Bear safety while hunting

Some sage advice from Rick Sinnott summarizing the research on bear attacks on Alaskans, and the best defence against them:

Is a firearm better protection than bear spray? Bear spray -- a concoction of propellants and capsaicin (from red pepper) that burns the eyes and mucous membranes -- is effective up to about 30-35 feet. Dr. Tom Smith, Herrero and others assessed the effectiveness of bear spray in 72 incidents in Alaska where someone used it in defense. Bear spray was effective in 92 percent of the 50 cases involving grizzlies and 90 percent of the 20 cases involving black bears. No one who used bear spray was killed. In the nine instances where a grizzly charged a person, the bear broke off the encounter after it was sprayed, and only one person was injured. The injury was relatively minor, deep scratches requiring stitches. Eventually, someone who uses bear spray will be severely injured or killed by the bear. But it seems clear that bear spray promises to be at least as effective at preventing maulings as a firearm.

I would actually go further than he would, and say that despite my earlier critique of of research on the subject, bear spray is more effective than firearms. I've been sprayed before, and even with my puny human nose, it was incapacitatingly painful. And I only got a short burst. When I hunt, I always carry bear spray too, despite the fact that I obviously have a gun, and have it at the ready.

Of course, the best deterrent is the one you actually use. Bear spray is uesless if it's at the bottom of your pack, or you don't spray the bear...

The snowshoe hare-coyote-Dall's sheep cycle?

When we teach our students predator-prey relationships, we tend to tell them a very basic story that have come from a few very good studies. It's not that all we have are simple models, but but we like to build up the basics before we dive into the complexities. Because when you get down to the complexities, a lot of counter-intuitive things happen which don't follow "common-sense" relationships.

At the last Alaska chapter of the Wildlife Society meeting, Steve Arthur presented one such study, which I had previously mentioned here by flinging out the abstract. Now the full paper by him and Laura Prugh is out in the Journal of Wildlife Management, and so I want to spend a little more time on the study.

They studied snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) and Dall's sheep (Ovis dalli) in the central portion of the Alaska Range, illustrated by the figure to the right. It's worth noting that though both species are in the Alaska range, they have differing habitat requirements. Whereas hares are happy in the lower foresty areas, the sheep decidedly prefer the rocky hills where they can can try to avoid predators. However, while adult survival among sheep is fairly high, lamb survival is generally lower, as predators (lynx, coyotes, eagles, wolverines) can still prey on them.

They used road-side counts to index hare abundance, which they double checked against pellet count data - it's little things like that which make a good paper. For the sheep end, they collared a variety of ewes and fitted them with collars, as well as lambs. They re-located them about 3-5 times a week, and the collars were fitted with mortality sensors. On death, they went and determined cause of death of the individuals. One nit-pick here - scavenging is probably represented somewhat in the mortality data, but the two authors admit that. Still, you wouldn't expect scavanging and predation to vary independently of mortality, and survival is what they wanted to get at. Finally, they used surveys to index the total population of Dall's sheep through the period.

When they analysed the adult data, they found that the year really didn't have a major effect on their survival, and that survival was either modeled best as age-specific, or just constant. However, for lambs, the best explanations for the changes in survival were either a three year time lag in hare abundance, positively, or a negative relationship between survival and hare abundance with a one year time lag. The mechanism for changing survival appears to be changes in predation - primarily coyote and golden eagle predation. Accidents and disease seem to remain at a constant low-level throughout all years, whereas predation seems to vary among years. Eagles are best predators early on, whereas coyotes appeared to kill several months after ewes dropped their lambs. As I mentioned before, snowshoe hares and sheep share those predators.

This seems to suggest that although there's a positive relationship between abundance of hares and sheep, it is not, in fact, a mutualistic relationship. If they had just limited their study to abundance, they would have never seen the change in lamb survival. At that point, we would be led to incorrectly believe that snowshoe hares and sheep benefit from each-other's presence. It doesn't appear to be mediated by a functional response in predation - first, a previous study found that coyotes don't switch to sheep when they're low, but secondly, it would mean there would be a positive relationship between hare abundance and sheep survival, not negative.

It's a messy story, one that depends on the sort of data you gather, and, this simplified version I'm presenting here is leaving out further complications itself. The effects of predation can be complex, leading to strange results when all is said and done. Here, the population dynamics of Dall's sheep seem at first blush to be driven by a species that isn't even in the same habitat as them. It's only though diligent data collection the true picture comes out.


Arthur, S., & Prugh, L. (2010). Predator-Mediated Indirect Effects of Snowshoe Hares on Dall's Sheep in Alaska Journal of Wildlife Management, 74 (8), 1709-1721 DOI: 10.2193/2009-322


All figures from Arthur & Prugh 2010, used under fair-use rationale. 

The other Air Force Falcons.

Birds and Aircraft don't mix. Just ask Sullenberger about how well his plane dealt with the multiple bird-strikes. This is even more the case in high performance military jets, which are even more expensive to fix. So, what's an Air Force base to do? In the latest issue of "The Wildlife Professional" there was an article (p. 52) with a great number of approaches laid out a bunch of approaches, from Habitat modification to Non-lethal dispersal, and capture and translocation. Well, an Air Force base has an idea I think stands out because it's neat - they're fighting falcons with falcons.

More likely, they're using them to harass prey. Falconry has been around for thousands of years now, and I've always been fond of it. Although there's occasional bird smuggling (primarily to the Middle East), on the whole falconers are a force for good, in terms of outreach and education about bird of prey conservation. Many of them volunteer at wildlife rehab centres. So the idea of using falconry to limit other human-wildlife conflict is appealing to me.

Side note - anyone else notice the B-2s flying around Fairbanks about a week ago? I can definitely see how those could be mistaken for alien spaceships! If you didn't know what you were looking at, you could easily say "That's not from this planet."

Moose management - it works, sometimes

Well, I finished reading "Science and Values Influencing Predator Control for Alaska Moose." It was actually a very good read, with excellent cadence, even if I had heard all of this at conferences before. I've got a few general comments on this, but first I'll lay out the review a bit.

