Bat die-off continues

White-nose syndrome, the disease decimating bat populations in the Northeast and beyond, is believed to have spread to all known bat caves in New York, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The fungal disease has reduced the populations of some bat species in the state by 90 percent since it was first documented in 2008.

Bat with white-nose syndrome. Photo by Larry Master.

The Graphite Mine in Hague, once the largest hibernaculum in the state, has been especially hard hit. The number of little brown bats has fallen from 185,000 to 2,000, DEC says. Two other species, the northern bat and the endangered Indiana bat, have disappeared from the mine entirely. Another, the tri-colored bat, has been reduced to a lone specimen.

DEC surveyed hibernacula early this year. “Caves and mines that avoided infection in the early years of the disease, perhaps by chance, are now infected,” acting DEC Commissioner Peter Iwanowicz said in a news release. “This year’s survey included hibernation sites that had not been visited by DEC in decades. What we found was disturbing. We now have sampled sites that represent the full range of environmental conditions across the state—and none have been spared. It is likely the sites not yet inspected are infected as well.”

But the populations held steady in two caves in the Capital Region, albeit at at roughly 10 percent of their pre-disease count. “Infected animals were present at these two sites, so it’s too early to say the decline here has halted,” said DEC bat biologist Carl Herzog, “but these two caves represent the most hopeful results in an otherwise negative report.”

DEC is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to find ways to treat the disease and check its spread.

Click here to learn more about white-nose syndrome.

Moose population rises to 800

Moose are on the move this time of year. Photo by Larry Master, www.masterimages.org

The number of moose in New York State has risen to about eight hundred, an increase of three hundred from just three years ago, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. About a decade ago, there were just fifty to a hundred moose in the state.

“The return of the moose has been one of New York’s environmental success stories,” DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis said in a news release. “In the last four decades, moose, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, ravens and ospreys have established themselves in the North Country after long absences. … It’s wonderful to see the progress that’s been made.”

That’s the good news. The bad news is that motorists have more to worry about. Last year, the state saw ten collisions between moose and vehicles. Fortunately, there were no human fatalities.

Most moose live in the Adirondacks, and they are most active this time year—the fall rutting season. They often are on the move at dawn and dusk, when visibility is poor.

DEC offers the following advice to motorists:

• Use extreme caution when driving at dawn or dusk, especially during September and October.
• Reduce your speed, stay alert and watch the roadsides.
• Slow down when approaching moose standing near the roadside, as they may bolt at the last minute when a car comes closer, often running into the road.
• Moose may travel in pairs or small groups, so if a moose is spotted crossing the road, be alert for others that may follow.
• Make sure all vehicle occupants wear seatbelts and children are properly restrained in child safety seats.
• Use flashers or a headlight signal to warn other drivers when moose are spotted near the road.
• Motorcyclists should be especially alert for moose.             
• If a moose does run in front of your vehicle, brake firmly but do not swerve. Swerving can cause a vehicle-vehicle collision or cause the vehicle to hit a fixed object such as a tree or pole.
• If a moose is hit and killed by a vehicle, the motorist should not remove the animal unless a permit is obtained from the investigating officer at the scene of the accident.

Davis leaving council

John Davis is stepping down as conservation director of the Adirondack Council to work for the Wildlands Network, a nonprofit organization working to preserve natural corridors for wildlife migration.

John Davis

“It has been a great five years working on conservation strategies inside the Park,” Davis said in a news release today.  “Now, I get to think about how the Adirondacks can remain connected, or reconnect, to other major conservation areas on the East Coast.”

Besides working for the council for the past five years, Davis has been a proponent of the Split Rock Wildway, a wildlife corridor that would connect the Champlain Valley with the High Peaks region. The Explorer published a story on this initiative in our January/February 2006 issue.

Davis lives in a small cabin in Westport and commutes to the council’s office in Elizabethtown by bicycle or skis. He has logged some twenty-five thousand miles going to and from work. He should be plenty fit for his Wildlands Network assignment: hiking, paddling, cycling, and skiing through the East’s largest wildlands and waterways and studying the biological connections between them.

On his treks, Davis will be accompanied by naturalists, biologists, and others. He will write about his journeys and the efforts to preserve wildlife habitat.

“It saddens us to say goodbye to John Davis,” said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian Houseal, who hired Davis in 2005.  “He is a highly valued member of our staff, a well-respected conservationist and national leader in the area of wildlife habitat connectivity.  More than that, he has become part of our family here at the council and we will miss his companionship and his sense of humor.  We wish him the greatest success in his future endeavors.”

Davis will leave his post at the end of the year.

A hoppy meal

Luckily, a snake's stomach is bigger than its eyes. Photo by Mike Lynch.

Mike Lynch, an outdoors writer for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, took this photo of a garter snake eating a toad near Raquette Falls last week.

On his blog True North, Mike says it took the snake about a half-hour to swallow the amphibian. He posted a later photo on his blog that shows only the toad’s legs dangling out of the snake’s mouth.

One of the northernmost-dwelling snakes in the world, the garter exists throughout New York State and is by far the most common snake found in the Adirondacks. Click here to see distribution maps of all the snakes in the state.

Scientists once believed that the garter was non-poisonous, but recent research shows that it produces a mild neurotoxin, according to Wikipedia. A bite may cause a rash or swelling in humans.  Another website says its saliva is toxic to small animals.

Garter snakes often secrete a foul whitish substance if picked up. I saw this firsthand when my excitable boy of a son, then twelve or so, found a giant garter on Pillsbury Mountain years ago.

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.