Bighorn sheep pair on the shoulder of Mt. Everts in Yellowstone

Bighorn sheep rut in Yellowstone

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Two bison during the annual rut in Hayden Valley in Yellowstone

A tender moment during the elk rut at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone

Scenes from the Yellowstone Elk Rut

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A misguided mating attempt between two Pacific chorus frogs in Yosemite

Pacific chorus frogs at Gaylor Lake in Yosemite

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River otter on the Yellowstone River in Hayden Valley share a cutthroat trout

Canada geese pair on the Gardner River at the north entrance of Yellowstone

Two bald eagles in Lamar Valley in Yellowstone

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If you need some more animal cuteness this week, meet Winkelhimer, the painting squirrel. Or watch this crow snowboarding.

Help protect otters and other wildlife. Send a message to the Obama Administration, urging them to act now to restore Clean Water Act protections to small streams and wetlands.

Here is a little boy at the San Diego Zoo who definitely found a way to communicate with a curious river otter.

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Find out how you can connect your kids to nature — right in your own backyard!

Misdirected federal funding cuts could become the next big threat to endangered wildlife like the Florida panther. Photo: Michael Levine.

With the holidays right around the corner, House Republican leaders are scrambling to fulfill the last-minute wish lists of their good friends, big polluters.

Knowing that Congress must pass the federal spending bills before year’s end in order to continue funding the government, some members are scheming to push through anti-wildlife measures that would otherwise never make it into law.

A whopping 51 anti-environmental “riders”–so called because they ride along appropriations bills while having nothing to do with spending–are being considered, making it one of the most aggressive assaults in our nation’s history to wildlife, clean air, and clean water.

At risk are cuts to programs in the Endangered Species Act, National Wildlife Refuge System, and State and Tribal Wildlife Grants Program, which have been essential to protecting and restoring our wildlife and natural resources. In addition, some of the most egregious riders attempt to:

• Block the EPA and U.S. Army Corps from clarifying the scope of the Clean Water Act, leaving 60% of our nation’s rivers and streams and over 20 million acres of wetlands–which provide crucial habitat for river otters–at risk.
• Force approval of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline and remove the President’s authority to make a final decision on the project. Bypassing much-needed environmental review and turning Congress into a permitting body on this dangerous project would undermine the entire process and put wildlife–including the endangered whooping crane–and water supplies at risk of toxic oil spills.
• Block EPA from reducing mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants, industrial boilers or cement kilns, which already causes suffering for common loons.

Passing a spending bill should not be an opportunity to force through unrelated matters that have not received proper consideration or public scrutiny. We can responsibly and successfully fund the federal government in a way that protects our nation’s wildlife, natural resources, and public health.

Urge your members of Congress to stand firm against anti-wildlife riders in the federal spending bill.

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! >>

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

Now scientists say their numbers are falling for new reasons that aren’t fully understood:

“This year was an alarming number of white shark attacks that we identified,” says Dr. Michael Murray, a Monterey Bay Aquarium veterinarian. “I think the jury’s still out on, ‘a’ what it means and ‘b’ why it happens.”

It’s puzzling because the sharks don’t eat the otters, but one bite is enough to kill the furry creatures. It’s one reason for a worrying decline in the number of California sea otters.

The latest count of this threatened species shows their population dropped to just 2,711, a decline of 3.6 percent. The number of sea otter pups, which represent the future of the species, is down 11 percent.

But sharks are only part of the problem. Otters are also dying of heart failure:

Heart disease could be linked to the otter’s voracious appetite that makes it vulnerable to toxic runoff from land, says Tim Tinker of the U.S. Geological Survey, who tracks the otters’ food supply.

“Disease causing parasites are going to end up in the ocean there. And sea otters are at the top of the food chain,” Tinker said.

Pollution is only the most recent threat to sea otters posed by humans. They were hunted to near-extinction by the early 20th century before an international ban on hunting, conservation efforts, and reintroduction programs allowed sea otters to rebound.

Learn more about sea otters at NWF’s Ranger Rick.