It comes in four five.
First, it reviews the relative effects of predation to other factors for moose. After all, if it's mostly nutrition limiting moose, additional rounds of predator control will not bolster moose populations, or will only do so slightly. Their arguments are old-hat to anyone who's been on this ride for a while, but it's worth repeating:

• Most moose in AK are at low density.
• Moose at low density are primarily limited by predation.
• Moose in some areas experience effects from high density.
• Moose in high density areas are not very effected by predation.
• Everyone is effected by random "bad winters" (Winterkill).
• Most moose predation mortality is in juvenile moose.

The second section dealt with manipulative studies - that is to say, our previous experience with Intensive Management. Here there's eight cases laid out that I won't go into exhaustive detail on. The best evidence, by far, is GMU 20A, or the moose south of the Tanana river and north of the Alaska Range. McGrath has potential to be a more important finding, but as of yet it is a weak-moderate finding. I am very unconvinced by data from 20D, but others might consider the data from that unit good. In general, the pattern of predator manipulation (which wasn't always IM) was followed by improved moose censuses. Some of these have thus-far been sustained (20A), others less so (Kenai).

The third, and shortest section, is on sustainability of the increases moose counts. This is the shortest section, since the data is the newest (or in other cases, the weakest). Again, the best data comes from Unit 20A, where there's been a sort of accidental experiment going for a while now. Important factors in the long term-sustainability of these populations seems to be a) carefully monitoring nutritional status b) doing habitat improvement when possible (this includes allowing burns to proceed, or doing controlled burns) c) allowing larger cow moose hunts to keep the population short of carrying capacity (overshooting K is a Bad Thing™).

Next comes the sustainability of wolf and bear populations in interior AK. The evidence for sustainability is very firm, and although I'm sure some people could twist it, in general most people can recognize that the situation is fine. The areas involved are vast, getting people involved in bear harvest is actually very hard, wolves and wolves do an exceptionally good job compensating for high harvest, and IM areas only seem large until you consider how big the state is, and how many and how large non-IM areas are. This is the section from my earlier quote. 

Lastly, there are some general comments on the sociology and public opinions around IM. It discusses logical fallacies employed by both people for and against it, and seems to suggest reconciliation is unlikely because either user group starts with fundamentally different premises and values. I think this is an overly grim view of the situation, and have hope that open communication can bring the public to some sort of consensus. This section had  a great table which I'll repost here.

In general, the message is that "Intensive Management Works*" Where there's a footnote that would read "*Under some models, in some conditions, some of the time." Which I think most biologists would be willing to concede. A large part of the problem over IM is the perception of conflicting values, which is an inherently non-scientific issue. I know that some Scientists would reply that the HD equilibrium is inherently unstable, and it's the LD "dynamic" equilibrium that's the most stable state. I'm not sure there is good ways to argue for or against that right now, without, say, 20 more years of data that doesn't exist.




Okay, here's my thoughts, in no particular order:

Caribou are generally a less-reliable prey than moose because seasonal distribution is more clumped and unpredictable, and voids exist in caribou distribution in inland Alaska.

I agree with the latter part of the sentence, but the former really needs a citation. I can't just let that pass. Where caribou are abundant, they have the potential to be a substantial part of wolf diets, potentially lowering the number of moose. I can illustrate this with a model, but I don't have data to back this up. However, neither do they.


It seems like Winterkill is often ignored as a major factor moose population trajectories. And it's hard to react to stochastic severe winter events fast enough to change management. This is the biggest lesson I take from the Fairbanks winter of 1971 (though I take others as well). We need a better manner of accommodating severe winter events.


Given the invasion of White Tailed and Mule Deer from the Deep South™, should our management objectives change from managing for high density populations to managing for low density? LD populations have two big advantages - first, contact between moose is lower, so disease transmission is reduced. Second, moose are in better nutritional status, which correlates strongly with the ability to mount immune responses to the emerging diseases. On the other hand, LD moose populations have declining recruitment as population declines due to diseases, whereas in HD moose populations, recruitment increases.  I don't know the answer to this question. Science is needed, because CWD and Winter Tick are coming to AK whether we like it or not.


IM for bears could probably be highly refined. Bears are even more cultural than wolves are, and in one instance less than 50% of killed 72% of calves. You could probably get away with just removing, or killing, the better predators. I think we need to start viewing bears as people long-ago did - as human in their cognition. But I'm a big proponent of the idea that bears show strong cultural evolution, so take that with a grain of salt.

Boertje, R., Keech, M., & Paragi, T. (2010). Science and Values Influencing Predator Control for Alaska Moose Management Journal of Wildlife Management, 74 (5), 917-928 DOI: 10.2193/2009-261

Sentences worth pondering

Currently, the primary practical factors ensuring that Alaska predator populations remain sustainable include 1) lack of tradition and interest in harvesting wolves and bears relative to harvesting moose or caribou, and 2) the greater challenge and cost associated with harvesting wolves and bears because predators are elusive, particularly in forested areas, and usually occur at low densities compared with moose or caribou. A substantial, long-term change in ≥1 of these factors will warrant a reexamination of whether sustainability of predator populations is adequately ensured.

This from Science and Values Influencing Predator Control for Alaska Moose Management in the new issue of JWM.

Prodigious Pronghorn Population Projections

Can the presence of wolves be good for prey species? Intuition seems to suggest the answer is no. After all, wolves eat prey, and being eaten is fairly bad for one's health. Wolves are implicated in a number of natural declines of prey species in a number of systems, especially in closed populations where immigration can't bolster floundering populations. The use of wolf control is a controversial tool which I won't discuss at great length here, but one of the key assumptions is that it increases survival of some age classes of prey.  Before I go much further, I've added some entries to my glossary over to the right, for ecological terms.

One of the most vulnerable age classes are neonatal animals and juveniles, or the year's young. While surviving to second or third year doesn't guarantee you'll survive to old age, if you're a deer, it does mean you're fairly less likely to die. Adults are very good at surviving, since evolution has shaped them to be surviving machines, capable of hyper-vigilance, amazing running speeds, and so on. The young, however, enjoy much less of that sort of protection. There tends to be lower survival for the young of the year, and this can be a major factor governing population fate - if you die young, it's hard to do much breeding.

Re-colonizing wolves provide a wonderful mini-experiment to see what the effects of their presence or absence is on various age groups. Kim Berger and Mary Conner, both at Utah State University at the time, studied the effects of re-colonization on pronghorn neonatal survival. Berger and Conner selected two study sites with wolves, and one that was free of wolves in Wyoming. Coyotes were much less abundant at the sites with wolves than they were at the sites with wolves, as they had demonstrated in a previous study.

