Dry, hot weather is driving wildfires in the West. Flickr photo by Anthony Citrano.

A wildfire driven by drought, wind and record-breaking heat has killed two people, destroyed an estimated 360 homes and blackened at least 15,700 acres in rural subdivisions north of Colorado Springs. If  the preliminary numbers hold up, the fire will surpass last summer’s Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs as Colorado’s most destructive in terms of lost homes.

And it’s early in the wildfire season, which grows longer every year in the West. Wildfires erupted even earlier this spring in New Mexico and California. People and wildlife are still dealing with the fallout from last year’s wildfires — property losses, important trout waters choked by ash and erosion flowing down barren mountainsides.

A seemingly never-ending wildfire season has become the new norm in the West. The changing climate has unleashed  record-breaking heat and drought in the Rockies. The National Weather Service reported that on June 12, Denver recorded its earliest 100-degree temperature on record. The previous record was June 14, 2006.

Unrelenting drought, heat

The U.S. Drought Monitor shows that much of New Mexico is in extreme to exceptional drought. Colorado ranges from moderate to exceptional, portrayed as dark red blotches on the U.S. map. Climate change is already transforming the landscape, threatening endangered species, stressing fish and other wildlife and affecting hunting and fishing opportunities. Last summer, anglers across Colorado were urged to forgo casting their lines in some spots because of the pressure fish were under due to the extreme heat. The full impact of a wildfire that blasted through northern Colorado’s Poudre Canyon last year is still unclear.  State wildlife biologists are monitoring the effects of erosion on the Cache la Poudre River, a favorite trout fishery.

Hunters and anglers, who are on the ground, walking through the backcountry and wading through streams, are making the connections between what they see happening to the landscape and fish and wildlife habitat with our energy choices. Todd Tanner, founder of the sportsmen’s advocacy group Conservation Hawks, calls climate change “the biggest threat we’ve ever faced.”

Warmer water and erosion from wildfires are threatening fisheries in the Rockies. Photo by Lew Carpenter

Smoke from the fires near Colorado Springs,  Canon City in central Colorado and in Rocky Mountain National park hangs over the Front Range, obscuring the view of the mountains from Longs Peak in the north to Pikes Peak in the south.

And it’s not even summer yet.

Read more about the threats to wildlife in the report “Wildlife in a Warming World” and learn about ways we can confront the climate crisis.

Take Action

Speak up for wolverines! Tell Congress to pass legislation that will preserve habitat for wolverines and other wildlife>>

Photo: Mark Gocke, USDA

If you’re a fan of big cats like me, a cheetah was the first contestant to come to mind. But the sprinters are short on stamina and like all cats, long on laziness:

9. Cheetah

The morning-line favorite. Having a fancy title like “World’s Fastest Land Animal” is going to get you a lot of betting action. But this isn’t a sprint—and the cheetah has no chance. Dr. Lindstedt estimates it would blast out of the starting gate, and after 20 seconds, would open up a 950-foot lead on the fastest thoroughbred. After that? You may find him napping in the infield.

Instead, scientists say a track star of the American West would finish far ahead of the Belmont’s thoroughbred horses:

8. Pronghorn

The wiseguy pick. They may not be as sexy as some of the other competitors, but pronghorns have an ideal mix of speed and endurance. Dr. Lindstedt says for a 1 ½ mile distance, they could likely reach a blistering pace of 50 mph. Added bonus: They are local, hailing from Western states like Wyoming and Colorado. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

But it gets even more interesting, according to Bruce Stein, the National Wildlife Federation’s director of climate change adaptation.

“The pronghorn’s blazing speed is apparently an evolutionary response to predation by the American cheetah, an animal that went extinct in the Pleistocene,” says Bruce. ”So in some ways, it truly is a race between pronghorn and cheetah!”

While pronghorns evolved their speed and endurance for outrunning predators and long migrations, today their biggest threats are cars, fences, and habitat loss. In fact, two subspecies – Peninsular pronghorns and Sonoran pronghorns - are on the Endangered Species List. Learn more about how the National Wildlife Federation is working to protect pronghorns.

