DEC kills nuisance bear

A state forest ranger last week killed a black bear that had been harassing people at the Eighth Lake State Campground. This was the first nuisance bear shot by the state this year. In 2009, state officials killed seven bears (a camper killed an eighth). Click here to read the full story in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

It’s too bad this happened. Another reminder that feeding bears at campgrounds (or anywhere) s a bad idea.

Take the panther poll

Earlier this week, I posted on Adirondack Almanack an article about mountain lions. It includes a photo of a plaster cast of a paw print sent me by Don Leadley, a veteran outdoorsman. Leadley says he tracked the beast for about a mile near his home in Lake Pleasant.

Paw print found by Don Leadley near Lake Pleasant.

Do mountain lions exist in the Adirondacks? That’s the question raised by the article.

It’s also the question raised in a new website created by the Wild Center in Tupper Lake.

The Wild Center’s site, which goes live today, includes video from two motorists who saw a mountain lion in Russell, just north of the Park, and from Ken Kogut, a state wildlife biologist who pooh-poohs the idea that the big cats are living in the Adirondacks.

Kogut does not mention in the video that he himself once saw a mountain lion bounding across a road. The state Department of Environmental Conservation, however, insists that any mountain lion seen in the region must have been a former pet that was released by or escaped from its owner. Yet DEC says the vast majority of “sightings” are cases of mistaken identity.

Mountain lions—also known as cougars, pumas, or panthers—supposedly were extirpated from the Adirondacks a century ago, but rumors persist that a remnant population remains here.

The Wild Center’s website contains several other cool features, including a map showing reported cougar sightings in the Park, by decade; photos and descriptions of cougar sign; and audio of the cat’s sounds.

It also contains a reader poll.

Do you think mountain lions exist in the Adirondacks? Now you can register your opinion.

Harassing loons

The common loon is an icon of the North Woods, a symbol of wilderness, and sometimes the object of harassment.

Common loon with chick. Photo by Larry Master.

On June 12, two teenage boys frightened a loon off its nest on Sixth Lake, in Inlet, and struck the nest with a canoe paddle, breaking an egg, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. DEC  ticketed the boys’ guardian for destroying the nest of a protected bird—on the theory that the guardian must answer for the boys’ actions. The maximum penalty is a $250 fine and fifteen days in jail.

The good news is that the remaining egg in the nest hatched.

On July 21, a teenage boy ski was seen harassing two adult loons and three juvenile birds by buzzing them with a jet-ski on Raquette Pond, part of Tupper Lake, according to DEC. “Loons, and especially young loons, have limited capacity to repeatedly dive below the surface to avoid such boating harassment, and it is unknown if any loons were injured or killed,” the agency said in a news release. The boy was charged with illegally taking protected wildlife and several violations of state Navigation Law. The fines could add up to as much as $900.

In a third incident, DEC received a complaint on July 12 that boaters were harassing nesting loons on Raquette Lake. Although two eggs from the nest eventually hatched, DEC is investigating the incident.

In other loon news, DEC yesterday rescued an adult bird that was sitting in a roadway in Arietta in Hamilton County (loons need to take flight from water). Environmental Conservation Officer Peter Buswell and Lt. Harold Barber bundled the loon in a raincoat and transported it to North Country Wild Care in Warrensburg for rehabilitation.

Although its population has increased in recent decades, the common loon remains a species of special concern in New York State. Wildlife Conservation Society recently completed its annual loon census in the Adirondacks. The data are still being analyzed.

Click here to read DEC’s news release on the loon incidents.

DEC news release

Encounter with a timber rattler

Timber rattlesnake on Lake Shore Road. Photo by Seth Lang.

Crown Point photographer Seth Lang was driving on Lake Shore Road between Wesport and Essex yesterday when he spotted a large timber rattlesnake in the road. Timber rattlers are a threatened species in New York State. This specimen was all black.

 “It was stretched across the lane as I swerved around it,” Seth e-mailed me. “I realized it was a snake.  I threw it in reverse, and it coiled up and stayed coiled up while I photographed it.  Very large, bigger around than my arm, and I’d guess five to six feet long.  It did kinda keep puffing up like it wanted to strike, but no rattle noise.”

Photo by Seth Lang.

Lake Shore Road borders Split Rock Mountain, which is thought to be the northernmost habitat of the timber rattler. In the Adirondacks, the snakes also can be found on Tongue Mountain and other spots around Lake George. Timber rattlers range as far south as Florida and as far west as Texas.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation notes that timber rattlers usually are three to four and a half feet long, so the one Seth encountered was larger than average—unless his eyes deceived him.

Bill Brown, an expert on timber rattlers, says the snakes rarely grow larger than four feet. “Anybody that sees a four-foot timber rattler thinks he saw a five-foot snake,” he said.