Fawns were located through a good old fashion leg-work (they must have good vehicle access out there!), and through watching gravid females until they dropped their fawns. They would capture the neonates, weigh them, age them, record the sex, and assess over-all health in a few categories before fitting them with a breakaway radio collar with a mortality sensor. When the animal dies, the radio signal from the collar changes, allowing the researches to swoop in and look for cause of death. Some things they would look for include

1. whether the fawn was alive at the time of the attack
2. tracks, scat, hair, and any caches that might help them identify the predator
3. signs of starvation or other accidents.

The sort of predator who killed it could be classified based off of previously described characteristics. One thing I've always wondered is if there is a better way to ID the cause of death more adequately. However, kill site characteristics have been frequently used before, and will suffice for here.

Ignoring the factors of survival for a moment, there was much greater fawn mortality among wolf free sites than wolf abundant, with as low as 0% survival in one year. The overwhelming majority of the mortality came from either demonstrable coyote predation, or likely coyote predation in those wolf free sites. Coyote predation was still a major factor in wolf abundant sites, but over-all survival was much higher in all years, with the lowest being 24%, higher than the highest survival in any year in the wolf free site. Thus, the presence of wolves appears to beneficially change the survival rate of pronghorn calves through reducing coyote mortality.  Modelling this forward using other vital rates for pronghorn, they find that the wolf-free sites will gradually suffer total collapse, while the wolf abundant sites are quite stable. Clearly, our earlier intuition was not entirely correct about the effects of having wolves in these populations.

This fits nicely into a framework that I've previously mentioned, which is the "Meso-predator release hypothesis." The idea is that wolves or other apex predators (bears, cougars, etc.) keep middling scavenger-predators (such as fox, coyote, racoon, skunk) suppressed when they're around and healthy. They can suppress them through feeding on common prey, attacking meso-predators directly, and so on. This is a top-down effect, where high trophic levels (animals that do bulk of the eating other things) influence the composition of the lower trophic levels (prey; the things that are eaten).

Within the state of Alaska, it begs the question whether there are significant numbers of meso-predators, and whether they are similarly released in times of intensive management. A entirely separate and important question is whether this release negatively impacts prey populations. To my knowledge, no one has done any sort of extensive study of meso-predators in the state. Our knowledge of background fox and coyote density is not very good, and after asking several people, I begin to suspect there are no density estimates for regions of the state. Given that, I am sure no one has looked at meso-predator densities during periods of IM. Anyone who knows otherwise is encouraged to email me! However, the latter most question is probably best identified - there have been studies of calf mortality after bouts of IM, and I don't anyone's identified a shift in mortality towards meso-predation.

---

Berger KM, & Conner MM (2008). Recolonizing wolves and mesopredator suppression of coyotes: impacts on pronghorn population dynamics. Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America, 18 (3), 599-612 PMID: 18488620

Unimak and South West caribou instability

I was fairly surprised to see that there was a story about the Unimak Caribou Herd (UCH) in the Alaska Daily News this morning; I checked around and found the source of this new burst of public awareness, which was a press release posted on ADF&G's website. As someone who knows a few things about the South West and Alaska Peninsula herds in general, and about the situation specifically, I thought I might try to add meaningfully to the conversation.

To the right I have a figure of the area we're talking about. I'm using ADF&G's figure from their website, since it's far better than my own. In the region, there are 5 designated caribou herds, plus feral reindeer on Kodiak island (which is a hotbed of introduced species). Mulchatna (MCH) is a conglomeration of multiple herds, including the now defunct Killbuk, and a few others, which merged into the mass we have today. Nushagak is actually quite separate from MCH because it a) has separate calving grounds and b) is entirely man-made, made from transplanted Northern Alaska Peninsula Caribou (NAP) a couple decades ago.

The NAP has quite a bit of range overlap with MCH, and recent authors have used this to describe the situation down there as a "Meta-population," that is to say a population of populations, with patches of terrain gaining and losing caribou at some background rate. I'm not sure I agree with their assessment, for technical reasons. However, NAP and the Southern Alaska Peninsula Caribou (SAP) don't really mix, as SAP and NAP are constrained short of Henderson Bay (generally). Similarly, UCH and SAP don't really mix, because of the False Pass that the village is named for.

Unimak caribou probably descended from animals which somehow made it across False Pass, and settled on the island. The island itself is lightly inhabited, and has broad plains with a few major volcanos sticking out (It's the AP, volcanos are like seagulls. ;) ). The Alaska Peninsula and Unimak island are both fairly marginal caribou habitat, or at least appear to be as over the long term, caribou have a hard time finding any equilibrium census, and they tend to fluctuate wildly over time. It's tempting to blame this on poor lichen, human harvest, other predation, and severe weather events, but to be completely honest, any satisfactory explanation of population dynamics out there probably must include all those factors.

So that's to say the area isn't a stranger to precipitous caribou declines. In the late 40's, NAP is thought to have scrapped along at a mere 2,000 animals, before peaking again at 20,000 in 1984. However, even this 10 fold didn't come as low as SAP, which declined to 600 animals as recently as 2007. After intensive management, the calf survival rate was brought up significantly in 08-09, and the population appeared to inch its way up so slightly to a slightly higher census.

In UCH, the population is at a mere 400. Harvest has generally been 10 animals (more or less) for the past decade, with no harvest being allowed in 09-10 regulatory year. In general, the level of human harvest represented a negligible portion of the herd until the decline between 06 and 09 censuses. Hunting on the whole AP has been "Verboten" for the last regulatory year.

The UCH's problem is illustrated through two things. First, it's abnormally low Calves per 100 Cows ration. It's 3:100. Needless to say, that is abnormally low. SAP had a lower ratio until intensive management was instituted, so it's not to say it's unrecoverable. However, the second illustrative problem is the extreme sex ratio fluctuation that's occurred. Currently, there are 5 bulls for every 100 cows in UCH. While Caribou are harem breeders (One male breeds with many females), this ratio is probably contributing to the other, abysmally low Calf-Cow ratio. There  just isn't enough bulls to "Cover" all of the cows.

