates – birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals – with declining populations as “least concern”: 3,337 birds, 287 reptiles, 819 amphibians, and 455 mammals.
Just because a species is listed as least concerned or near threatened by IUCN, doesn’t mean its populations are stable. Nearly 50% of bird species that are considered not threatened are facing population declines, so are others to some extent.
Conservation gives hope
As sobering as the situation may seem at a global scale, there are reasons for hope. The newly adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in December will guide global conservation efforts through the decade to 2030. Among other things, the deal envisions putting 30% of the planet’s land and sea areas under protection by decade’s end.
“It’s so overwhelming to think there are these species right on the edge,” O’Brien said. “But then the conservationists I work with remind me of how much people care.”
Between 1993 and 2020, conservation measures such as habitat restoration or captive breeding helped to prevent the extinction of up to 32 bird species and as many as 16 mammals worldwide, according to conservative estimates in a 2020 study published in the journal Conservation Letters.
Computers other technological advances – from apps that crowd-source citizen science data to programs for sequencing species’ genetic DNA – are helping scientists learn more about what’s in nature so they’re better able to help struggling species, and to understand what’s lost when they can’t.
“Science is democratizing the information for every country to know what it needs to do where,” said Ehrlich of the Wilson Foundation, which works to identify the best places in the world for protecting biodiversity and prioritizing nature. Before he died last year, Wilson himself advocated putting half the planet under conservation and estimated that would save 85% of the world’s species.
“We humbly need to do the best that we can to protect them now,” Ehrlich said, “until we understand more about the intricate web of life that sustains nature – and us, as a part of nature.”
