Category: Habitats

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Habitats, Sonoma CoastTags , ,

Ocean heat wave brought 67 rare, warm-water species to North Coast

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

An extended ocean heat wave that spurred a series of ecological anomalies off the Northern California coast — including toxic algae, mass sea lion strandings and the collapse of the bull kelp forest — also promoted the northward migration of an unprecedented number of southern, warm-water species.

Sixty-seven rare, warm-water creatures, including 37 whose presence has never been documented so far north, were found in the region and points poleward, according to a UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory study published Tuesday in “Scientific Reports.” Everything from bottlenose dolphins to two kinds of sea turtles to barnacles and small sea snails were present during the study period between 2014 and early 2017.

One colorless, tiny snail cousin, the striated sea butterfly, hadn’t previously been seen north of the tip of Baja California. It turned up in sampling nets collecting whatever critters might be floating past the Bodega Bay lab, said lead author Eric Sanford, a UC Davis professor of ecology and evolution.

Similarly, pelagic red crabs — four still alive at the lab — that came ashore at Salmon Creek Beach in January 2017 normally would have been closer to Baja, he said. Also found in the bay was the molted shell of a spiny lobster more commonplace in Baja.

With the planet and the ocean warming, the recent, extended marine heat wave “provides a glimpse of what the Northern California coast might look like in the future,” as species move toward cooler environments to survive, Sanford said.

“We’re basically seeing these communities change before our eyes as more southern species become part of these communities,” he said. “That’s pretty dramatic.”

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9376990-181/ocean-heat-wave-brought-67

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & Energy, Habitats, Sonoma CoastTags , , , , ,

Heatwaves sweeping oceans ‘like wildfires’, scientists reveal

Damian Carrington, THE GUARDIAN

Extreme temperatures destroy kelp, seagrass and corals – with alarming impacts for humanity

The number of heatwaves affecting the planet’s oceans has increased sharply, scientists have revealed, killing swathes of sea-life like “wildfires that take out huge areas of forest”.

The damage caused in these hotspots is also harmful for humanity, which relies on the oceans for oxygen, food, storm protection and the removal of climate-warming carbon dioxide the atmosphere, they say.

Global warming is gradually increasing the average temperature of the oceans, but the new research is the first systematic global analysis of ocean heatwaves, when temperatures reach extremes for five days or more.

The research found heatwaves are becoming more frequent, prolonged and severe, with the number of heatwave days tripling in the last couple of years studied. In the longer term, the number of heatwave days jumped by more than 50% in the 30 years to 2016, compared with the period of 1925 to 1954.

As heatwaves have increased, kelp forests, seagrass meadows and coral reefs have been lost. These foundation species are critical to life in the ocean. They provide shelter and food to many others, but have been hit on coasts from California to Australia to Spain.

Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/04/heatwaves-sweeping-oceans-like-wildfires-scientists-reveal

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Habitats, Water, WildlifeTags , , , , ,

CalTrout report lists old dams whose removal will free up salmonid habitat

California Trout

Announcing the release of CalTrout’s Top 5 California DAMS OUT Report highlighting five dams that are ripe for removal and that must, for the health of the ecosystem and communities around them, come out.

California has thousands of dams, from smallearthen barriers to large dams hundreds of feet tall. More than 1,400 of those dams are large enough to fall under state safety regulations. A great number of them provide critical water supply, flood control, and hydroelectric power. But many have outlived their functional lifespan and the ecosystem and economic benefits of removal far outweigh the cost of leaving them in place.

California Trout’s Top 5 California DAMS OUT Report highlights five dams that are ripe for removal and that must, for the health of the ecosystem and communities around them, come out. The five dams were selected by analyzing information found in several studies to assess the overall benefits that removing the dam would present to native fish, water, and people.

Read more at https://caltrout.org/2019/01/top-5-california-damsout-2019-report/

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Habitats, Land Use, Sustainable Living, WildlifeTags , , , , , , , ,

Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’

Damian Carrington, THE GUARDIAN

“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” they write. “The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”

The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors.

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
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The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.

Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Habitats, Sustainable Living, Water, WildlifeTags , , , , ,

Bay Area salmon advocates decry proposed delta water diversions

Bay City News Service, SFGATE.COM

Officials from a San Francisco-based group dedicated to preserving the region’s salmon habitat say a new federal plan to divert more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay would decimate the fish as well as jobs.