So, I hope I've convinced you that it's not hyperbole when one of my good friends in the agency said "We have concerns that in one to two years, the herd will be on a trajectory that will cause it to cease to exist." While I'd put this possibility on the low end of things (Maybe 5-10% chance), I have to agree with his assessment on the whole. Discussion up to this point has focused on rescue transplants of males. Hopefully, the thought goes, additional males could cover the females not currently getting covered. The long-term genetic consequences of this is worrisome, but the short-term demographic consequences of the extreme sex ratio is far greater, and we can mitigate the genetic effects through appropriate management.

This development relates to the other factor of the cow:calf ratio, which is survival-to-census. Wolves can be highly effective predators of caribou calves, as can bears (for a short period). The argument goes that wolves are at a "Population High," and therefore intensive management is warranted in order to preserve both caribou and wolves long term viability on Unimak island. Most people will generally agree that IM was somewhat effective in bringing SAP on an upward trajectory, and we'll see how effective it was long-term when those 2008 animals really get to breeding in 2010.

However, long-term, I think we need an over-all strategy. South-Western caribou will go through population fluctuations much greater percent-wise than other herds in the arctic. This is inevitable, unless climate change has the unforeseen boon of stabilizing caribou cycling. We have three long-term directions we could take. First, we could intervene and attempt to stabilize the system through clever pushing-of-the-buttons. This, I'm sure, will be expensive. Second, we could supplement Caribou to stabilize them, turning the AP into something akin to the National Elk Refuge. This would be potentially less expensive, but have some major eco-systems wide effects. Or, we could manage for natural ecosystems, which is a fancy way of saying "Take our hands off the wheel and let the truck go wherever." All three have their strengths and weaknesses as options. All three require value judgements. However, a consistent direction is far preferred to a reactionary approach.

Slides from the FWS presentation from ADF&G, and the table is from the 09 caribou inventory report.

Things that have been on my mind a lot: Mesopreadators.

One thing I have been thinking a lot about is Mesopredators. Mesopredators are medium predators, such as racoons, coyotes, snakes, etc etc. A bear, wolf, puma etc would be a top predator, and not a mesopredator.

See, I was reading a paper recently about Pronghorn in Wyoming, where they had wolf-free and wolf-abundant sites. In their wolf-free sites, fawn (pronghorn have fawns, for some reason) survival was near 0 in some years, whereas in nearby wolf-abundant sites, fawn mortality was very low. They argue that the difference was in mesopredators, who differentially prey on fawns, and they try to show that coyote predation makes up the bulk of the wolf-free mortality. I know how practically difficult it is to make these calls, so I remain dubious of that. Still, it's hard to argue with that kind of finding in survival.

So, does interior AK have mesopreadators of consequence for our game? Coyotes are definitely mesopredators, and wolves generally do a good job keeping their populations surprised in most of the state (Coyotes are recent arrivals). I don't see much of a release when wolves are removed. Perhaps there are other factors limiting coyote release. Lynx can prey on reindeer calves, but do wolves keep lynx suppressed? I have a hard time envisioning this, because they don't have much niche overlap outside of that.

I'm still thinking about this, but I'm not sure mesopredators are a major factor in large game dynamics in non-SE Alaska.

When it doesn't matter where you're from

People move animals around. It's what we do. Why are there Elk on Afognak island? Some guy thought it was a good idea at the time. Wildlife managers in the past were some of the biggest conduits for moving animals around, frequently en mass, back before biology really caught up with the profession. We can cite plenty of examples where moving animals around to do population rescues was a bad thing - the Arabian Oryx got both inbreeding and outbreeding depression at once! And there's others, still.

Why? We predict animals to be generally well adapted to their environment, or well adapted to it pre-human mucking around. What it takes to be a good Elk in Hungary is very different from what it takes to be a good Elk in Norway. Norway is pretty different from Hungary.

Quick side note: Names are confusing, even to a professional Here, I'm talking about what North Americans call Elk, or Wapiti. What Europeans call Elk is Alces alces, or what North Americans call "Moose." They call NA-Elk "Red Deer." In any event, it's Cervus elaphus. North American elk are sometimes called Cervus canadensis, but frankly, I think that's a load of hooey. But that's an argument for another day. When I say "Elk," I mean Cervus elaphus or C. canadensis.

Just reading my explanation of the nomenclature makes me want to get a stiff drink!

"Strangely" enough, the situation I just gave to you as a hypothetical happened. So, the question is... does it matter? Does putting Hungary blood in Norway animals make them maladapted? Well, Haanes et al. studied whether these long-distance translocations hurt a population on an island called Otterøya. What a wonderfully Norwegian looking name! The population on Otterøya was down to 12-14 individuals, 3 or 4 or which were stags. Since Elk tend to have very skewed reproductive success in the males (meaning, either you're the big bull and get plenty of reproduction, or you get little-none), it means you can basically 2 or 3 individuals contribution into the next generations. That brings it down to 9-12 individuals who contributed their genes to the next generation.

To avoid expatriation, 17 German•Hungarian 'Hybrid' elk were brought in for a population rescues. I say 'hybrid', because supposedly those are different subspecies. I have issues with that, which I'll outline later. Regardless, the population exploded, shooting up to 100 Elk in 10 years, and even higher since. Obviously, the population rescue worked. But what's the long-term consequences of the German•Hungarian animals' introduction? It could be that the Elk are less successful than they would be, if they didn't introduce that linage.

Well, Haanes et al. decided to take a two-prong approach. First, they took blood/tissue from Elk on Otterøya, they sampled Elk on mainland Norway, and they sampled 20 Elk in Hungary. They took DNA from all of them. They would have loved to sample the German Elk, but since the translocation, the rest of the German Elk were bottlenecked, translocated some more, and probably experienced some introgression. Basically, they're not the same Elk anymore. Finally, they measured body characteristics for the various populations, hijacking some datasets to do so. I'm fine with that; it's hard to get good data on hunter-derrived samples because hunters bias their hunts to tasty/big animals.

I'll skip ahead to the results. First, using STRUCTURE, they found a best solution of `there are two populations. The program STRUCTURE tries to assign individuals to populations without knowing anything about where they're from. It doesn't make assumptions in that regard (although it can, if you tell it to). I've put the STRUCTURE bar-plots next to this paragraph. Each vertical bar represents an individual, and each colour represents one population assignment. So a half red, half green vertical bar represents 50% assignment to both red and green cluster. Next, they found that their mtDNA showed that there was a hybrid origin of the elk. The morphometric measurements suggest that body size is large in the Otterøya Elk. Take together, the message is "Hybridization happened! But it looks like things went well for them."