And the fastest fish in the world? The sailfish, clocked in short sprints at up to 68 miles per hour.

Remember the plume of dispersed oil that stretched from the wellhead and settled in the deep underwater canyon just south of the wellhead? It turns out the foul feature caused an oily sediment blizzard. Analysis of core samples taken from the canyon where the sediment blizzard came to rest showed the record die-off.

As the oil was flowing, David Hollander at USF was one of the first scientists to find that subsea dispersant application led to the plume of oily water. At the time, I was staffing Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) who sits on the Senate Oceans Subcommittee. Hearing what researchers like Hollander were finding, Sen. Nelson was gravely concerned about the impacts of dispersed oil particles on the Gulf food-web. He filed the Subsea Hydrocarbon Imagery and Planning (SHIP) Act to require the government to track the plume and develop a plan to clean it up. SHIP was never enacted.

Hollander was right to be concerned three years ago. Summarizing the results of the USF study, Hollander says, “Everywhere the plume went, the die-off went.”

Marine Foraminifera by Flickr user Pali Nalu

Gulf Killifish by Louisiana Sea Grant College Program, Louisiana State University

Gills serve fish the way lungs serve humans: they allow for oxygen to enter the bloodstream and remove carbon dioxide. In essence, they “breathe.” Healthy functional gill tissue has a uniform, parallel, accordion appearance. Louisiana State University researchers compared the gill tissue of killifish in an oiled marsh to those in an oil-free marsh. The results? The gill tissue from killifish in the oiled marsh was a mangled mess.

Reports that microscopic organisms and bull minnows were harmed by the disaster three years ago suggest there are more impacts to come. It took years after the Exxon Valdez oil disaster for the Pacific herring population to crash. Harm at the bottom of the food-web manifests incrementally. We may not know for years how top predators like tuna and dolphin will fare.

This week, BP began its defense in the Deepwater Horizon trial. One thing is clear: BP would like the American people and the Judge to believe the disaster is over. There is no doubt: BP will present a court case rivaling its public relations case in the court of public opinion. Gulf wildlife aren’t buying it. Neither should Judge Barbier, and neither should we.

Fishing in the Florida mangroves.

There I was, a mosquito biologist on a hot summer day, knee deep in the mud of a mangrove swamp bordering the Indian River Lagoon, the long estuarine system along the Florida east-coast.  I had given up trying to get a “biting count” (believe it or not, you actually try to count the number landing on you in one minute…an ‘index’ of misery!).

I had stood in this very spot two weeks before, and there were none, but shortly after that the tide had risen sharply, flooding the mangrove swamp and apparently hatching the myriad of saltmarsh mosquito eggs secreted in the mud.  I had missed finding the larvae, a critical part of any control effort.

Frustrated, I jammed my dipper, the long-handled scoop which is the main tool of the mosquito larvae sleuth, into a small puddle. No larvae, of course, but four small fish darted frantically about in the dipper. Always interested in fish, I glanced at them and could not immediately identify them, so I placed them in a bucket.

Sometimes it is the smallest things that are life-changing: this simple act, placing the four little fish in a bucket, has led to over 25 years of research and insights into the remarkable life of a very unusual fish.

The mangrove rivulus is the only known vertebrate which is a selfing, simultaneous hermaphrodite, able to “clone” themselves.

The “well known” part was due to a very unusual sex life: this is the only known vertebrate which is a selfing, simultaneous hermaphrodite—they “clone” themselves. Adult rivulus have a complex reproductive organ, and internally self-fertilized eggs are laid which hatch into exact genetic duplicates of the parent…with some exceptions, as you shall see. Oddly enough, pure male rivulus, which differ from the “herms” in having a bright orange/red tint, had been caught in the wild, but their function was unknown: sexual reproduction had been documented in the lab but never in the wild…but more on this later.

