Mt. Wonalancet, NH, not far from the route of the Portland-Montreal Pipeline (photo: Chris Schoenboem)

Fighting back against Big Oil

Fortunately, New Englanders aren’t known to let themselves get trampled on. Local conservation groups, public health experts and many others has been fighting back against Exxon, bringing widespread attention to the project — enough that we have the support of nearly the entire Congressional delegation from those three states (Senator Ayotte, we’re still waiting on ya). We even managed to get 1,500 people to a rally in Portland back in frigid January, the biggest gathering of any kind in 25 years. Suffice to say, New Englanders care, and we don’t want this dangerous substance pumped through our rivers and forests, threatening species like moose and black bears and contributing to climate change.

The problem is, the US State Department (which is tasked with overseeing the pipeline) doesn’t necessarily notice anything amiss and hasn’t the told the company it can’t proceed without a new permit. The State Department needs to make it clear: if Exxon wants to bring poisonous, climate-wrecking tar sands across Northern New England, the impacts are going to be given a hard look and approval is going to needed. It’s a common sense requirement, just making sure we know the threats and the particulars before giving the green light to Exxon, but State hasn’t gotten involved yet because the company hasn’t made a formal proposal.

And that’s the catch-22: unless the State Department tells them to formalize their plans, Exxon might never get around to filing the paperwork — and they’ve already told regional officials they don’t have to. They’re more than happy to act like the cartoon cat burping up feathers, shrugging its shoulders when you ask what happened to Tweety Bird. But this is real life, and New Englanders want to protect their region and wildlife from spills and climate change.  All risk and no reward does not interest New Hampshire, or Vermont or Maine for that matter.

Mr. Smith (and a bunch more) goes to Washington

New England and DC — culture-wise — may sometimes feel like oil and water, but when actual oil and actual water are in the mix, it’s worth a trip to the nation’s capitol. On Monday, a group from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont came down to Washington, DC to tell their stories to State Department officials in person. It wasn’t your usual DC lobby trip: Fishermen, retired oil industry lawyers, and a handful of conservationists all made the rounds of Capitol Hill, meeting with agencies and Congressional offices with a simple request: Can someone PLEASE make sure this tar sands plan is carefully reviewed?

Our hometown lobby team at the State Department (photo: Peter LaFontaine/NWF)

Pushing toxic, spill-prone tar sands through Exxon’s pipeline across Maine is an all-risk, no-reward proposition. The health of Maine people, our economy, and our way of life, depend on clean water for drinking, tourism, our fishing industry, and recreation. - Lisa Pohlmann, Natural Resources Council of Maine

We plan to keep the heat on Exxon and the State Department, and our group also got a chance to sit down with (deep breath…) the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, to talk about updating our nation’s safety standards for tar sands projects like the Northeast pipeline and Keystone XL. After Mayflower — and Kalamazoo, before that — we can’t trust the industry to operate safely, or even to tell us what they have planned for our back yards.

It can be hard to tell with federal agencies, but I think State got the message.

Tell the US State Department to protect New England’s wildlife and communities from this dangerous and polluting project. Say “NO!” to the Portland-Montreal tar sands pipeline.

Help us plant 75,000 trees for National Wildlife Week, and be sure to share this with your friends on Facebook.

Support National Wildlife Federation’s efforts to plant 75,000 native trees in celebration of National Wildlife Week! Make a generous tax-deductible donation today >>

If you’re an educator, you can find out more about about National Wildlife Week and all of the great educator resources we have available at NWF.org/NationalWildlifeWeek. If you have any questions about National Wildlife Week, contact us at nationalwildlifeweek@nwf.org.

3/18 Update: A prior version of this infographic incorrectly stated the height of trees from whence wood duck ducklings leap.

But this video of Minnesota moose getting outfitted with “cell phone-like” radio collars was too cute not to share. Up close with adorable moose! The narrator’s amusing accent! (I’m from Boston, so trust me that I laugh with, not at, other regions’ accents.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Learn more about why researchers are so troubled by the decline of Minnesota’s moose.

