Tag: pups

Prairie Dog Wars

  • Keith Edwards, a rancher in Kansas, is in favor of poisoning the prairie dogs. (Photo by Devin Browne)

Often we hear stories about
the government trying to get
farmers and ranchers to do
things that are better for
the environment. But Devin
Browne has a story about a
rancher trying to do something
better for the environment
and getting in trouble with
the government:

Transcript

Often we hear stories about
the government trying to get
farmers and ranchers to do
things that are better for
the environment. But Devin
Browne has a story about a
rancher trying to do something
better for the environment
and getting in trouble with
the government:

In western Kansas, there’s a war going on. People are suing each other and threatening each other and there’s poisons and noxious gasses involved. They all call it the ‘prairie dog wars,’ but few of them agree on what it is they’re really fighting about.

Some people say this is about a bad neighbor who’s ruining things for other ranchers. Some say it’s about whether you can let wildlife live on your land. And still, other people say that the conflict in Kansas is about whether the government gets to tell you what you can do on your own land.

(sound of prairie dog barking)

Prairie dogs about a foot tall, in the squirrel family, though technically rodents. Ranchers hate them because they eat grass that’s meant for cows. But biologists love them because where there are prairie dogs there are also all the other animals that need them for food or shelter – hawks, foxes, badgers, owls, and maybe most importantly – the black footed ferret, one of America’s most endangered mammals. We’ll tell you more about the ferret in a moment.

“It’s been said that prairie dogs are the most important animals on the plains and I agree with that.”

At the center of all this controversy is Larry Haverfield He’s a bearded guy in bib overalls, a born and bred Kansas rancher. Four years ago, he stood up at a county meeting and said he liked prairie dogs. And he wasn’t going to kill them anymore.

Ever since then his neighbors have been organizing against him.

Keith Edwards is one of them.

“We’ve had county meetings, we’ve had a petition, we’ve filed the legal complaints that you can go through the county, and we’ve done that several times.”

Second, third, fourth generation ranchers will tell you so in no uncertain terms they’ve been fighting a war against the prairie dogs. But now these ranchers are fighting against one of their own, Larry Haverfield. It’s gotten ugly. Some might even say petty.

Again, Larry Haverfield.

“Well, they’ve threatened to come in on us, and they have, we haven’t paid all the bills yet either.”

When he says come in on us, he means come in onto his property. Exterminators hired by the county to poison the prairie dogs, the one or two days a year when he’s not home – when he and his wife are in court, in Topeka, battling lawsuits. And then, not only the poisoning, but the bill for the poisoning – for thousands of dollars.

This might sound like illegal trespassing, but, in Kansas, there’s nothing illegal about it. An old law, from 1901, says that the government can poison varmints on your land & then bill you if you don’t kill them yourself.

Haverfield says it’s not just the prairie dogs that are affected by the poisoning. The endangered black footed ferrets eat prairie dogs to survive. Since there are so many prairie dogs on the Haverfield’s land, it was decided that they should host one of the first re-introductions of the ferrets. Since it’s endangered, it can’t be legally poisoned.

But the ferrets didn’t stop the county. Haverfield says the state law and the federal Endangered Species Act are working against each other.

“That’s quite a conflict, we think the endangered species act will rule in that argument.”

And an environmental group thinks Haverfield should be able to do what he wants on his land. Ron Klataske is with the Audubon of Kansas.

“Basically, the conflict in western Kansas is: are landowners allowed to have native wildlife on their land?”

Ironically, ranchers such as Keith Edwards say they’re worried about being able to do what they want on their land too.

“Our question is: what will be able to do with our land when the black footed ferret becomes established? And we poison prairie dogs and it accidentally poisons a ferret? Does that leave us open for a lawsuit? Scares us to death.”

Edwards is afraid that this is only the beginning – that if he can’t poison what he wants on his own land, will he have any freedoms as a farmer at all?

Haverfield says he plans to stick to his principles and keep the prairie dogs & the ferrets on his land, no matter what it costs him.

For The Environment Report, I’m Devin Browne.

