Earth Blog

Earlier this month thanks to the efforts of the USDA Forest Service, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and the Memphis Zoo officials were able to take seven Louisiana pine snakes, all six months old and about three feet long, into the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana for immediate release.

The snakes hadn’t slithered into homes via the plumbing or weren’t hanging around residential backyards terrorizing small dogs to have earned a one-way ticket back to the forest. Officials are hoping reintroduction will help restore the population to its natural range in the center of The Bayou State. Last year officials released twenty snakes as part of the initiative which hatches and raises the snakes in captivity from wild-caught snakes.

The sad deaths of 108 dolphins due to stranding along Cape Cod on the east coast isn’t this year’s only news of marine mammals dying in “unprecedented” numbers. The west coast is looking at a dwindling
sea otter population that is for once not due to anything humans have done.

The Sumatran rhino is “critically endangered” according to the ICUN Red List because poaching -primarily to obtain their horns- has severely depleted the rhino population making it difficult for them to successfully breed in the wild. It is estimated that less than two hundred Sumatran rhinos remain in Southeast Asia and most live in Indonesia’s national parks where they can be protected and still live in a natural habitat. 

The Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS) in Kambas Way National Park, Indonesia has a handful of rhinos thanks to conservation efforts from the International Rhino Foundation, the Rhino Foundation of Indonesia and Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry.

This week the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) released their top ten list of the most endangered spots in the Southeastern United States. SELC says, “Our top ten list targets areas of exceptional scenic, ecological, or cultural value that are facing immediate, potentially irreversible threats—and the important actions needed in 2012 to protect our environmental heritage for future generations.

As the largest organization dedicated solely to the South, SELC has been working to conserve the environment for over twenty years in six states: Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

Have you ever watched baby birds receive food from a human on a nature video?  The human doing the feeding will often use a puppet to simulate the feeding process as it would be in the wild for a baby bird. Even birds that begin their life in a nest with parents will be fed with a puppet so they will recognize the process when they are eventually returned. In most cases orphaned birds will need to be taught much more than simply how to eat. Some birds, like endangered and orphaned Whooping cranes, will also be shown how to migrate for the winter by a pilot dressed like a bird and operating an ultralight plane that also looks like an adult bird.                                                                   

There was some bad news out of the University of Adelaide in Australia yesterday for approximately 531 species of American birds, mammals, and a slew of other creatures. A new study by the university’s Environment Institute and School of Earth & Environmental Sciences has found that a significant number of American species aren’t on the protection list compiled under the laws of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). However, the species are on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list. When researchers compared the two lists, the ESA list and the red list, the disparity was found. The findings have been published in the most recent issue of Conservation Letters.