Bringing endangered animals back from the brink
Nature wins with conservationists’ work
Editor’s Note: The theme for this year’s Earth Day is “Restore Our Earth” and recognizes that while climate change is a big concept, there are small things we can each do to help. This week, we’re looking at ways Atlantic Canadians can make a difference, right here at home.
If you were in Newfoundland in the mid-1990s, you no doubt remember the saga of a little critter called the pine marten.
The pine marten, we were told, was just about a goner. He’d all but packed his bags and moved on to that great black spruce in the sky.
Estimated to number no more than 100 in 1995, the Newfoundland population of American marten (to use its proper name) was losing habitat to logging interests and was getting accidentally caught in snares.
But the furry fellow made a comeback.
In 2007, the marten moved down the scale from endangered status to threatened and has spread into a broader range of habitats.
“Trappers are helping with the recovery by using water-based mink box traps that prevent accidental catch of marten,” says Kathleen Blanchard, president and founder of the conservation group Intervale.
“Over 80 volunteers around the province are helping to monitor the animals’ presence by installing hair snag devices on trees, which attract marten with sardine bait and capture a tiny piece of hair, which later gets sent for genetic testing to determine if the source was marten.”
Intervale is not the only outfit pouring time and resources into conservation efforts, but it’s one of the most active, not only in Newfoundland and Labrador but in the Gulf region as a whole.
Qalipu First Nation has its own Natural Resources Department that conducts research and monitoring of threatened species on the island, including the marten and the piping plover.
Species monitoring has become so pervasive, Jennifer Sullivan says, it’s sometimes hard to know how effective previous efforts were.
“It’s kind of raised the question of, well, were marten always doing as poorly as they were in the 1990s, or was it that we weren’t looking hard enough?” said Sullivan, who is Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial stewardship co-ordinator with the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC).
She joined the organization about a year ago and works out of its St. John’s office.
The American marten is a success story in the Atlantic region, and that’s something Dan Kraus prefers to talk about rather than focusing on the negative.
There were species of marine mammals and seabirds that were on the brink of extinction a century or more ago, he says, but legislation and regulations around harvesting and habitat preservation helped them to bounce back.
The right whale is still threatened, but the grey seal has come back from the precipice.
“It’s important to remember that we have these species today because of actions that past generations took,” Kraus, the NCC’S senior conservation biologist, said in a phone interview from Guelph, Ont.
The Atlantic region has always had a diverse and abundant array of wildlife, said Kraus.
“It’s that meeting of land and sea that really drove an abundance of wild species.”
But human encroachment has taken its toll.
Many of today’s generation may not know that cougars once roamed the wilds of Atlantic Canada, but have since become extirpated (which means it has disappeared from a region, but is not extinct).
Wolves have also disappeared from most of Atlantic Canada, although Newfoundland has its own subspecies.
On the other hand, birds such as the peregrine falcon have learned to adapt to human development. While not common decades ago, they can now be seen building nests on top of urban light poles, along with other birds of prey.
LONELY FISH
One curious example of a threatened species is the Atlantic whitefish, found nowhere else in the world except in the waters around Nova Scotia.
It’s more endangered than the giant panda or any other species on Earth, says Kraus.
“That’s a species that’s teetering on the edge of extinction.”
Its fate hinges on its ability to enter freshwater rivers to spawn, as salmon do, but Kraus says it has such a narrow range that its continued existence has always been tenuous.
Why worry about a fish that’s not even good to eat?
“If we keep just letting species go and letting common species like coyotes take over, we risk what scientists sometimes call biotic homogenization, which is where everything just becomes the same,” he said.
“The richness of our human experience is diminished.”
Not only is it an esthetic loss, but scientists can’t be sure what domino effect species loss may have on any given ecosystem.
PLANT POWER
Animals in the wild may attract more attention from the public, but there’s another aspect of nature conservation that’s just as, if not more, important.
“I know people are generally interested in the furry and fuzzy critters, but sometimes, it’s really looking at those green, leafy things that give a good indication of how we’re doing,” says Shelley Moores, Newfoundland and Labrador’s senior manager of wildlife research.
And the island of Newfoundland has a number of fascinating case studies.
Scientists never fail to mention the Long’s braya and Ferald’s braya, relatives of the mustard plant that have been found nowhere else in the world except along a narrow band of limestone barrens on the Northern Peninsula.
There’s also the boreal felt lichen, of which Newfoundland is believed to host more than 90 per cent of the world’s population.
The advantage of being an island is especially evident when it comes to the black ash, a tree found across Canada and parts of the U.S. The west coast of Newfoundland hosts its most easterly population, but also its most protected one, as those in other regions — including the Maritimes — are being ravaged by a beetle-like insect called the emerald ash borer.
The insect tends to work underneath the bark of the tree, so it’s hard to detect.
“Once you know that they’re there, the tree is gone. It’s too late to save it,” says the NCC’S Sullivan.
As part of a rescue measure, she said, seeds from Newfoundland’s ash trees are sent to a national seed bank.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Thousands of people already are helping with conservation efforts, and provide invaluable, hands-on service to frontline groups.
It could be something as simple as spotting a bug and checking it out on an app called inaturalist.
“If you find a bug that you think looks like an emerald ash borer, load it up on inaturalist, because that early detection and management can be really helpful for some invasive species,” said Kraus.
Blanchard points out how lobster harvesters on the west coast of Newfoundland are now bringing back to shore the plastic bait box liners that once may have been tossed overboard. These can be lethal for marine creatures if ingested.
Even without active participation, it’s still everyone’s responsibility to just be aware.
“Stick to the rules around snaring and trapping and hunting. Stick to the rules around where you take your ATV. Don’t go throwing out garbage,” says Moores.
“Recovery is everybody’s business. It’s not just those of us in government. It’s industry, it’s academia, it’s the general public — it’s everybody.”
“If we keep just letting species go and letting common species like coyotes take over, we risk what scientists sometimes call biotic homogenization, which is where everything just becomes the same … The richness of our human experience is diminished.”
Dan Kraus Nature Conservancy of Canada