Covered with mosquito bites, I kept glancing in the bucket on the way back to my office that day. Once I got an ID on my fish, a few days later I was back in the mangrove swamp, peering at the small puddle where I had collected the fish. But this was no common puddle! I immediately recognized it as a water-filled land crab burrow. With a quantum leap in collecting technology, I plunged a small net into the murky depths of the burrow, and withdrew it with 5 more rivulus.  A few more dips, and I had a total of 13.  I was floored to realize that I had just collected more rivulus in one location than anyone ever had before.

Setting traps for rivulus in Florida mangroves.

More than a Hole in the Ground

After gently placing the fish back in the burrow, I left, wondering if this association was mere coincidence.

The great land crab (Cardisoma guanhumi) is a large blue crab found throughout the shorelines of the tropical Atlantic, but it is actually a terrestrial crab. It digs burrows in saltmarshes and mangroves and sometime inland for some distance. The burrows are dug to the depth of groundwater, typically about 2-3 ft. deep, and the crab uses the pool of water to moisten its gills.

I began to suspect that the “scarcity” of rivulus had more to do with “looking in all the wrong places.” I was right. I checked crab holes far and wide, in every saltmarsh and mangrove swamp where my job led me. In the ensuing years, I have collected several thousand rivulus, and not just in Florida: I have found them in Belize, and also in Honduras, the Bahamas and Cuba.

The relationship seems well established. So, in Florida at least, rivulus is not as rare as originally thought, but still rare enough to warrant designation by the state as a “Species of Special Concern” and collection is prohibited without a permit.

Fish or Amphibian?

Early in my burrow-peering days, I found that sometimes rivulus would be out of the water, stuck to the side of the burrow, well above the water line. This behavior apparently offers the fish a means of avoiding poor quality water. During these aerial jaunts, the fish becomes torpid and respires through an extensive capillary network in the skin and fins.

My colleague Dr. Patricia Wright from the University of Guelph in Canada has been studying the physiology of emersion in her lab for years, and her findings are remarkable. My own lab study has shown that they can live at least two months out of the water in damp habitats: when re-flooded after 66 days, they were skinny, but eager to eat and devoured mosquito larvae immediately!

The adaptive value of emersion was dramatically revealed when I came upon a macabre scene inside a crab burrow where dozens of small minnows had been stranded by receding tides.  Not as hardy as rivulus, the minnows began to die and rot, and I observed several rivulus emersed above and on the rafts of floating corpses, waiting for conditions to improve.  A week later, when all trace of the dead fish was gone, only live rivulus were left in the burrow.

It turns out that rivulus will also occupy small, shallow pools at higher elevations in the mangroves. These pools flood and dry intermittently with higher tides or heavy rainfall. It is rare to find other fish species here, as they die when the pools dry. In Belize, my colleagues William P. Davis and Bruce J. Turner and I were puzzling over where the rivulus went when such pools dried.  We had assumed that they would retreat to adjacent crab burrows or burrow into masses of mangrove leaf litter.  It turns out that there were other housing options when your pool dries up.

Dr. Eric Reyier and I performing a visual census. I’m wearing pink “tags” for labeling filed sites.

The Birds and the Bees

Speaking of sex (were we?), I have already alluded to the mysterious presence of male fish in an hermaphroditic species. Why would nature find this necessary? We know that male fish regularly show up in laboratory colonies of rivulus, and rearing the developing eggs at lower temperatures (~ 20° C /68° F) produces a high percentage of males, but low temperatures are not a common phenomenon in the tropics.  So, my colleagues and I were shocked in our initial collections in Belize to discover that fully 25 percent of the population was male, and this high ratio has now persisted for over two decades. A few stray males have shown up in Florida, and a couple from the Bahamas and Honduras, but something strange is going on in Belize, because there the fish is reproducing sexually.

Apparently, in the presence of these flashy males, the herms somehow suppress internal self-fertilization (a fascinating physiological problem in itself!) and lay unfertilized eggs, which are then fertilized externally by the males.  Of course, in the murky confines of a crab burrow (not the most romantic of settings), this has never been observed, but geneticists can tell by looking at the DNA that ‘sex’ is happening here!