First, I'm not sure that their various elk are deserving of subspecific designation. I'm not too familiar with the lit on Eurasian Red Deer, but Europe is where a lot of taxonomy was developed, so they've gone through and divided Europe up with a fine tooth comb. Just about everything has its own subspecies over there, and I'm not sure legitimately so. The reason why this matters is that a subspecies implies a whole lot more adaptation than just two unconnected, remote populations. I do see that other people are skeptical of the taxonomic assignments. Taxonomy matters.

Second, I draw your attention to the STRUCTURE plots. I've seen this sort of plot before, where my most likely solution is lower than what my true apparent tree is. I suspect STRUCTURE focuses on lower k values, stopping at some high level divide and not going any deeper. For example, I have one data set where both the highest likelyhood solution and Evanno's ∆K method solve for K=2, when in fact I have very clear structure, and structure we expect to find, at K=5. I think STRUCTURE is biased to the deepest divisions.

Still on the STRUCTURE topic, I think the Hungarian sample was just too low. Sample size matters. Fogelqvist et al. (2010) argues that 8-10 is enough in STRUCTURE. I think that might be true in selfing organisms, but I seriously question whether that's enough in most of the organisms I'm working in. Obviously, the thing to do would be to do a simulation study, which I haven't done. 20 for Hungary, for such fine scale differences, feels too small. And I wonder if how spatially distant they're sampling their populations is biasing their very high He (which is ~.8, astronomical for a mammal.) And they have a ton of private alleles too, which I have a hard time explaining - is it just a function of northern animals being lower diversity? Or maybe a function of Fennoscandian isolation - but that would support a model where Norway has something closer to a sub-specific division. And look at the number of haplotypes in the below table. I wish they rarifacted...

Finally, how do we know body size isn't environmentally induced? In my own experience, Caribou seem to follow a few different life history strategies that we've lumped into 'ecotypes.' In general, folks have found that the sedentary type is smaller. However, these aren't genetic differences, but instead diversity that seems to lie among all Caribou. The first or second generation migrants should be more like wherever they end up growing up, and plausibly not retain their sedentary phenotype. I'm hesitant to use body mass as a marker of success for supposed hybrids, for this reason. Better would be rumpfat, ovarian markers (for reproduction), etc. It's clear from the census alone, though, that these animals are doing quite well.

Too often, us in the conservation world take too much of an adaptionalist point of view. This is amusing because what we work with to get at population demographic history is almost entirely neutral markers. But few people I know will be too enthusiastic about neutral hypotheses of genomic evolution! This serves as a good counter-example to many of our examples of translocations being bad. Did Norwegian Elk lose a little bit of adaptation to their environment? It's possible, but these results wouldn't support that. Or if they did, they're currently "adapted enough" to make a good go at being Elk in Norway. Even if those crazy Europeans call Elk the wrong name. ;)

As usual, here's the abstract:

For several centuries, game management has involved translocations of non-native individuals of many species to reinforce local native populations. However, there are few quantitative studies of potentially negative effects on population viability as expected when taxa with different local adaptations hybridise. The European red deer has been subject to particularly many translocations. Around 1900, a total of 17 red deer of Hungarian (Cervus elaphus hippelaphus) and German (C. e. germanicus) ori- gin were introduced onto the island of Otterøya in Norway where few native red deer (C. e. atlanticus) remained (n ~ 13). To assess interbreeding, the present stock on Otterøya and the indigenous Norwegian and Hungarian populations were characterised in 14 microsatellite loci and in the control region of mtDNA. An intermediate level of genetic variation in the Otterøya population and the pres- ence of population specific alleles from both the indigenous Norwegian and the Hungarian population demonstrate that the introduced red deer interbred with the native. Even distributions of one indigenous and one non-indigenous mtDNA haplotype in the Otterøya population and two point estimates of admixture indicate similar genetic con- tributions from the two parental populations into the hybrid stock. Low numbers of migrants identified with Bayesian assignment tests demonstrate low recent gene flow from Otterøya into the Norwegian mainland population. The Otterøya hybrid stock has grown vastly in numbers during recent decades, suggesting a high population viability. We observed that the body mass of red deer on Otterøya was similar or greater than in adjacent indigenous Norwegian stocks, indicating that population performance has not been reduced in the hybrid stock and that gene flow probably has not had any negative effects.

Haanes, H., Røed, K., Mysterud, A., Langvatn, R., & Rosef, O. (2010). Consequences for genetic diversity and population performance of introducing continental red deer into the northern distribution range Conservation Genetics DOI: 10.1007/s10592-010-0048-1

Netgunning deer in New Zealand

I haven't used a netgun before (and annoyingly, I haven't been out on any captures in a bit. Grumble.). Most of my critters are either much easier to access, such as Caribou being accessed at Onion Portage by Unit 23's Area Biologist, or are in situations where netgunning is impractical compared to the other options (e.g., darting moose). But in other areas, it's a very viable and efficient way of doing captures. I know the Canadians rely on netguns and helicopters for a large chunk of their caribou captures.



Last night, I was at a small get-together and we were talking about pilots. We were talking about a guy with 4,000 hours as a helicopter pilot doing capture work. Which is quite a bit. One of the guys there was a pilot at one point, and said he (and most people) bug out before 2,000 hours. It's just too dangerous in most of the places in AK people are called to fly.

Abstracts: Long-Term Persistence of Spent Lead Shot in Tundra Wetlands

From JWM,  Flint PL, Schamber JL (2010) Long-Term Persistence of Spent Lead Shot in Tundra Wetlands. Journal of Wildlife Management: Vol. 74, No. 1 pp. 148–151 DOI: 10.2193/2008-494.

We seeded experimental plots with number 4 lead pellets and sampled these plots for 10 years to assess the settlement rate of pellets in tundra wetland types commonly used by foraging waterfowl. After 10 years, about 10% of pellets remained within 6 cm of the surface, but >50% remained within 10 cm. We predict that spent lead pellets will eventually become unavailable to waterfowl; however, it will likely require >25 years for all pellets to exceed depths at which waterfowl species may forage.

It'd suggest we're not being conservative enough in controlling lead shot in other areas. Despite recent efforts to step up lead shot control in the YK, it's still 25 years out before it ceases to be a human and wildlife hazard.