Photo by Tom Blandford

See more of Tom Blandford’s photos on Flickr >>

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Moose photo by Rick Libbey

“The state’s moose population has been in decline for years but never at the precipitous rate documented this winter,” said Tom Landwehr, DNR commissioner. “This is further and definitive evidence the population is not healthy. It reaffirms the conservation community’s need to better understand why this iconic species of the north is disappearing from our state.”

The state’s annual hunting season isn’t a cause for the moose’s decline. Researchers last month began an ambitious research project to figure out what’s killing them off. Calves are dying at higher rates than normal and, more significantly, adult moose in their prime are dropping dead.

What was once a healthy population sustainable enough to allow hunting is now in rapid decline. The population in northeast Minnesota has been declining for years, from 8,840 in 2006 down to only about 2,760 counted in January 2013. While just 46 bull moose were harvested in 2012, the population plunged by nearly 1,500 moose from 2012 to 2013. Minnesota’s other population of about 4,000 moose in northwest Minnesota virtually disappeared over 20 years, with fewer than 100 remaining by the mid-2000s.

What’s Driving the Decline?

“This is a tragic collapse, but it isn’t a surprise,” says Dr. Doug Inkley, a wildlife biologist and the National Wildlife Federation’s senior scientist. “There are probably several factors affecting the population, but we know moose have trouble coping with hot weather, which has been on the rise in Minnesota. Stress factors, such as rising temperatures, can cause moose health to decline, making them  more vulnerable to disease and predators.”

The National Wildlife Federation highlighted the climate crisis’ impact on Minnesota moose just last week with the release of a new report, Wildlife in a Warming World:

Biologists attribute most of this decline to increasing temperatures: when it gets too warm moose typically seek shelter rather than foraging for nutritious foods needed to keep them healthy. They become more vulnerable to tick infestations, which have proliferated as the region has warmed. Ticks leave moose weakened from blood loss and with hairless patches where they tried to rub off the ticks. Without protective hair, these animals can die from cold exposure in the winter. Individual moose infested with 50,000 to 70,000 ticks—ten to twenty times more than normal—have been documented.

Signs of Struggle

Nationwide, it’s harder to get an exact gauge on the impact of climate change since moose have only recently returned to their historical range in some areas. Moose were once found as far south as Pennsylvania before over-hunting and habitat destruction wiped them out from much of the eastern United States. Populations in places like Massachusetts are still re-establishing a foothold.

But in New Hampshire, the impact of warmer temperatures on moose are clear and dire. Researchers say New Hampshire moose are literally being eaten alive by ticks. Moose there have to deal with 30,000 ticks at a time in a normal year, but in recent warm years, moose carry as many as 150,000 ticks. The moose die of anemia, a lack of healthy red blood cells. After the unseasonably warm winter in 2011, they think that it’s likely that all calves born the previous year were killed along with 40 percent of adults.

And then 2012 was America’s hottest year on record. In Michigan, where a moose have returned to the Upper Peninsula, efforts to count the population have been hampered by warm temperatures - without a covering of white snow, researchers can’t spot the brown moose from the air.

Time to Confront Climate Change

The climate crisis is already changing the playing field for wildlife and urgent action is needed to preserve America’s conservation legacy. Species that have spent thousands of years or more adapting to their ecosystems are now watching their homes transformed before their eyes. We must act now to cut carbon pollution, speed our transition to clean energy, and safeguard America’s ecosystems and communities.

Congress hasn’t shown much interest in tackling the climate crisis, but the Obama Administration can take a number of steps, like using Clean Air Act authority to limit carbon pollution from new and existing power plants, rejecting the dirty Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and ensuring the budget fights ahead do not slash critical investments in clean energy.

Speak up for wildlife by urging President Obama to limit carbon pollution from coal-burning power plants.

Moose photo by Rick Libbey

“I saw my first moose and it just did something to me. I was struck by how big they are, and how confidently they look at you.”

