I have a special place in my heart for toads because of Grandpa.

The year was 1975 and my mother, 9-year-old brother and I, age 5, were spending another summer at my grandparents’ home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We had just finished a dinner of breaded pork chops and potato salad, and the grown-ups were at the kitchen table playing cards. My brother and I were sitting on the steps to the backyard, our silhouettes growing darker in the beam of light shining from the kitchen as the sun began to set.

Grandpa was a kindly soul and while he didn’t say a lot to us, he was always ready with a joke or a piece of rock candy when he came home from a long day of cutting glass. He could see we were bored, so without a word, he got up and grabbed a couple of large metal flashlights from the back porch, gave them to us, pointed at the grass and went back to playing cards. My brother and I just looked at each other, knowing we were supposed to wait for something to happen—but what?

Just then, lumps seem to emerge in the grass as if by magic. What were they, fairies? I shone the light on one of the larger lumps coming our way. Gleaming gold eyes stared back at us. I almost screamed! Then it hopped into the light: a toad, one of a great menagerie of hopping black-speckled gold and brown balls of various sizes. The grass looked like popcorn popping on a stove. Suddenly, we knew the game.

I ran out to the grass and picked up the biggest one I could find. It puffed up so much I could barely grasp it in my tiny hands. I was so proud of discovering what I called the “king of toads,” I ran into the house to show Grandpa. “You may have the grand prize winner!” he proclaimed. Everyone applauded and didn’t even mind as the dirt from the toad was smeared all over my shirt after I returned him to his place in the yard.

When Grandpa died, I asked for our lucky toad-hunting flashlight because all one might need for finding a toad and a love of nature is a source of water, a flashlight and a vivid imagination.

So the summer went: the great toad game of who would find the most toads or the biggest one, the one with the prettiest spots or the fastest jumper, and each night ending with a firework display above the water dishes. I never got tired of it.

By the time we were teenagers, my brother and I had stopped spending every summer at my grandparents. When I was 20, I visited them after not seeing them for many years. At first, Grandpa didn’t know what to do with this grown-up grandchild. Then, he silently got up out of his lounge chair, went to the back porch and picked up one of those heavy metal flashlights. I followed him out the back door.

“I haven’t seen them for years since they built up over that pond in back of us,” Grandpa said apologetically. “But we’ll try.” After nearly a half hour, we finally saw him: a lone majestic toad prince peering out from under the shed. I gently picked him up and showed my prize to Grandpa. “I guess you win this round,” he proclaimed with a grin.

That was the last time I saw Grandpa before he died. I had indeed won, both memories I treasure and an enduring appreciation of toads. Along with Grandpa, these wondrous creatures will always sit in a special place in my heart. Never underestimate the power of grandparents or a simple backyard experience with nature to inspire one’s love of it for a lifetime.

Be Out There

NWF’s Be Out There® program offers many guides for parents and grandparents on how to grow the enjoyment of nature in your backyard and beyond. See the new Nature Play at Home Guide for tips on how to create nature play spaces at home and get The Dirt on Dirt, on why letting kids get dirty is a good thing.

Get More About Wildlife

Read and subscribe to National Wildlife magazine’s Animals Channel for more articles on wildlife, including How to Dote on Toads and Frogs Need Our Help, So Hop to It!

Of course, humans don’t actually hibernate: Our heart rates, breathing and metabolisms can’t automatically come to a crawl and our temperatures can’t drop causing us to go into long bouts of torpor to allow us to conserve energy. However, hibernation expert Hannah Carey at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says that inducing us into some form of decreased metabolic state might not be out of the realm of possibility someday.

A hibernating 13-lined Arctic ground squirrel. Photo courtesy of Hannah Carey.

“If we knew everything about how they did it, it’s possible that we could use that information to manipulate human metabolism or mimic other aspects of hibernation,” says Carey. “We could induce humans and other animals into a mild dormant state, which could, for example, limit damage of vital organs until accident victims can get medical aide.”

