My schedule is so cruel that I was able to go to only a few talks at the Wildlife Society's excellent 2009 conference, and to look at the posters. (This did however protect me from buying a coatimundi skull, a book on gibbons, and a radiocollar big enough for a bear.)
Even so, it was rewarding because so informative. Let me just say: you will log more fisher visits to your camera traps if you use actual bait. If you are translocating endangered birds from one side of Mauna Kea to the other, they may lose less weight in transit if you provide a wider variety of snacks during travel. Also, if you bought the conventional wisdom about imported red foxes occupying previously foxless lands, you might rethink in light of recent DNA evidence.
Fisher (Martes pennanti)
The traditional view has been that Europeans arrived on the east coast of the US, wailed that there were no red foxes, imported red foxes from Europe (suitable for hunting), and created an exuberant population of alien red foxes who spread out over the land. There were already clades of red foxes in the north and in the Rockies, but the invaders filled in the blanks on the map, occupying previously lightly-foxed lands .
A newer view hypothesized at the conference (goaded by a plea from an audience member, apparently a random crotchety blogger who had infiltrated the event) suggests that Europeans arrived on the east coast and saw no red foxes, yet foxes were probably there in modest numbers. The European immigrants imported red foxes, which vanished, leaving no traces in the DNA of the modern foxes sampled. But at the same time the Europeans altered the landscape in ways hospitable to the native red foxes (“Say, looks like they cut down that heavy forest and put in... a... can it be? It is, by cracky, it is! A chicken coop!”) Also they killed off fox-hostile species like wolves. It was by these acts, rather than by imports, that they created the exuberant population of red foxes.
“Tally-ho!” they cried, with completely misplaced self-esteem.
Jim Thiele
this blog cheers me up
Posted by: katecat | October 17, 2009 at 04:21 PM