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Captive Otters Adopt Orphaned Pups

  • Now that surrogate moms raise the otters, the goal is for the pups to never see or hear a human. To get up close to the pup, Ann had to put on a Darth Vader costume of sorts. (Photo by Angela Hains)

For animals in most zoos and
aquariums, the door from freedom
to captivity only swings one way.
But at the Monterey Bay Aquarium,
sea otters from its exhibits teach
wild sea otter orphans how to
survive in the ocean. Ann Dornfeld
has the story:

Transcript

For animals in most zoos and aquariums, the door from
freedom to captivity only swings one way. But at the
Monterey Bay Aquarium, sea otters from its exhibits teach
wild sea otter orphans how to survive in the ocean. Ann
Dornfeld has the story:

Rosa has her baby in a headlock. That’s actually how
southern sea otters hold their young.

“The pup is essentially unconscious – it’s very much
asleep, and Rosa is holding it as a female would in the
wild: she’s got it sort of teed off to her side with a paw
around its neck.”

Andy Johnson is the director of the Monterey Bay
Aquarium’s Sea Otter Research and Conservation
program.

By the end of the19th century, sea otters had been hunted
to extinction in some parts of the Pacific.

Lilian Carswell is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
She says these days, pollution and disease are sea otters’
biggest threats. And she says a lot of other species
depend on otters’ survival.

“Sea otters are important for a number of reasons. One is
that they’re a top predator in the nearshore marine
ecosystem and they play an important role in structuring
what that ecosystem looks like.”

Hungry sea otters keep sea urchin populations in check.
When urchins overpopulate an area, they can mow down
entire kelp forests that provide food and shelter for
hundreds of species.

So to help conserve the otter population, Andy Johnson
and his team at the Monterey Bay Aquarium pair orphaned
pups from the wild with the female exhibit otters. The goal
is for the surrogate mother to not only care for the pup, but
also to teach it all the skills it will need to be released back
into the wild at about six months old.

A volunteer has just tossed some food into the pool where
Rosa and the orphaned pup are swimming. Rosa grabs
the live crab as the pup watches.

“Rosa’s quite skilled with those, so she’ll pretty much take
that apart in a few minutes. We’ll have to watch the pup
and see if the pup approaches the crab without getting
pinched. I have to admit it’s quite amusing to see these
young animals confronting these crabs ’cause these crabs
are pretty formidable on their own.”

Rosa ends up breaking off a leg for her adopted pup, who
decides the shell is too much work. Before long, though,
the pup will learn some of the same impressive skills that
adult sea otters have – like how to use tools to open clams
and sea urchins.

Before the surrogate program began, workers and
volunteers used to hand-rear these pups. They’d even
take the pups swimming in Monterey Bay to acclimate
them to their future home.

But that made the released otters expect food from
boaters and other people they encountered in the bay.

Now that surrogate moms raise the otters, the goal is for
the pups to never see or hear a human. We’ve been
watching the sea otters interact from a TV monitor near
the pool. To get up close to the pup, I have to put on a
Darth Vader costume of sorts – starting with a huge black
nylon poncho.

(sound of the poncho)

Ann: “This is a welding mask?”

Andy Johnson: “A very cheap welding mask.”

Rosa isn’t fooled. As I approach the pool, she shoots over
to see whether I have food.

(sound of the otter sniffing around)

Rosa was a rescued pup. She was hand-reared before the
surrogate program began. After she was released into
Monterey Bay, she had to be recaptured because she was
jumping on kayaks and divers.

“We found that with the sea otters, putting them with an
adult female in a fairly shallow pool for six months far
outweighs whatever we were doing trying to raise these
pups.”

Sea otter populations are recovering at a slow pace in
California. But this program is contributing to the
population.