You can't make this up

Toronto tasered a deer.

Seriously.

"So we've rediscovered the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. So what?"

We welcome the recent announcement by the conservation partnership BirdLife International that they have launched a "global bid to try to confirm the continued existence of 47 species of bird that have not been seen for up to 184 years" (see http://go.nature.com/6Hc2Cn). But there are pitfalls, as the recent history of 'rediscoveries' has shown.

One of the species on BirdLife's target list is the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), a bird that was prematurely alleged to have been rediscovered in 2005. This seemingly improbable reappearance provoked intense debate within the scientific community about the veracity of claimed sightings and, more generally, about what represents sufficient proof of continued existence (or extinction). Accusations of 'faith-based' ornithology resulted, increasing scepticism among politicians and policy-makers that conservation organizations are often too willing to put public relations before scientific rigour. [...]

Some people really know how to get my attention.

I've been kicking around this idea for a while, too, though not as eloquently. The authors of the opinion piece make their case that even if we re-discover species living in the wild, the discovery means very little unless there's a minimum viable population. I would have taken a different tact, saying the quest to re-discover these species burns through vast sums of critical conservation money; money that would be better spent on species who are a little more accessible.

I do see a small amount of scientific utility in this, though - extinction rate is sensitive to what we a) declare a species and b) an and can't find. It's hard to talk about, say, Giant Squid demographics without being able to look at them (or otherwise detect them). So how hard we try to look for relictant populations influences our measure of current extinction rate. To get an accurate measure of the current extinction rate, it makes sense to apply copious effort.

That said, these expeditions are expensive. They're multi-person, multi-year affairs frequently requiring access to remote areas by specialist personnel. If you can't hear the dollar signs ring up as you read that last sentence, you should get your hearing checked! The price on the knowledge that a species isn't totally extinct, but instead a hairs-breadth away from extinction, is very massive, and surely that money could be used to keep other species from getting that far-gone to begin with.

Citation:

Ladie et al. Caution with claims that a species has been rediscovered. (2009) Nature 461, 723

The future of Polar Bears is Styrofoam

There's a stock number of questions I get all the time. Usually the first question I get is something about whether I shoot wolves or not. But just as often, after a long discussion about predator control, I'll get asked about Polar Bears, and whether I support their listing.

My answer is, of course, that given my knowledge of Polar Bear biology (admittedly incomplete), it seems prudent to protect Polar Bears. People will then ask me if I support subsistence harvest for Polar Bears. Which, given my knowledge of Polar Bear ecology, I do. `Ah ha!` someone will cry. `You're biased to subsistence! You wouldn't let a bunch of white guys go out and shoot a Polar Bear, but you're happy to let natives do it even when you want to protect a species!`

This is when I get out the clue-by-four and begin beating them with it until they get a clue.

So how can a species need protection, but still be available to harvest? Well, unlike many things in biology, this is actually mostly straight forward.

Let's say you have a Polar Bear.

Yes, yes you are a Polar Bear. Incidentally, if you want my art skills using paint, check out this tutorial.

Okay, let's take that Polar Bear, and put it with all her buddies.

What a wacky bunch! They should have their own prime-time sitcom.

Now, in this system, we have something that is a limiting factor, and something that will become an increasingly large limiting factor - habitat. Particularly, ice habitat. We're going to have a lot less of it. Some Polar Bears are going to have it...

But what about those who won't? Or those who get sub-optimal habitat?

Well...

I joke. It's not curtains time for them, but those bears will be much worse off. The boars probably won't get to breed, and the sow will have very low cub survival, because the sows will be in poor condition. There may be some small contribution contribution to the next generation's numbers, but the contribution will be dominated by chance (stochasticity).

It's my contention, and the contention of US gov't., that harvesting a small number of Polar Bears is entirely acceptable (albeit unsustainable). If you shoot a Polar Bear, either a) it wasn't going to make a large contribution to the demographics (especially if male) or b) it frees up the limiting factor (habitat) for another animal who will now be able to make a larger contribution to the next generation. And if you keep your hunts low, the mortality will rarely make a blip on the population magnitude radar. The story is simplified slightly, yeah. And I glossed over a few things. But on the whole, it holds water.

"Wait! You said it was unsustainable. What's with that" Well, sure. Eventually, given the trends in habitat, there will be very little habitat left to Polar Bears. Short of building Styrofoam icebergs for them, there's nothing we can do about that. Thus, it's not a sustainable situation. However, it's got less to do with hunting pressure and more to do with people running coal fired power plants. Here's some cold hard facts to throw a damper on your day: There probably won't be many Polar Bears in the future, Yup'ik Language is dying, someone will have to take a cut in their lifestyle because every country can't all have it and Africans will eventually want to start eating food too, and eventually India will kick our ass economically. Oh, and there's no Santa.

So, that all said, the ban on importing Polar Bear rugs from hunts is pissing into an active volcano. Sure, it feels good, but it doesn't get anything done to Polar Bear conservation. Worse, it has the unintended consequences of cutting off the livelihood of people. And it will consume resources enforcing the ban which would be better spent doing conservation in other ways. Like, say, putting up a few few wind turbines. But if we were really serious about solving these problems, things would be different, wouldn't they?

Predator Control by Press Release

If I was doing science by press release* to try and convince people everything was great about Predator Control, I don't think I would have taken the tack used in the AP story that the News Miner and the ADN picked up. This story is rife with problems.

First, while it's true that the current program really got started by Murkowski, there has been active predator control of one sort or another since pre-statehood. Poison, bounties and aerial shooting was employed by government agent until statehood. Aerial shooting continued with the public until 1972, when the federal Airborne Hunting Act was passed. This coincided with several harsh winters in the state, resulting in heavy predator depression of game populations.

In 1975, the first wolf control was authorized in game management unit 20A, which is south of the Tanana river from Fairbanks. This was conducted by only ADF&G staff. The policies were shaped over time through the 80s, and in 1992, the Board of Game (BOG) added control to three areas. Due to massive backlash from tourists, Hickel reconsider and BOG revoked their plan. In 1993, BOG authorizes additional predator control for 20A. Predator controlled continued until Knowles became Governor, and suspended all programs.

Because of the long history, I don't think it's fair to say Murkowski is responsible for predator control. It would be like saying I started the tradition of having breakfast this morning. Sure, it's technically true, because there was a gap of about 24 hours where I had no breakfast tradition, but it ignores all the breakfast I've had other days.