Over at The New Republic’s The Vine, Brad Plumer discusses how sea otters make the case for capping carbon pollution & allowing trading of pollution permits:

Let’s say Congress enacted a cap-and-trade system and pollution permits were selling for about $20 a ton. If [scientist Chris] Wilmers is right and a healthy sea otter population could sequester ten million tons of carbon, that’d be worth $200 million. So polluters might decide that it’s cheaper to fund sea otter preservation programs than cut power use (at least in the short term), and new offset projects could get approved. Voila: There’s suddenly money to try this sea otter strategy. (Obviously you’d need to have regulators make sure these offset projects are actually working.)

On the other hand, if your national energy policy just consists of a bunch of flat regulations and subsidies for different energy sources, then this whole sea otter business is going to get ignored. Sure, maybe Congress will decide that sea otter preservation is something worth funding directly, but waiting for the legislature to bankroll worthwhile carbon-reduction projects is an awfully sluggish and inflexible way to do business. (Plus, who knows, maybe the urchin lobby steps into the fray.) Right now, Congress is leaning toward this regulation-and-subsidy approach to energy. But there’s an excellent case for a more flexible market-based system. Just ask the otters.

You really otter act now (sorry, had to say it) & tell your senators we need clean energy legislation with a cap on carbon pollution.

Photo via Flickr’s MikeBaird

Picture this:

Once home, the father reaches for a children’s dictionary — the one with the big colorful pictures and 18-point font. The father says, “Let’s look up dandelion, son!”

If you are rolling your eyes from the sickly-sweet unreality of this scenario, stay with me for a moment. It all goes horribly wrong.

They flip to the D section and … dandelion isn’t there. And near to where the word should be? Database.

That’s right — the Oxford Junior Dictionary has been slowly removing many nature words, and adding more technological ones.

For the record:

In: Blog, MP3 player, broadband, Blackberry (the electronic kind)

Out: Acorn, beaver, otter, blackberry (the purple berry you can eat)

Sure, there are plenty of other things beside lexicography for parents to worry about. But I ask you – is it absolutely necessary that kids understand broadband technology at age 7? What about stone-skipping or grass-whistling?

It’s not fair to pile on the dictionary’s editors. Junior dictionaries are not meant to hold every word — just the ones commonly used by children. And next to MP3 players, I guess dandelions and acorns don’t stand a chance of making the cut.

The dictionary is simply reflecting the world our children live in, where the virtual world increasingly crowds out the natural one.

But there’s hope: You might assume it was an environmentalist group that raised a fuss about the missing words.

Nope. It was an even more powerful force: a mother.

According to the original story — Lisa Saunders, a mother of four in Northern Ireland, was helping her son with his homework when she realized words like moss and fern weren’t in the dictionary. Missing too were certain Christian terms, like bishop, chapel and saint.

Incensed, she spoke to a reporter late last year, who wrote an article. At the bottom of the online version of the article are 351 comments from readers. The world’s bloggers took it from there.

So. There’s a button at the top of this post. It says “Share.” You know what to do.

And check out NWF’s Green Hour program for great ideas for getting your own kids outside again.

ANIMAL PHOBIAS (if you know of more, add them to my list!)

Animals – Zoophobia
Animal Skin or Fur – Doraphobia
Wild Animals – Agrizoophobia
Bees – Apiphobia
Birds – Ornithophobia

Bulls – Taurophobia
Chickens – Alekorophobia
Dogs or Rabies – Cynophobia
Fish – Ichthyophobia
Frogs – Ranidaphobia
Horses – Equinophobia or Hippophobia
Otters – Lutraphobia
The Great Mole Rat – Zemmiphobia
Insects – Entomophobia or Insectophobia
Insects that eat wood – Isopterophobia
Insects that cause itching – Acarophobia
Reptiles – Herpetophobia
Sharks – Selachophobia
Shellfish – Ostraconophobia
Snakes – Ophidiophobia or Snakephobia
Toads – Bufonophobia
Bats – Chiroptophobia
Cats – Felinophobia, Galeophobia or Gatophobia

It’s no surprise why people find some of these animals intimidating. Sure, snakes, sharks and bats are scary to many people and are often portrayed negatively. But here’s something to think about: Have you ever thought that maybe our phobias of them might be a crucial element to their survival? After all, it means that they are keeping predators like us at bay!