Moose Photography

Now, Libbey is a full-time wildlife photographer of moose and loons in Maine–take a look at his photos, some of which he generously donated for use by the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund.

Quietly waiting in his kayak for the majestic creatures, Libbey has a unique view of the moose. The moose also have a view of Libbey, but seem unconcerned with his careful and slow-moving presence. “Even in the midst of summer,” Libbey says, “the moose are getting ready for the winter and I do not want to send them crashing off.”

This year Libbey spent time watching one particular bull moose that he refers to as Sherman, as in “Sherman the tank.” The moose is a good 1,500 pounds, he estimates–a good 300 pounds larger than the other moose. Libbey explained that he loves the really big moose, which “just seem like old wise men–they just walk more slowly.”

These large moose, he describes, are generally quite healthy, which you can tell in part by their healthy coat of fur.

Moose Suffer From Warm Winters

Not all moose, however, are doing as well as those who live far north in Maine. Highly adapted to cold, in the summer moose suffer when temperatures are over 57 degrees F.

At the same time, winter tick populations can explode in New Hampshire and Minnesota in warm winters with a late first snowfall–to the point that many moose are simply overcome.

Libbey described seeing a small yearling bull moose in New Hampshire that had succumbed to ticks.  “He was covered in globs of grape-sized ticks and they were just draining him. First we found his bed, and blood in the snow in his bed. Then we saw him. He died two weeks later.”

Take Action for Moose

While moose in New Hampshire and Minnesota were experiencing a heat wave and worsened parasites, moose in the mountains of Colorado were forced to flee forest fires blazing across their habitat.  This summer’s drought, extreme heat, and the vast expanses of dead trees caused by pine beetle infestations fueled by climate change intensified the wildfires.

Speak up for moose suffering from the warming climate–urge your members of Congress to address climate change.

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!

A moose leads her calves across an Alaskan road. Photo by Mike Criss.

Create Safe Pathways for Wildlife

On U.S. highways, a vehicle hits an animal at least every 26 seconds. The National Wildlife Federation is working to create corridors for wildlife to cross key habitat areas safely, which will help save wildlife and protect drivers. Learn more and find out how you can help >>
 

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.

Basically untouched until recent decades, the boreal forest’s great natural riches may also turn out to be its undoing: massive amounts of oil have been found in deposits known as “tar sands,” and the energy industry has kicked off a full-scale war on Mother Nature in their rush to boost their profits. Aided by a government that seems determined to wreck the country’s eco-friendly reputation, Big Oil is transforming huge parts of Alberta, Canada into something out of a nightmare, destroying vital wildlife habitat and putting whole populations at risk.

Read on to learn more about nine remarkable species that are directly threatened by tar sands development, then send a message to the President to help protect them.

Woodland Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou)

Woodland caribou are being pushed out by oil development in their habitat (photo: British Columbia Forest Service)

The Canadian federal and provincial governments seem happy to turn a blind eye to the problem, and a stakeholder group that should be leading the charge to protect this iconic species — the Endangered Species Conservation Committee — is stocked with representatives from the energy industry, agriculture and timber companies, who watered down the caribou recovery plan to a toothless piece of paper. And even then, Environment Minister Peter Kent ignored a court order and refused to issue emergency protections for at-risk herds. Scientists fear that industrial development could cause Canada’s woodland caribou to vanish by the end of the century.

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)

Our understanding of gray wolves has come a long way since the days of Little Red Riding Hood. They are impressively smart, social animals that spend as much time playing as hunting, and live together in close-knit packs of 4 to 7 animals.

Gray wolves are a keystone species in the northern ecosystem (photo: flickr/YankeeNovember3)

But in the eyes of the Canadian government this makes them a threat, and an easy scapegoat for the recent rapid declines of the caribou herds. So the government has embarked upon a plan to “cull” wolf populations using poison-laced bait and aerial hunts from helicopters. The poison, strychnine, is known for an excruciating death that progresses painfully from muscle spasms to convulsions to suffocation, over a period of hours. As if that weren’t awful enough, other animals like eagles and even domesticated dogs have been unintended casualties of the baiting campaign.