“This is a blatant water grab that threatened thousands of fishing jobs and families in California,” said Dick Pool, secretary of the Golden Gate Salmon Association.

Added GGSA Director Noah Oppenheim, “The Trump administration won’t be able to get away with killing off our salmon runs if the state refuses to cooperate.”

These comments come in response to Monday’s release by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation of a “biological assessment” helping guide long-term operation of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, which operate separate but largely parallel canals in the Interstate Highway 5 corridor.

The Trump administration aims to make more water available to the agricultural producers in the central part of the state. The biological assessment is part of that overall plan. It isn’t known yet how much more water state farmers could get.

The GGSA calls the assessment’s assertions “a step towards abandoning federal rules governing the damaging effects of the giant state and federal water diverting pumps in the Delta.”

“We’ve seen what happens when water users are given free rein to divert Bay-Delta water,” said Mike Aughney, another GGSA director, who also published USAfishing.com. He said that before 2008, so many baby salmon were killed that the commercial salmon fishing season was cancelled the following year.

If the state opts to free up additional water to help preserve fisheries, that water would likely come from the State Water Project, which serves a mostly urban use base. The federal Central Valley Project largely provides water for ag producers.

The economic power of the salmon fishing industry, GGSA officials said, is approximately $1.4 billion annually, at current volumes. This includes everything from commercial and recreational fishing, fish processors, equipment manufacturers, the hospitality industry and businesses that support the fishing industry.

Source: https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-Salmon-Advocates-Decry-Proposed-Delta-13600379.php

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Habitats, Sonoma Coast, WildlifeTags , , , ,

Colorful sea star stricken by disease vanishes from most of the West Coast

Darryl Fears, WASHINGTON POST

Six years after it was stricken by a wasting disease off the northern California coast, the sunflower sea star – one of the most colorful starfish in the ocean – has all but vanished, and the domino effect threatens to unravel an entire marine ecosystem.

The cause of the sea star’s demise is a mystery, but it coincided with a warming event in the Pacific Ocean, possibly tied to the climate, that lasted for two years ending in 2015. It heated vast stretches of water in patches, and likely exacerbated the disease, according to a new study released Wednesday.

“I’ve never seen a decline of this magnitude of a species so important,” Drew Harvell, the lead author of the study, published in the journal Science Advances, that documented the sunflower sea star’s retreat into possible extinction off California and Oregon.

If the study had a purpose, she said, it was to call attention to the sea star’s demise so that federal officials would take action to list it as endangered and work to save it, possibly with a breeding program using sunflower stars that are surviving in parts of Washington, Alaska and Canada.

“It’s big news and cause for major management action,” Harvell said. “We felt there wasn’t enough attention.”

Read more at https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2019/02/01/colorful-sea-star-stricken-by-disease-vanishes-from-most-of-the-west-coast/

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Habitats, Sonoma Coast, WildlifeTags , ,

Drakes Beach in Point Reyes to reopen for up-close elephant seal viewing

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

In a first-time experiment for a new colony of elephant seals at Drakes Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore administrators will reopen the site to visitors this weekend for an up-close view of intriguing creatures hunted to near extinction a century ago.

A phalanx of park rangers and volunteer docents will be on hand to move small groups of visitors along the edge of a parking lot near the beach to ensure the elephant seals and their newborn pups are not disturbed and that no humans end up in harm’s way.

It’s an exciting and unexpected opportunity for visitors to witness the recovery of a once-threatened species and to observe the females with their babies just yards away, park personnel said.

But it’s going to be a balancing act, with rainy weather expected to dampen crowds enough to make the task possible, park personnel said.

“We’re just going to manage the heck out of it,” Point Reyes Superintendent Cicely Muldoon said. “Our winter wildlife program is very rigorous. We have a lot of people eager to get back to work after the shutdown and volunteer docents eager to get back to what they do. We’re going to have a lot of staff on duty.”

Visitors have been able for decades to see elephant seals at the seashore, where they began appearing in the 1970s after an absence of more than 150 years. Though the marine mammals spend most of their lives out in the ocean, they return to shore each winter to birth pups and breed and, later, in spring or summer, to molt.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9232226-181/drakes-beach-in-point-reyes?ref=related

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Habitats, Sonoma Coast, WildlifeTags , ,

Elephant seals take over beach as Point Reyes reopens after shutdown

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

In the absence of heavy visitor traffic and regular staff wildlife management, the burgeoning elephant seal colony that has been drifting along the shoreline from Chimney Rock for several years appears to have gotten a foot-hold at Drakes Beach, though it’s not entirely clear where the elephant seals there came from.