Brown said the Split Rock population is unusual in that all the specimens are black. Except for a tiny population in New Hampshire, other populations in the North are made up of black snakes and yellow snakes (with crossbands). In the South, there may be more color variations.

A biologist who has studied timber rattlers for more than three decades, Brown attributes the uniformity of the Split Rock population to the “founder effect.” It is supposed that all the founders of the population were black, and no yellow snakes contributed to the gene pool.

Essex County, where Split Rock Mountain is located, once offered a bounty on the venomous snakes—which led to a steep decline in their numbers. How is the population faring these days?

 “As far as I know, it’s doing well,” Brown said. “It’s like all of the populations in New York State. They’re holding their own or coming back a little bit.”

Timber rattlers feed mostly on small mammals, but they also eat birds, amphibians, and other snakes. They use venom to immobilize prey. “In New York there have been no records of human deaths attributable to rattlesnakes in the wild during the last several decades,” DEC says. “Contrary to popular opinion, a rattlesnake will not pursue or attack a person unless threatened or provoked.”

Our vanishing bats

Over the past four years, the number of endangered Indiana bats in New York State has plummeted about 50 percent. And that’s the good news.

The populations of other bat species in the state have fallen as much as 90 percent.

State biologist Al Hicks told the Adirondack Park Agency on Thursday that three species—the little brown, northern, and eastern pipistrelle bats—could be extirpated in the Northeast within a few decades.

A little brown bat with white-nose syndrome. Photo by Larry Master.

“Extinctions are not out of the question here,” Hicks said.

The bats are dying from white-nose syndrome. The disease’s name comes from the white fungus that appears on the animals’ snouts and wings. Infected bats often use up their fat reserves during hibernation and die of starvation. Many will leave caves in winter in a desperate search for food, but the insects they depend on for survival cannot be found at that time of year.

White-nose syndrome was first documented in 2008, when state scientists found thousands of dead bats in a cave south of Albany. They now think the disease originated in Howe Caverns, a commercial cave in Schoharie County. Photos taken at the cave in 2006 showed bats with the white fungus. In recent years, the disease has spread throughout New England, as far south as Kentucky, and as far west as Missouri.

Before the onslaught of white-nose syndrome, New York boasted the country’s third-largest population of Indiana bats, which are on the federal list of endangered species. Hicks put the population at 54,000. This paled in comparison to the number of little brown bats, the most common of the state’s bat species. One cave in the Adirondacks once harbored 200,000 little browns each winter. The Indiana bat, however, seems to be more resistant to the disease.

“There is a chance that the Indiana bat will be the most common bat in New York State, not because it’s doing well, but because it’s not dying out as much,” Hicks said.

When white-nose syndrome was first discovered, Hicks sent out pictures of infected animals to bat scientists around the country. None had ever seen anything like it. However, European scientists had. Apparently, bats in Europe have been living with white-nose syndrome for years, but for some reason it is not as lethal there.

Hicks said it’s possible that European bats have developed a resistance to the disease. Over time, he said, the same could happen here. If not, the die-offs will likely continue.

Falcons nesting on rock-climbing cliffs

State biologists have confirmed that peregrine falcons are nesting on two popular rock-climbing cliffs, Upper Washbowl and Poke-o-Moonshine.

The discovery of the nest on Upper Washbowl means that cliff will remain closed to climbers, but the routes on Lower Washbowl are now open. Upper Washbowl boasts twenty-one routes, including some of the best moderate multipitch routes in Chapel Pond Pass, according to the guidebook Adirondack Rock.

Falcons also are nesting on the Main Face of Poke-O, probably in the vicinity of the Nose, according to Joe Racette, a biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The department won’t open any new routes on the Main Face until scientists ascertain exactly where the nest is.

Poke-O is one the Adirondacks’ premier rock-climbing venues. The Main Face alone has 167 routes. Only twenty-four of those are open. You can find a list of the open routes in an earlier post.

Upper Washbowl closed

Last week, I posted a list of rock-climbing routes that are closed to protect the postential nesting sites of peregrine falcons. This morning, the state Department of Environmental Conservation announced that it is adding the Upper Washbowl routes to the list. The following is an e-mail sent out by Joe Racette, a DEC wildlife biologist:

We have observed peregrine falcons engaged in nesting behavior at the Upper Washbowl cliff at Chapel Pond, and effective immediately are closing all climbing routes on Upper Washbowl Cliffs.  Climbing routes on Lower Washbowl cliff will remain closed until peregrine falcon nesting on Upper Washbowl cliff is confirmed.