This and many other things we have recently discovered about several extreme nappers are squashing many old assumptions about hibernation being only a cold-climate defense tactic.

It’s not just for animals in cold climes or even nonprimates anymore

Here are some other surprising facts about 10 expert sleepers, some of which live in the tropics or deserts:

1. Dwarf lemurs and mouse lemurs in Madagascar are the only tropical primates known to hibernate. They can do so for months to accommodate periods in which resources become scarce. The fat-tailed dwarf lemur hibernates seven months out of the year in tree holes in Madagascar, where winter can be as warm as 86 degrees F. Its body temperature can fluctuate as much as 36 degrees daily to accommodate fluctuations in temperatures in its hole.

2. Black, brown and grizzly bears are the largest hibernators. Given their size, it actually takes a lot for them to power down and back up again, so while their heart rate drops from, say for black bears, an average of 55 beats at rest in the summer to as few as nine per minute during hibernation, their body temperature is only lowered a few degrees and ranges from 86 to 97 degrees F. Living off of five inches of stored fat for five to seven months while hibernating, they won’t eat, drink or urinate, in spite of waking up periodically and then again returning to hibernation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out these live bear cams and videos of black bears denning, some with cubs, at the North American Bear Center in Minnesota.

3. Bats drop their heart rates from hundreds of beats per minute to a low of about 25 beats per minute during hibernation. However, given their relatively small size, if bats are woken during winter when their insect meals cannot be found, they could easily use up their fat stores and starve.

4. Many North American rodents, from desert-dwelling kangaroo rats and rock squirrels to tiny forest-dwelling dormice, will go dormant for hours to days and then wake up to snack on stored foods to get by in cold months. (Watch these captivating videos of dormice from ARKive.)

5. But marmots, ground squirrels and jumping mice hibernate for weeks just off of accumulated body fat. In fact, the Arctic ground squirrel can hibernate for up to 250 days this way by lowering its body temperature down to nearly 27 degrees F—the lowest of animal known mammal.

6. The nightjar or common poorwill is quite uncommon actually, as it is the only bird known to be able to slow its metabolic rate and drop its body temperature for days or weeks when its food, night-flying insects, are not available. It lives in dry, open grassy or shrubby areas in western North America. 

7. In winter, some amphibians and reptiles go into a state of brumation in which they are awake and although they will drink water, will not eat. North America’s only poisonous lizard, the gila monster, lives in deserts in parts of the southwestern United States and Mexico. This mostly nocturnal predator feasts on small mammals, birds, other lizards, frogs and eggs, and then lives months without food by storing fat in its tail and becoming dormant in its burrow.

8. Some reptiles will aestivate, or lower their own body temperature to protect themself against extreme heat, like the desert tortoise of the North American Southwest. It will aestivate in summer and then hibernate most of winter, from about October to March.

9. The pupfish lives in the deserts of southwestern North America. At the end of summer when shallow springs, ponds, marshes, and slow-flowing streams dry up, most pupfish will die, having lived less than a year. In some areas, by late summer, surviving pupfish will start to become dormant in burrows at the bottoms of remaining waters.

10. Many insects will pause at different stages in their development, or diapause, in winter but also when food or water might be limited in summer, like desert locusts.

Why Hibernate?

Some researchers have noted that during the last 500 years, those species that spend some periods of time in torpor with lower heart rates are also less likely to go extinct, perhaps because they are able to adjust better to drastic changes in food availability or temperatures. This could be valuable information, as so many species are being affected by climate change.

Who knows what else we might learn from these expert sleepers? Perhaps that state of suspended animation we see in science fiction movies isn’t entirely out of reach. As Carey puts it, “We are very loyal to that 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit,” so I know I’ll be envying our hibernating brethren during the next winter months as I reach for my next cup of coffee.

Robert Postma

Just the name wolverine evokes images of a ferocious fighter, able to take down prey many times its size. However, the U.S. government isn’t one of them.

