ThinkingAfield.org

Pollinators, such as the monarch butterfly and the rusty patched bumble bee (listed in March as an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), recently have made headlines due to declining populations, primarily from habitat loss. These insects play a critical role in the ecosystem, as well as people’s lives, and human intervention is needed to help keep these pollinator populations abundant and healthy.

Grasslands, vitally important to many species including pollinators, have become increasingly rare.

“Making sure pollinators have habitat that supports milkweed and other native, flowering plants is important to preserving these key species,” said Dan Kennedy, endangered species coordinator for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

Through several habitat enhancement projects, the DNR – along with many partners, organizations and volunteers – is working to increase habitat for pollinators in Michigan.

In southeastern Michigan, DNR staff is seeding wildflowers on 7.5 acres at the Shiawassee River State Game Area in Saginaw County to help restore pollinator habitat. Read more

(Washington, D.C., July 25, 2017) We applaud the U.S. Senators who today introduced a bill to ban chlorpyrifos, a widely used pesticide that has been killing birds and poisoning the environment for the past half-century: Tom Udall (D-NM), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Edward J. Markey (D-MA). We’re also grateful to Representatives Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) and Keith Ellison (D-MN), who have offered a companion bill in the House.

The “Protect Children, Farmers & Farmworkers from Nerve Agent Pesticides Act” would prohibit all chlorpyrifos use by amending the U.S. Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that oversees food safety.

Chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate related to sarin nerve gas, is used in production of common crops such as strawberries, apples, citrus, and broccoli. In addition to the pesticide’s well-known threats to human health, American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is concerned about the pesticide’s effects on birds, including to declining species like the Mountain Plover (shown). A recent draft biological evaluation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated that chlorpyrifos is likely to adversely affect 97 percent of all wildlife, including more than 100 listed bird species listed under the Endangered Species Act.
ABC has been calling for a ban on the use of chlorpyrifos for years. EPA scientists agreed and were on course to ban the pesticide from use on all crops. In March 2017, however, the EPA administrator reversed the recommendation of the agency’s own scientists and extended chlorpyrifos’ registration for another five years. Read more

Warm season food plots, which are extremely attractive to deer, are part of superior management programs for serious hunters.

The Firminator is ideally suited for putting in warm-season crops. It combines a heavy-duty disc harrow, a true agricultural-grade cultipacker and a precision ground-drive seed system in one unit that you can pull behind an ATV or a tractor.

It’s a simple all-in-one system that discs the ground, puts the seeds in at the rate and depth you choose, and then packs the ground to assure good seed-to-soil contact. It’s everything you need to put in a food plot. You do the driving, the Firminator does the planting. Read more

Ready to fall asleep under a sky filled with stars? Raring to ditch the fast-moving, competitive world for unspoiled nature — at least for a few days?

Maybe now’s the time to get away, go camping and be captivated by the nation’s national wildlife refuges.

National wildlife refuges from Alaska to Florida offer camping opportunities that allow visitors to see wildlife up close in a variety of natural habitats.

The National Wildlife Refuge System, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, works to conserve America’s treasured wildlife species and their habitat, providing unparalleled outdoor recreational opportunities for all Americans.

Here’s a sampling of camping options: Read more

Ithaca, NY—Within the next few decades, human-caused habitat loss looms as the greatest threat to some North American breeding birds. The problem will be most severe on their wintering grounds, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Global Change Biology. By the end of this century, the study’s authors say predicted changes in rainfall and temperature will compound the problem for birds that breed in eastern North America and winter in Central America.

This animation shows where the 21 study species are found throughout the year. They spend more time on Central American wintering grounds (bright yellow) than on their northern breeding grounds (green to purple). Map by Frank La Sorte.

“This is really the first study to measure the combined impact of climate change and land-use change over a bird’s full annual cycle,” says lead author Frank La Sorte at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Typically, studies tend to focus on the breeding season. If you do that, you’re missing the real story which is inherently dynamic and complex.”

Migrant wintering grounds are vitally important because the birds spend a greater proportion of the year in these places.

“We found the species we studied spend up to 60 percent of the year on their wintering grounds in Central America, where they occur in higher numbers and densities,” says La Sorte. “That means more individuals of more species are likely to be exposed over a longer period of time to habitat loss as people continue to convert forests to cropland or grassland.”

The scientists ran dozens of scenarios to predict what the future might look like for 21 species, most of them flycatchers, vireos, and warblers. They used observations that volunteers entered into the eBird database from 2004 through 2014 to establish where and in what density the species are found throughout the year. Then, they layered in modeled climate change projections (temperature and rainfall) and habitat data (land-use changes and the location of protected areas).

The study finds loss of wintering habitat in the near future will likely be magnified by the long-term effects of climate change. By the end of this century the study species are expected to encounter several significant changes:
Greater warming on the northern breeding grounds and during autumn migrations—a surface temperature increase of about 9°F (5°C) with uncertain consequences for breeding and migration success; a smaller increase of about 5.4°F (3°C) is projected for their wintering grounds. Read more