What’s clear is they find it a safe and protected place to bear offspring. By Monday, there were about 50 females with 40 pups and more on the way, as well as a dominant bull and several subordinates.

The listless malaise common to many workplaces on Monday mornings was nowhere apparent among national park staffers, as workers returned from a 35-day layoff imposed on them by a political showdown 3,000 miles away.

Their email in-boxes were brimming and the awaiting work load unmeasured, given 150 miles of back-country trails still to patrol for downed trees and other damage from recent winter storms.

But everywhere, people were clearly glad to be in uniform and back on the job after a long, uncertain and stressful wait.

A Monday morning meeting of about 80 personnel just to check in and mark the occasion was more like a high school reunion than anything else, Point Reyes National Seashore spokesman John Dell’Osso said.

Wildlife ecologist Dave Press said everyone was glad to see one another and find out how they had passed the month away from work.

“It was very uplifting,” said Dell’Osso, a 36-year employee of the seashore. “It was great to see everybody.”

The public was allowed during the federal shutdown to use trails and roads on the 71,000-acre seashore, a year-round attraction to locals and tourists alike.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9221142-181/point-reyes-national-seashore-reopens

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Climate Change & Energy, Habitats, WildlifeTags , , ,

From Sonoma County to Antarctica, Point Blue studies climate change through birds

Jeanne Wirka, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Tucked behind a Petaluma office park overlooking Shollenberger wetlands, the headquarters of Point Blue Conservation Science can be difficult to find without a map.

Yet this 53-year-old, Petaluma-based organization is doing globally significant work from Alaska to Antarctica, and from the Sierra Nevada to the California coastline. Point Blue’s 160 scientists form a kind of “geek squad” for nature — unapologetically generating, interpreting and leading with data that document impacts of a changing climate and other threats to wildlife and ecosystems.

“We are driven by data,” said Point Blue’s chief scientist, Grant Ballard. “If the data don’t say anything, we don’t say anything.”

Since its 1965 origins as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, the organization’s scientists and their collaborators have recorded more than a billion observations of birds and other wildlife from field stations throughout California and in Antarctica. According to Ballard, it is precisely these long-term data sets, some of which dates 50 years, that set Point Blue apart.

“By taking the long view, we can speak with credibility about whether changes are happening or not.”

It comes as no surprise then that climate change has become the central focus of Point Blue’s research and that “climate-smart conservation” is now the cornerstone of its strategy.

The complexity of how and whether animals respond to changes in their environment is perhaps best illustrated by one of Point Blue’s most charismatic long-term research subjects, the Adélie (pronounced “uh-DELL-ee”) penguin, a tough little bird whose population in Antarctica’s Ross Sea has actually been increasing during the time Point Blue has been studying them.

Author SuzannePosted on Categories Forests, HabitatsTags , ,

Save the Redwoods League releases book on state of redwood forests on 100th anniversary

Meg McConahey, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

… California’s state tree is not out of the woods. More than a million acres of redwood forests remain unprotected, managed for timber. And even the protected forests’ health is threatened by the degraded land surrounding them, Hodder said. Some forests have been logged multiple times. Among the league’s current initiatives is to help existing forests regenerate, a difficult task considering the complexity of the old growth ecosystems that developed over millennia.

They are among the most awe-inspiring natural wonders of the world. As Mother Nature’s skyscrapers, redwoods are among the tallest living things on the planet — the most gargantuan approaching 400 feet. And although not the oldest — the bristlecone pine has a longer lifespan by a good measure — the most senior denizens of the redwood forests were alive during the lifetime of Julius Caesar.

Today, less than five percent of the original 2.2 million acres of coast redwood forests, which once covered the Northern California and Southern Oregon coast for more than 200 million years, still survive.

It took a scant 150 years for loggers and then major timber companies to fell California’s primeval forests. But one organization, the Save the Redwoods League, can be credited with helping to preserve what was left of these titans that had flourished since the days of the dinosaurs.

The conservation organization, which claims credit for helping to preserve 212,000 acres of coast redwoods and their cousins, the giant sequoias that inhabit the western slope of the Sierra, is celebrating its centennial, and marking the event with publication of a new book, “The Once and Future Forest: California’s Iconic Redwoods.”

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/lifestyle/9162305-181/save-the-redwoods-league-releases