The largest of the land-dwelling weasels, this predator has been named a Gulo gulo (from “glutton”) for its supposed voracious appetite. But much of what it eats it hasn’t actually killed itself but found as carrion while on the prowl. The wolverine’s long, shaggy coat allows it to survive in harsh arctic and subarctic environments in Alaska, boreal northern Canada, Europe and Asia, as well as in the alpine northern Cascades in Washington and Rocky Mountains in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Its incredible sense of smell can find prey beneath snow, its claws and teeth can tear apart even frozen carcasses and it can travel for hundreds of miles in a week scoping for food.

Their built-in survival gear, however, cannot protect them from being vulnerable to climate change. Wolverines need deep snow that lasts well into late spring to build dens for their newly born kits. But snow is melting earlier, and the wolverine’s formerly continuous forest is being fragmented into disconnected islands of limited habitat. As few as 250 wolverines may be left in the contiguous United States, of which only 35 individuals are thought to be successfully breeding. The population needs sufficient continuous, snowy habitat to find mates, reproduce and survive.

Dying in Wait

Putting the wolverine on the U.S. Endangered Species List could help preserve habitat vital to the species’ survival. Yet, as ferocious as this mighty woodland warrior might appear, the wolverine cannot muscle its way onto the list. It is among at least 252 “candidate species” waiting to get the protections the Endangered Species Act and its list affords from a variety of threats, such as overhunting, pollution and habitat destruction. The Endangered Species Act and its list are tools that have proven their worth. They have pulled animals back from the brink of extinction, including our nation’s iconic American bald eagles, wolves, Florida panthers and black-footed ferrets, just to name a few.

The Wolverine’s Other Opponent

This past summer, key leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives sideswiped animals both on the Endangered Species List and those species waiting for its protection with a potentially fatal blow. An “extinction rider” to the 2012 budget bill was proposed that would have prevented the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from spending any money to implement some of the most crucial sections of the Endangered Species Act, including listing any new species, designating habitat as critical to a species’ survival or changing the status of any species from threatened to endangered.

This bold attack on wildlife was met with fierce resistance from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). With the help of our supporters and wildlife champions in the U.S. Congress, NWF  led an effort to stop this dangerous proposal. By a vote of 224 to 202, the measure was defeated with bipartisan support on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Despite this victory, the battle is far from over. The “extinction rider” is only a preview of what could be in store for wildlife from Congress. National Wildlife Federation expects the attacks on imperiled species to come harder and faster in the coming months.

Speak Up for Wolverines

Help protect wolverines and other imperiled species by sending a strong message to Congress to stop the stealth attacks on wildlife. Even the mighty wolverine and all of those lying in wait for protection need us to be fighting in their corner.

Wildlife in the Crossfire – About this Series

This four-part blog series highlights wildlife caught in the crossfire of the federal budget battle raging in Congress and gives you the tools to fight back.  Now is the time to stand up for wildlife.

Fact: America’s investment in wildlife is not to blame for the budget problems we face today. Over the past 30 years, America’s investment in parks, wildlife, clean water and clean air has fallen from 1.7% to 0.6% of federal spending.

The North American river otter can be seen at Trout Lake in Yellowstone National Park.

Many people might take these endearing, iconic North American inhabitants for granted, but they were once nearly wiped out in many portions of the United States. And now, given recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that may reinterpret what U.S. waters are protected under the Clean Water Act, they are potentially once again at risk.

Clean Water Paws-itively Necessary for Otters

Otters are good indicators of water quality. As predators, they are high up on the food chain. Scientists have found pollutants such as PCBs and mercury accumulate in otters’ tissues over time, as the animals consume fish, frogs, crayfish, mollusks and other invertebrates, which have in turn also ingested pollutants from their own foods.