Johnson says the apparent survival rate of the re-released
pups is now about as good as that of newly-weaned pups
in the wild. Some have even successfully raised their own
pups, using skills they picked up from an exhibit otter at
the aquarium.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Living Out Aldo Leopold’s Legacy

  • Aldo Leopold found fame by writing "A Sand County Almanac"... but even sixty years after his death, scholars say his theories about living in harmony with nature are influencing conservation practices today. (Photo courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation Archives)

If you feel you just cannot live without wild things, you have something in common with a conservationist who’s still influencing conservation practices almost sixty years after his death. Scholars say the theories of Aldo Leopold continue to help shape wildlife management and land preservation, especially in the Upper Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

If you feel you just cannot live without wild things, you have something in
common with a conservationist who’s still influencing conservation practices almost
sixty years after his death. Scholars say the theories of Aldo Leopold continue to help shape wildlife management and land preservation, especially in the Upper Midwest. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Aldo Leopold is probably best known for writing A Sand
County Almanac. That’s a collection of essays about finding harmony
with nature. His ideas about preservation changed while working for the
Forest
Service in the southwestern U.S. Rick Stel of the Aldo Leopold
Foundation
says one day in the early 1900’s Leopold shot a wolf thought to be a threat
to
cattle. The female had pups with her.


“And he says he got there in time to see the
fierce green fire die in her eyes… and it was at this time he realized
we’re going about this in the wrong way… we really need to look at all
creatures and everything as a community.”


Leopold’s epiphany led to writings that won him national attention. he
eventually moved to Madison, Wisconsin – first to work in forest
research and later at the University of Wisconsin. There, he taught the
nation’s
first course in game management.


In 1935, he bought an abandoned farm in the sandy floodplain of the
Wisconsin River. It became the inspiration for many of the essays in A Sand County
Almanac.


(sound of unlocking door)


Most tours of the site start at an old chicken coop that was the only
building left when Leopold bought the place and is the only structure
now. The shack, as Leopold called it, has no electricity or furnace.


(sound of fire)


On chilly days tour guides light a fire in the fireplace and talk about
the ideas Leopold developed while visiting the shack with his family.
The Leopold Foundation’s Buddy Huffaker says Leopold worried about
becoming disconnected from nature.


“His February essay talks about the two spiritual dangers of
not owning a farm. One is to assume food comes from a grocery store, and the second is that heat comes from a furnace.”


Outside the shack Leopold and his family worked to return the land to its
pre-agricultural state. They planted thousands of pine trees. The also undertook
one of
the first prairie restorations. The Leopold family spent a lot of time
discussing how
people were damaging the environment.


(sound of brushing)


About one hundred yards from the shack Buddy Huffaker brushes off
a plaque that’s set in the ground. at this spot, Leopold sawed apart a
lightning-damaged oak tree that he called the good oak. He wrote
about the experience in a famous essay that Huffaker says is really
about natural history.


“As he and his family saw through the growth rings of the oak, he
goes back in time to see how people have disregarded other natural
elements in the landscape – the decimation of turkeys and other
species that we hunted into extinction locally or entirely.”


But turkeys, sandhill cranes and a few others species have come
back–in part because of Leopold’s conservation ethic. Now his
followers are trying to protect more things.


To spread Leopold’s message some groups have started sponsoring
readings of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. At a library in Lake
Geneva
Wisconsin Jim Celano reads from the essay about the good oak.


“Now our saw bites into the 1920’s the Babbittian
decade when everything grew bigger and better in heedlessness and
arrogance – until 1929 when stock markets crumpled. If the oak heard them
fall, its
wood gives no sign.”


Celano is a former commerical real estate developer who now heads
a land conservancy group. He says he’s trying to convey Leopold’s
ideas to other developers.


“That we’re not here to say no to development… but to ask
they be sensitive to what they’re developing. And when you step on
their parcel, after their development is done, that the first thing you
notice is what they’re preserved and protected.”


(sound of woodpecker and traffic)


But even Aldo Leopold’s famous land around the shack is not immune
from modern threats. As a woodpecker hammers overhead, the noise
from a nearby interstate highway intrudes into the scenery. The
Leopold foundation’s Buddy Huffaker says Aldo Leopold knew the future
would bring new threats to the natural world.


“But I think that’s Leopold’s challenge to us. He
understood progress was going to continue. He just wanted us to
contemplate what we wanted that progress to be. And how far it
should go.”


And with sales of A Sand County Almanac bigger now than when it was
published in 1949, it ‘s a future Aldo Leopold might be helping to
shape.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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