My next big complaint about the story has to do with mis-leading verbiage. The story implies that of all areas of predator control, a few have been successful. It then cites McGrath, and the Southern Alaska Peninsula. If we're allowed to talk about predator control as a holistic idea, a better example would be the aforementioned GMU 20A. The area currently hosts some of the largest populations of moose in the state, and very healthy populations of wolves (though not the healthiest, due to the 2003 invasion of a depeliating parasite).

If we're only talking about current areas, then I have some complaints. First, it's too early to be talking about successes. You only know whether you were successful after you remove predator control. One of two things will happen. Either population levels will remain stable, or the population of game species will decline again. If the number of game animals declines again, you know you've mis-characterized the ecological situation, and you're attempting to apply predator control where it doesn't work; if they remain stable, you know that you've been successful**. I will admit, if you don't see an increase in game numbers, it is fairly indicative that your current predator control regime is not applicable.

If we're limited to current predator control areas, then the Southern Alaskan Peninsula Caribou Herd is not great example of anything, right now. The situation is complex, and it's my studied opinion that we're not entirely in possession of all the facts in that system.  While Calf Mortality is clearly a major issue with the SAPCH (<2 per 100 is a very low number indeed), I'm yet to be fully confident that there are not other, conflating factors involved in the long term population trends.

The AP left out something re: the non-resident hunter situation that I think ADF&G would have pushed strong for inclusion. That is, that non-resident hunters are a substantial economic factor, especially in small villages. In order to access the non-resident permitted areas, a guide is typically required. Further, non-resident hunting parties can spend several thousands of dollars per person, and each tag typically results in multiple hunters in a party. While the Nelchina is a complex situation, one that I swore I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot stick, game there is not so precariously positioned that those permits need to be cancelled.

One thing I wish people understood is that Predator Control is like science in general: It's really, really complex. There are no simple answers to pretty much anything; everything is wrapped up in assumptions that need met, confidence intervals, and highly situational knowledge. There should be an * beside pretty much every simple line inside these sorts of articles saying "Well, X is true 85% of the time, and the other 15% of the time, Y and Z are true." We're letting ourselves get trapped by these simple story explanations which don't even begin to cover the truth.


*Science by press release is a pejorative comment to describe non-peer reviewed science that's pushed out there by Public Offices of Agencies and Universities. the chief complaint is that science by press release is rarely accurate, and never goes through the rigour of peer review.


** This is seriously simplified, moreso than everything else here. But the nut of the matter is sound - you don't know, until it's over.

Hadn't we been on this ride before?

This comic panel from the ever-funny XKCD. Click for the whole strip...
The sad thing is, I know people like that. I'm boring by proxy!

Today I'm distracted from blogging by letter writing. Yet again, predator control is in the news for someone wanting to shut it down. Yet again, the whole thing is ignoring the science, and all about people's emotions. Management needs to be based on sound scientific principles, and not our whim of the day. Both the sides that think wolves should be protected because they're lovable and squeezable and the side that thinks wolves are awful and should all die are enemies of proper, rational, sound scientific based management which we claim is the goal. Cooler heads need to prevail; science frequently requires people to be dispassionately critical, something many people aren't used to being.

I really should have saved the last batch of letters, because I'm just going to say the same thing. Predator control works, but only some times. There appears to be instances where we've mis-applied it. Predator control is temporary, in an area, even if it might seem permanent as a program. The theoretical basis for predator control is strong, but only in some situations. Predator control is not the same wolf hunting the states engaged in during the 19th century. Predator control is incredibly expensive. Predator control is not about the predators, but about the game species. Predators in Alaska are not threatened like they are in the states.

If it sounds like I've been through this before, yes, I have. Endlessly. In fact, the first thing people ask me is often "Do you shoot wolves from a plane?" or some variation of that. Most of the time, by the end of the conversation, they're reading whatever answer they want to hear from my reply. People are too used to treating this as a visceral topic, and not used to treating it like a matter of science. I'd say that has to change, but honestly, I don't see it changing.

Climate Change and Rangifer

Here's a little something I wrote while sipping tea in my brother's home, obviously on vacation (that's why I had so many work related emails open! Because I was on vacation!). As you possibly remember, I have confidence in Global Warming as a actual phenomenon as it's born out by a variety of data sets. I can't comment on the mechanism, except to say I don't second guess nuclear physicists, so why should I treat climatologists any different.

That said, I was somewhat... appalled by the treatment of a finding I've known about for a while:

The scientists were shocked to discover that 34 of the herds were declining, while no data existed for 16 more. Only eight herds were increasing in number. Many herds had been declining for a decade or more.

"We were surprised at the ubiquity of the decline," says Vors.

Surprised? I'm not sure they should have been. The data's been around since 2004ish (more on that in a moment).

"When we delved into the status of European reindeer herds, we were surprised that so many were declining. We expected them to be in better shape than North America herds because reindeer, namely the semi-domestic herds, are closely managed by humans."

[...]

"If global climate change and industrial development continue at the current pace, caribou and reindeer populations will continue to decline in abundance," says Vors.

Oh dear. I suppose I should start with the initial statement. Reindeer herding on a whole is on the decline due to human factors. Namely, fewer people are doing it. In North America, little market exists for reindeer meat, and historical factors have sabotaged the development of herding as an industry. In Eurasia, the industry is on the wane for a variety of reasons.

As for the out-of-nowhere statement about Climate Change, I present this graph from Kofinas and Russel:
You can probably see the issue right from the get go.
I'll refrain from begrudging the point. After all, I haven't seen the paper yet (I am writing this while on vacation!), but it would take strong evidence to convince me that the competing hypotheses are incorrect.

Two quick stories

I would write an outraged post about how they're thinking about releasing some members of the corrupt bastards club, but I don't think I could write for long without descending into pure profanity. And I can curse like a marine at our graduate students, some of which will even share my sentiments.

Instead, here's a sad story of two ladies who tried to smuggle two moose calves to a reindeer farm after their mother was killed in a DLOP. Their hearts were in the good place, but they really, really turned left from Common Sense Rd. and were seen driving down Crazy Land Dr. I just can't figure out how people think these decisions are good, sensible, logical ones...