Black Bears (Ursus americanus)

Black bears like this cub like to eat the garbage from dumps around tar sands mines, much to their misfortune. (photo: Noah Katz)

It shouldn’t come as a surprise by now that tar sands development has directly encroached on bear habitat, leading to more interactions between humans and this species. Unfortunately, the government’s approach has been similar to their wolf plan: shoot ‘em and keep digging for oil.

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development says 145 black bears were killed by Fish and Wildlife conservation officers last year after being habituated to garbage in the oilsands region. The number of bears shot in the Fort McMurray district was nearly three times the count the previous year and the highest in recent history, said spokesman Darcy Whiteside. Nearly half — 68 bears — were shot in oilsands camps and facilities after being attracted to the camp by food, garbage or other attractants, Whiteside said Tuesday.

Canada Lynx (Lynx canadensis)

Canada Lynx near Whitehorse, Yukon (photo: Keith Williams)

Unlike bears, lynx shy away from contact with humans. Development in the eastern part of Canada has already forced out the big cats, and pressure from tar sands exploitation in Alberta is causing concerns there as well. And there’s a critical connection between gray wolves and lynx: wolves kill coyotes, which directly compete with lynx for snowshoe hare and other prey. So fewer wolves means more coyotes, which means fewer lynx. For a population that’s already threatened, that’s bad news. On the other hand, protecting wolves means lynx may rebound as well.

Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis)

Sandhill cranes face a double-whammy in Alberta and Nebraska (photo: flickr.com/nigel)

The big birds migrate thousands of miles each year from their breeding grounds in western Canada to as far south as Mexico, fattening up for a month in Nebraska’s Platte River valley. But this exposes them to a double-whammy from tar sands, with Alberta’s energy development destroying prime nesting habitat, and the danger of a spill in the Nebraska Sandhills region (from which they take their name) that could take away a crucial feeding ground. As it happens, their migratory pathway overlaps the route of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline almost mile-for-mile, meaning that a spill at any point will put this iconic species in harm’s way.

Walleye (Sander vitreus)

An angler in Ontario holds her latest catch (photo: flickr.com/Rowdy Rider)

But walleye and several other native species of fish might soon become a scarce commodity if Big Oil gets its way. Residents of Fort Chipeweyan, Alberta (most of whose residents are First Nations members) have reported a pretty scary development in the last few years: lots and lots of deformed fish downstream of the tar sands developments. In 2010, commercial fishing ground to a halt due to concerns about heavy metals like mercury and cadmium…as if anyone would want to eat a filet with a golf-ball sized tumor. The Canadian government, not surprisingly, contests these claims, but independent data shows that contamination has reached 30 times the federally-accepted levels.

In addition to all that, tar sands extraction requires a lot of water — up to three barrels of water for every barrel of oil — and this has disrupted the normal cycles of of the Athabasca river and surrounding watersheds.

Moose (Alces alces)

It's hard to play hide-and-seek when you weigh more than a ton (photo: flicker/Benjamin 1970)

This species has been a major part of native culture and their diet for millennia, but with numbers near Fort McKay, Alberta declining 60% in recent years, First Nations elders now have to travel up to 200 kilometers to find moose during their traditional hunt. Moose meat has also tested high in arsenic and carcinogens created by tar sands mining, endangering the health of the region’s indigenous communities.

Like woodland caribou, moose are prey for gray wolves, and toxins in moose meat spells trouble for their predators.

Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis)

Scaup, also known as "bluebills," call the Athabasca River delta home (photo: Carol Foil)

Scaup (pronounced “skawp”) are a favorite of hunters but, like so many other creatures, tar sands operations are taking a toll. In addition to direct habitat loss, Big Oil has created a particularly gruesome way for these birds to die. One of the dirtiest parts of oil mining is so-called “tailings ponds,” gigantic open pits where the industry dumps its liquid waste. There are lots of these contaminated tailings ponds in the delta region, filled with toxic chemicals and oil, but which appear to flying birds like just another good spot to land. And when they do, it’s not hard to imagine what happens: slow, painful death. The industry’s solutions have ranged from the simple (and ineffective), like scarecrows, to the absurd — supersonic “cannons” that boom loud enough to disturb animals for miles around, and scare off any birds from landing in the sludge.

You and Me (Homo sapiens)

Climate change threatens our oceans, shorelines, and every other ecosystem on earth (photo: Barry Keleher)

And perhaps the biggest threat of all is the danger posed by global warming, which has already reached a tipping point and could be pushed over the edge by burning Canada’s tar sands oil. Rising sea levels, extreme droughts, flooding — it might sound like the Apocalypse but in fact it’s already happening.

Speak up now! Tell President Obama to stand up for wildlife in the tar sands region, and stand strong against Big Oil’s plans to destroy the boreal forest.

National Wildlife Federation is helping to lead the charge against tar sands and Big Oil’s dirty projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, which would help trigger even more development in the boreal forest. We need your help to make sure that this pristine ecosystem and its magnificent animals don’t vanish forever.

To donate directly to our tar sands campaign, please go to NWF’s “Choose Your Cause” website, or visit NWF.org/tarsands to learn more and find out how you can make a difference.

The photo that generated the most accusations

BILL ROTH (ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS/MCT/LANDOV)

After we published Bill Roth’s picture of a moose sitting in a backyard baby pool in Anchorage, Alaska, in a 1999 issue, we were besieged with angry messages from members accusing us of using computer trickery. In response, in a subsequent issue of the magazine, we published another Roth photo taken from a different angle showing the animal’s full body inside the pool. While it didn’t generate many letters, the second photo did produce one reaction that I still remember today. “I was wrong in assuming you would doctor a photo,” a member in Oregon wrote. “Please accept the enclosed donation to NWF as an apology.”

The photo that produced the most smiles

KATHARINE FENG (MINDEN PICTURES)

It’s impossible to verify how many people actually smiled after looking at it, but this image of a four-week-old panda cub produced a large reader response, including two dozen letters from students in a California elementary school class who told us it was their favorite photo ever. Katharine Feng took the picture in a captive-breeding facility in China for a 2005 NW article. “I photographed the cub as it stretched and yawned,” she told us. “Its eyes were not yet opened, so it could not see.” Feng assured us that her presence did not cause any problems for the cub.

The photo that spawned the most mail from readers

DANIEL J. COX

When it first appeared in the magazine in a 1998 essay about wildlife in winter, Daniel J. Cox’s heart-wrenching picture of a polar bear mother and cub in northern Manitoba huddling over another cub that had just died generated an outpouring of emotional letters from NWF members. Cox told us it was “a tragic scene, but one that I believe needed to be documented with a camera so people can see how difficult wild creatures’ lives really are.”

The photo that got the most staff votes

STEFFEN BINKE

I should qualify that this Steffen Binke image of a dwarf minke whale in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef received the most votes from the judges in the magazine’s 2009 annual photo contest. It was awarded the grand prize. Binke said he took the photo with a fish-eye lens, only a few feet away from the massive creature. “It was a great moment,” he recalled. “I am still sure I could hear its heartbeat and breathing.”

The National Wildlife Photo Contest

Now in its 42^nd year, the National Wildlife Photo Contest is open for submissions, and you don’t have to travel to distant places like the Great Barrier Reef to create a winning image. Sometimes, in fact, the best photographic subjects can be found right in your own backyard. This year’s winners will be published in the magazine and will receive some great prizes. Entrants also can participate in our separate People’s Choice competition. For details, including how to enter, visit www.nwf.org/photocontest.  To see more nature and wildlife images, go to www.nwf.org/photozone.