When some wild Belize fish produce self-fertilized eggs in captivity, the offspring are not genetically identical. This means that at some point in prior generations, sexual reproduction occurred. Cloning has taken a lesser role here. Why? We don’t know. And the real puzzler is why would you need sex in an animal that appears to be eminently successful without it? After all, if you are distributed from southern Brazil to central Florida and throughout the entire Caribbean and western tropical Atlantic, you must be doing something right.  This extensive range does speak to the advantages of ‘waif dispersal’: it only takes a single individual to found a population.

As they say, much remains to be done, but I thank my lucky stars that I did not discard that dipper full of murky water on that fateful, mosquito-ridden day 25 years ago.  I still stalk the mangroves and look for other miracles. And there are others out there, to be sure.

D. Scott Taylor was raised in east central Florida and has a PhD in marine biology. His career interests are in mangrove fishes, where he has studied at field sites in Belize, Honduras, Cuba, the Bahamas and coastal Florida, battling mosquitoes the entire time.  He is currently a land manager with the Brevard County (Florida) Environmentally Endangered Lands Program, charged with managing and restoring Florida’s diverse natural habitats.

This guest blog is part of our 2013 National Wildlife Week celebration of trees and the wildlife that depend on them.

Delivery of hundreds of thousands of messages in April, 2012, as they continued to pour into the Environmental Protection Agency.

Support Heating Up for Wildlife

Over the past few months, over three million people officially voiced their support for landmark first-ever limits on carbon pollution  from new coal-fired power plants.

The record-breaking number of messages to the Environmental Protection Agency is sending a strong message to our leaders that Americans want an end to the unlimited pollution that drives rising global temperatures with increasing negative impacts for our wildlife and our communities.

As the heat blazed across the country, National Wildlife Federation supporters have been taking action on solutions to global warming–voicing support for Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to limit carbon pollution, speaking at public hearings, and spreading the word to help more people protect wildlife.

Big Polluters Attack Environmental Protection Agency

The fight continues as Big Polluters fund members of Congress who are attempting to cripple the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect us from harmful carbon pollution.

With each new attack, National Wildlife Federation supporters have immediately spoken up for wildlife–contacting their legislators to urge action on global warming and giving generous donations to continue the campaign for wildlife.

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First-Ever Limits on Carbon from Coal-Fired Power

The first-ever rules on carbon pollution from new coal fired power plants are expected to be completed by the Environmental Protection Agency and approved by the Obama Administration this year. These ground-breaking carbon pollution limits pave the way for moving forward with limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants–the largest source of carbon pollution in the nation.

credit, Susanne Miller/USFWS

Throughout the Midwest, this summer’s heat waves fueled by climate change worsened summer temperatures in streams and rivers, driving them to impossibly high temperatures. Already, tens of thousands of fish have been reported dead–including sturgeon, bass, catfish and carp.

Reducing the carbon pollution that fuels global warming is necessary to ensure wildlife habitats do not become uninhabitable–giving hope to the future of polar bears, moose and fish.

Thanks for all you do for wildlife—keep up the great work!

Rafters on the Cache la Poudre River in July, 2012. (NWF Photo by Judith Kohler)

At first glance, it looks normal. Dozens of life-jacketed people in bright blue and yellow rafts are bouncing along the Cache la Poudre River. A closer look reveals that the water is as dark as some of the rough rocks that make the river a favorite for kayakers. Mud is piled up along the banks and stretches into the river.

The destruction that began June 9 when a lightning-sparked fire raced over more than 87,000 acres west of Fort Collins will be felt for years as storms washing over barren slopes unleash more ash, mud and debris into the Poudre—Colorado’s only federally designated wild and scenic river.

The Poudre is also one of northern Colorado’s best fisheries.Tim Romano, in a Field & Stream blog, calls the Poudre “a beautiful trout stream.”

“It’s devastating, it really is,” says Ken Kehmeier, senior aquatic biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

He fears the majority of the adult fish could die off.

Compounding Effects of Forest Fires

Roughly 30 miles of the 126-mile river that starts in Rocky Mountain National Park are affected. The full scope of the damage likely won’t be known for a while, but biologists have already found dead fish in the river. The pH of the water has changed in places, becoming more acidic in some spots and more alkaline in others from the ash, pine needles and other debris.