DEC debunks cougar rumor

Did you hear they found a dead mountain lion in Black Brook? It was hit by a car. The state Department of Environmental Conservation picked up the carcass and hauled it away the other day. There’s even a photograph to prove it.

The photo has been making the rounds of the Internet.

You can read all about this mountain lion on the Internet. Some guy took a picture of it on his cell phone.

But there is a problem with the story. The same photo turned up on the Internet weeks ago, supposedly taken in Pennsylvania. And a guy in Adirondack Forum says he received the photo twice: the first time, a few weeks ago, he was told it was taken in Springville, N.Y. ; the second time, just yesterday, he was told it was taken in Black Brook.

You can read about the hoax here and here. And click  here to read about an earlier hoax.

DEC spokesman David Winchell said the agency decided to issue a news release debunking the rumor after receiving a number of phone calls and e-mails about it.

Winchell acknowledges that mountain lions have been seen in the Adirondacks, but he insists there is not a wild population. Rather, DEC maintains that any cougars in the region are pets that were released or escaped. He says it’s easy in some states, such as Ohio, to acquire exotic animals.

“They’re cute when they’re little,” Winchell said of cougars, “but when they grow up they’re wild animals, and the people can’t take care of them, so they bring them to the Adirondacks and release them.”

Click on the link below to read DEC’s news release (Word document).

DEC on hoax

How to scare a bear

State wildlife biologists experimented for years with different methods to keep bears from stealing campers’ food in the High Peaks Wilderness. Finally, the state decided to require all campers in the eastern High Peaks to store food in bear-resistant canisters.

A black bear. Photo from Wikipedia.

This not a problem unique to the Adirondacks. The latest issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management includes a study conducted in California’s Sequoia National Park of the various ways people try to scare away “problem” bears: yelling at them, spraying them with pepper, throwing things at them, shooting them with rubber bullets, etc.

“Aversive conditioning was most effective when applied quickly after a bear’s first contact with human food. Shooting bears with rubber slugs from a 12-gauge shotgun was found to be slightly more effective than any other method,” according to a news release from the journal.

“Overall, aversive conditioning reduced but did not eliminate incidents of bears entering developed areas to forage for food,” the news release said. “The study noted that in areas where bears require access to critical habitats, it may be best to seasonally exclude people rather than bears.”

Incidentally, Mary Thill wrote a story about Adirondack bears in our September/October issue. And if you’re interested in bears, you’ll be interested in our earlier post about Yellow-Yellow, the bear that learned how to open food canisters.

Click here to  read the California study.

Click the link below to read the news release.

news release pdf

Our wolflike coyote

The skull on the left is from a pure coyote. The one on the right is from a coyote with wolf genes. Photo courtesy of the New York State Museum.

Scientists have recognized for a while that Adirondack coyotes are bigger than western coyotes, but there has been debate over whether the cause is genetic or environmental.

A recent study led by Roland Kays, mammal curator at the New York State Museum, comes down squarely on the side of genetics: the Adirondack coyote is part wolf.

Although scientists have suspected a wolf connection, Kays said the study proved it. “One of the big results was to show this in a systematic way,” he said.

Kays and two colleagues, Abigail Curtis and Jeremy Kirchman, tested the DNA from 686 coyotes and measured the skulls of 196 specimens. They found not only that Adirondack coyotes are part wolf, but also that their skulls are wider and larger–that is, more wolflike–than the skulls of typical coyotes. The Adirondack coyote’s larger skull and body give it an advantage in hunting deer.

“It’s got enough coyote in it to live around humans, but enough wolf to take down ungulates,” Kays said.

Coyotes evolved as hunters of rodents and other small prey in the Great Plains, but they migrated east in the last century, partially filling the niche once occupied by wolves (which were driven out in the 1800s). Some traveled south of the Great Lakes, reaching New York State via Ohio. But others went north of the lakes into Canada, where they bred with wolves, and then moved south to the Adirondacks and New England, according to the study, published in Biology Letters.

The two populations later met in western New York and Pennsylvania. Unlike the Adirondack coyotes, those that arrived in New York via Ohio remained the same size as their western counterparts. Kays said that since both populations dwell in similar habitats–woods filled with deer–genetics, not the environment, must account for their physiological differences.

Kays also noted that Adirondack coyotes exhibit far less genetic diversity than coyotes that migrated through Ohio. This suggests that the population is descended from a few females that crossed the St. Lawrence River from Canada.

Despite its lupine genes, the hybrid remains more coyote than wolf, according to Kays. In a sense, though, the wolf has returned to the Adirondacks, only in a different form.

“It’s interesting to show that evolution is still happening,” Kays said. “It’s not something you observe just in fossils.”

NOTE: This article appears in the November/December issue of the Adirondack Explorer.