To survive, otters need clean water in relatively specific, undisturbed environments. This and their small numbers spread across wide ranges have made them extremely vulnerable to pollution, habitat destruction and historical, unregulated trapping. By the mid-1970s, the North American otter had severely declined and disappeared throughout portions of central United States. This prompted 22 states to initiate programs that reintroduced more than 4,000 otters back into their natural range.

River otters being released along the Juniata River in south-central Pennsylvania became a community affair.

Tom Serfass, a leading river otter researcher and professor of wildlife ecology at Frostburg State University in Maryland has been studying the animals since he was a graduate student in 1979. “I’ve always enjoyed the antics of the otter.” Serfass has been involved in river otter reintroduction programs in Pennsylvania, New York and New Mexico. He says he has seen a rebound of U.S. otter populations as a result of such programs, more informed management and improvements in their aquatic habitats from regulations such as the Clean Water Act. Today, the North American river otter, one of 13 otter species worldwide, is once again found in every continental U.S. state.

Recent Supreme Court decisions, however, have caused confusion over which waterways are protected under the Clean Water Act. The Court’s interpretation of the law says only “navigable waters” or those closely connected to them are protected, leaving some lakes, more than half of the nations’ stream miles and millions of acres of wetlands at risk. In addition to affecting much of our own sources of water for drinking, fishing and farming, this may undermine more than three decades of recovery efforts for river otters.

Serfass led the 1982 reintroduction project of 153 otters into seven river drainages in Pennsylvania. The resident otter populations had declined as a result of unregulated trapping and degraded aquatic habitats. This included the Casselman River and its tributaries in western Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania.

Beginning in the late 1800s, seepage from local coal mine operations into these waterways eventually made the river water so acidic that it could no longer support aquatic life. Government and private conservation organizations, including angling groups, banded together in the 1990s to stop the drainage from the mines and the river habitat rebounded. Serfass and his team were able to reintroduce otters to the river habitat about 10 years ago and otters continue to thrive in the area.

Not Out of Danger

While the reintroduction of the North American otter is a great conservation success story, these animals have not yet been able to recolonize all of their former historic range. In some cases, this has been related to severe water quality issues, but other U.S. populations may just need more time. For example, only recently have otters begun to move into North Dakota from nearby Minnesota, a healthy native population.

Meanwhile, those populations that are considered stable are not necessarily out of danger. For instance, Serfass says, “The majority of otters used in the reintroduction projects were obtained from coastal Louisiana, the very same area that has been impacted by the recent oil spill. We don’t know the impact of the oil spill on otters, but this event indicates how quickly a thriving population could potentially be impacted by an unexpected event.” In addition, development is continuously shrinking coastal and other habitats the otters need to survive.

What we have done for the otter was to put proper protections of its aquatic habitats in place that allowed these reintroductions to succeed. Weakening the Clean Water Act would be detrimental not just for the otter but the great variety of species that depend on healthy waterways, including ourselves. NWF attorney Jim Murphy told National Wildlife magazine in its April/May issue that “the Clean Water Act has been one of the most successful environmental laws we’ve ever had. … Until we restore [it], many areas are going to find themselves with polluted water.”

In 2009, the Clean Water Restoration Act was introduced to remove the word “navigable” and restore the law to its original 1972 mandates.  The Obama Administration recently took a first step to restore Clean Water Act protections to many of the waters that were protected prior to the Supreme Court’s rulings. On Wednesday, April 27, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers released draft Clean Water Act guidance. While the Administration must act within the bounds of these Court decisions, successful administration action will restore and clarify protections for millions of wetland acres and stream miles, placing these restored protections on a much more secure legal and scientific foundation.

This would be a simple fix to what could be a very messy problem for all of us, including the North American river otter. And who would want to be visiting their favorite woodland river, wetland or coastal area and have to ask, “Where are the clowns?”

Speak Up for River Otters

Protect river otters’ streams from polluters before July 31! >>

Click here to view the embedded video.

Credit: Sadie Stevens, Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts Amherst