The Herd Concept

Random: Am I the only one who finds the article headline "Palin, gas line supporters dismiss pipeline criticisms" incredibly obvious? Of course they disagree with people who disagree with them. That's the definition of supporter, eh? They support. Next, the DNM will publish a story saying "Critics continue to criticize."

---

I've got my work on deer off to my coauthors for their review, and I've effectively finished my work on them. I would be going back to the wolf stuff now, except I haven't heard any direction from ADF&G, so that'll continue to get put on the back of the stove. I'm back to caribou work, where we've went and raided our freezer for blood and tissue. So maybe it's a good time to talk about the herd concept.

When we talk about caribou, we tend to talk about caribou in herds. For management purposes, there's 32 recognized herds in the state of Alaska. Don't ask me to name them all. By and large, they're numerically concentrated in 7 herds of 10,000 caribou or greater, with the north slope herds being the largest. As a pure guess, I'd say 90% of the caribou in Alaska are in the Porcupine, Central Arctic, Western Arctic, Mulchatna, Nelchina, 40-Mile or Teshekpuk Lake caribou herds.

One of the defining features of caribou is that they exhibit the prehensity to seasonal movements. c.f. domestic reindeer, who tend to move fairly "randomly" through time. What happens is that we see caribou exhibit site fidelity among females for parturition (what normal people call "childbirth" or "calving"). Because they return to at least roughly the same area each cycle, we tend to treat all the animals who use that same space the same way as a management unit.

You can see site fidelity illustrated off to the right. The figure is from ANWR, based off of a radio collared female in 1987. You can see how she migrated to the calving ground, hung around a while (probably calving), before moving off over the course of a few months. The Western Arctic herd migration is very pronounced - whereas the PCH may migrate 200-300 miles, the WAH will move up to and over 400 miles from their summer grounds on the North Slope to their wintering grounds on the Seward Peninsula. You can see a nice animation of that at this link to the CARMA network's webpage. Beware, the file is about 3 MB, for those of you on slow connections. Here's a link to the PCH's page, where you can click on "Porcupine Caribou Animation."

So, it should be clear that the herds are somewhat demographically independent - that the number of caribou in an area is linked to how well the herd is doing, and not how well the herd nextdoor is doing. This makes herds a very useful concept for management, as we as managers want to manage how many animals there are (abundance). However, although useful for management, the herd concept might not be evolutionarily signifigant - it might not reflect the actual, biological reality of what are important groupings for the animals. This is because caribou occupy different space when they rut and when they calve. Rut is when all the sex is happening, and long term biological processes are chiefly concerend with who has the largest number of successful offspring.

Whether the herd concept is actually rooted real or not, we can't say yet. A previous researcher did a survey of the North Slope herds, and found that they weren't biologically discrete units. However, that researcher's research was filled with problems, and many scientists are reluctant to take it at any value. There's a number of people doing studies across the state, and in Canada, investigating just that. One finished project from Canada found a mixed bag - some herds were legitimate biological entities of evolutionary importance, and some were not. And some herds should have been considered multiple herds. It will be interesting, as time goes on, to see how the North Slope caribou herds are found to be in the future.

Bear Ranching

This is one of the things that are so stupid, I didn't believe the story was true until I got verification.

A man has been feeding bears for 20 years, to train them to... I don't know. Frankly, it doesn't matter. He could be training them to belch oh-come-all-ye-faithful for all I care. This is... words fail me. It's stupid. It's amazingly stupid. This is fantastically and confoundingly ill-advised, moronic, hairbrained, misguided, and plain old WACKO.

The stupid is so flaming hot. It burns us.
In case I'm not clear, don't feed the $#**##$#@ing bears!

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Of course, the ADN brings out the best commenters by a long stretch. Take this gem:

graves wrote on 05/19/2009 11:59:29 AM:
Typical Fish and Game. Gotta be the boss, can't let it be.

Ah, yes. Damn those ADF&G people for enforcing the law! Damn them to heck! Next, well be angry when troopers start responding to robberies. They're not the ones getting robbed, so they should just let it be.

LonePony wrote on 05/19/2009 12:02:56 PM:
The thing that bothers me about this is that the State promotes hunters, sitting in a tree, luring bears in with stale doughnuts. That's just fine but they want to prosecute this guy. Both are habituating bears to human food.

There's a huge difference between feeding bears and bear baiting. Bear baiting can't be people's homes. This guy had neighbours. Bear baiting is done for short periods per year. This was a 20 year, year round activity. Bear Baiting involves... you know, shooting the bear. feeding bears involves not shooting bears, but allowing them to wander wherever they will, looking for more human handouts. Bear Baiting allows us to control predator numbers in sensitive areas where human game harvest is a big concern (esp. predator pits). Feeding bears... well. It just contributes to the problem.

kodiaks wrote on 05/19/2009 02:12:42 PM:
Habitat back? No just let them have waht they have now. Is it always humans first? Our we not the stwards of the earth or does that go to the way side when it is our own self interests

Call me crazy. But... what the heck is even remotely natural about feeding bears thousands of pounds of dogfood?! This guy isn't letting nature be, he's decided to subvert it for his own human pleasures!

akgem wrote on 05/19/2009 03:16:26 PM:
Kmetzger....you say people should not domesticate wild animals? How many dogs or cats do you have? Friends or family members have? Do you turly think that dogs and cats have always been domestic? Where do you think they originally came from? What would they world be if we did not have our furry family members? Dog, cat, skink, raccoon, ferret, mouse, cow, pig, horse, bear, tiger, whatever! Any decent human can tame an animal. It is the bad owners who have pets that you should worry about. the 'cool' people who intentionally make a 'pit' or 'rottie' mean thinking it makes them cool. It is not just about the animal, but the people also. Treadwell was a moron who 'assumed' he was accepted to tresspass in the bears area. Vandergaw accepted the bears into his, and the bears accepted him, and his area. My point...thank god people have domesticated wild animals...I love my pets. It is people to worry about..not animals.

Did this person just compare bears to their pet dog? Seriously? Dog, which are the product of far over 10,000 years of domestication, and still occasionally mauls people? And this guy has been `domesticating ` them for less than 0.1% of that time... so they're just as safe?
Siegfried and Roy had the same thing, and even had the advantage of people who knew jack$*#! about tigers, and a tiger still attacked Roy.
Yes, tigers and bears, exactly like normal household pets.

My lord! How do people this dim survive? There is no justice in the world.