“That’s  a huge stressor” for the fish, Kehmeier says.

Sediment lines the riverbed and banks of the Cache la Poudre River. (NWF Photo by Judith Kohler)

“We lost 70 percent of the adult population of fish on the South Platte after the first couple storm events. I would say it will be at least that bad on the Poudre based on what I’m seeing,” Kehmeier says.

More than $40 million has been spent to dredge a reservoir, divert sediment and revegetate the Hayman fire area.  Kehmeier says it took five or six years to start rebuilding the fish populations in the South Platte and aggressive stocking of rainbow and brown trout.

Denver Water and the city of Aurora released water from Cheesman Reservoir to flush the sediment in the South Platte. The lack of large reservoirs feeding into the Poudre means biologists need more help from nature there.

“What we really need is a big winter. A large snowpack would run a flushing flow through that system and would flush out that sediment,” Kehmeier explains.

This year, dry, warm weather resulted in the lowest-ever snowpack in parts of Colorado.  Sizzling-hot temperatures and parched forests and grasslands have driven wildfires across the Rocky Mountain West this summer. More than 250 homes were destroyed and one person was killed in the High Park fire.

The orange beetle-infested trees among the blackened trees in the Poudre Canyon are further testament to the damage caused by climate change. The winters haven’t been cold enough to kill off the bugs. Drought has weakened the trees’ resistance.

(NWF Photo by Judith Kohler)

Mud fills spaces between the rocks and gravel on the river bed, wiping out the trout’s spawning grounds and suffocating eggs, Kehmeier says. The mud kills the flies the fish eat. A loss of vegetation along the banks eliminates the canopy that helps keep the water cool and is home for grasshoppers and other insects the fish feed on.

Kehmeier has a history with the Poudre River.  He fished it while attending Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Later, he was the regional aquatic biologist for several years.

“It’s pretty painful to see the way that river looks now,” he says.

The debris and sediment will dissipate and the insects and fish will rebound. State and federal agencies will reseed the forest. Kehmeier figures the South Platte fishery is 85 to 90 percent of what it was before the wildfire.

“It will recover. The Poudre will recover,” he says. “It’s just going to take more years than people anticipate.”

An endangered goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara) off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. Photo by William Goodwin.

This Photo of the Day was donated by a participant in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. See more photos or sign up for the 42nd Annual National Wildlife Photo Contest.

National Wildlife Federation’s Oregon affiliate, the Association of Northwest Steelheaders (ANWS), is preparing to launch an exciting and innovative program that aims to help returning war veterans develop new skills and ways of responding to stress while learning to preserve wildlife and the natural habitats that support them.

River Ambassadors

The River Ambassador Program is designed with two goals in mind: to teach the value of preserving wildlife and natural habitats and to assist veterans in developing new skill sets that allow them to better respond to the stress and challenges that inevitably accompanies the return to civilian life.

The program’s initial three-day course, scheduled for September 13-16 near Madras, Oregon, is the brainchild of ANWS’s Executive Director Russell Bassett. A recent Iraq veteran himself, Bassett can speak personally to the great therapeutic healing properties found in the sport of angling and in experiencing the great outdoors. “Angling helps develop coping skills that help alleviate stress and helps find inner peace and a sense of serenity,” said Bassett. “Although the course speaks of life found in rivers and streams through the eyes of the angler, the connection is intentionally to get the participants to integrate successfully back into civilian life and to be life-long stewards of the environment. Respect for nature and its inhabitants are our core focus. The program will foster respect for our differences yet simultaneously celebrate what we have in common as war veterans, a high regard for natural habitats, the sport of fishing and our human bond.”

Participants in the program will have the opportunity to learn the skills of river and nautical reading, and will learn about salmonid life history and conservation, entomology, and different fishing techniques, including fly fishing for trout and steelhead and gear fishing for salmon and steelhead. A guided drift-fishing trip completes the program on the last day. Each participant will receive a full set of fishing gear (rod, reel, lines, flies, lures) for their use during the program and to keep and continue their process on the river wherever life takes them.

Free to Qualified Members of the Military

ANWS’s River Ambassador Program is offered free of charge to qualified members of the military who have recently returned from deployment. With the success of September’s pilot program, plans call for expanding to at least two programs a year in coming years. But that depends on securing adequate program funding and support. Donations of funds or of guiding, rods or equipment to support this terrific program can be made by contacting ANWS via www.nwsteelheaders.org, office@anws.org, or 503-653-4176.

Learn more about the River Ambassador Program here: www.nwsteelheaders.org/conservation/river-ambassador-program

1. 

   The "Border Bill" threatens to ignore environmental laws which protect important wildlife species like brown bears. (Photo: Steve Hillebrand for USFWS Headquarters/Flickr)

   Representative Bishop’s (R-UT) Border Bill (H.R. 2578) creates a 100-mile zone along U.S. Canadian and Mexican borders which will allow U.S. Border Patrol to regulate land while ignoring 16 essential conservation and environmental laws. If you live along the 100-mile buffer zone, call your local representative’s office and let them know what hiking, fishing, and hunting you could be missing out on  should the bill pass.
2. The House will also be looking at the Strategic Energy Production Act (H.R. 4480), a package of strategic drilling bills that jeopardizes access to public lands while undermining leasing reforms intended to safeguard air, water, fish, and wildlife in these drillable areas. The underlying message is drill, drill, drill, anyplace, anywhere, anytime. Additionally, the bill will expedite drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska without considering important wildlife areas for caribou and migratory birds.
3. On the Senate side, Senator Inhofe’s  (R-OK)  Congressional Review Act Resolution (S.J.Res. 37) would undo the EPA’s Mercury & Air Toxics Standards for power plants and would block the agency from reissuing similar safeguards. These standards and safeguards are designed with the public in mind for they protect the public from power plants’ mercury and toxic air pollution. (In case you missed it, here’s Sen. Inhofe’s attempt to misrepresent NWF’s statements on the rule, now that’s a headline that should be bogus)
4. 

   Farm Bill amendments are threatening the Clean Water Act's ability to protect America's important waterways. Alger County, Michigan (Photo: James Marvin Phelps/Flickr)

   The drama surrounding the Farm Bill continues in the Senate. Currently, the bill is bogged down with over 300 amendments, many of which wreak havoc on the environment. Attacks are most evident on the Clean Water Act.  Amendments (S.A 2165 and S.A. 2177) by Senator Barrasso (R-WY) and Senator Paul (R-KY) prohibit the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA from finalizing and implementing pending Clean Water Act guidance. The Rubio Amendment (S.A. 2261) by Senator Rubio (R-FL) would block EPA’s ability to hold the state of Florida to Clean Water Act numeric nutrient standards. Far from benefiting the American public, these amendments would further damage an already precious resource.

What can you do to oppose this week’s heavy-handed attacks on our environment? Look up your Senators and Representative’s numbers or e-mails. Urge a NO vote on all of these anti-environmental legislation (bills and amendments are listed here for reference). And remember, your voice counts! I’m off to give the offices of Senator’s Stabenow and Levin and Representative McCotter a call—you should get cracking too.

Dan Egan with the Journal Sentinel captures the story.

Not good news

What this means is more and more Asian carp are finding their way past the electrical barrier —which is in direct contrast with the Army Corps’ assurance that these barriers are working to stop carp from entering the Great Lakes.

Also of concern is that these new test results were apparently posted 10 days ago very quietly via an update on a website that only a select few wonks (including me) check.

Given that Asian carp negatively impact our fish, wildlife and economy of the Great Lakes, this information should have been released more broadly to the public.

If this doesn’t alarm folks—it should. We need to permanently separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River in Chicago in order to stop Asian carp and other invasive species from moving back in forth between both basins.

While the Corps sluggishly moves, Asian carp are swimming faster and getting closer to our Great Lakes. We appreciate the efforts of the White House to speed up its efforts on finding a solution, but more urgent action needs to happen now or our Great Lakes will never be the same.