IBA NEWS: CHASE LAKE NWR

While on the subject of centennials, mention should be made of Chase 
Lake National Wildlife Refuge (NWR).  The North American population of 
American White Pelicans was at an extremely low level when President 
Theodore Roosevelt established, by executive order, the Chase Lake NWR 
in August 1908.

This month, Chase Lake NWR in central North Dakota is celebrating its 
100th anniversary. We don't point out each and every refuge anniversary, 
but this one is special. This refuge, one of two wilderness refuges in 
North Dakota, is also a designated Important Bird Area (IBA).

Chase Lake often boasts the largest or second-largest (depending on the 
year) nesting colony of American White Pelicans in North America.

The refuge received considerable publicity in 2004 and 2005 when the 
USFWS investigated the mysterious deaths of thousands of young American 
White Pelicans at this critical IBA. Chase Lake NWR recovered the 
following year, supporting almost 35,000 birds. An aerial survey in late 
May of this year showed more than 23,000 nesting pelicans. But last 
month, another die-off was reported, with a loss of more than half the 
colonys young. The probable cause this year was cold, wet weather.

You can read more on the Chase Lake NWR centennial here:
http://www.fws.gov/arrowwood/chaselake_nwr/history.html

For additional information about worldwide IBA programs, and those 
across the U.S., check the National Audubon Society's Important Bird 
Area program web site at:
http://www.audubon.org/bird/iba/


SAGE-GROUSE: THE ONGOING SAGA

Some issues just don't seem to go away, and protection of sage-grouse, 
both Greater Sage-Grouse and Gunnison Sage-Grouse, is one of those 
issues. Astute observers describe the situation as "deeply troubling"; 
others use more colorful descriptions, such as "a train-wreck in the 
making." While, there are many ongoing developments on the sage-grouse 
front, two of them merit specific attention this month.

First, about a month ago two conservation groups, the Theodore Roosevelt 
Conservation Partnership (TRCP) and the North American Grouse 
Partnership (NAGP), asked the federal government to impose new 
restrictions on oil and gas development in the West in order to protect 
the Greater Sage-Grouse. They made "petition for rulemaking" requests to 
encourage the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land 
Management (BLM) to use the best available science available to protect 
sage-grouse.

Researchers contend that sage-grouse breeding areas are suffering as a 
result of rapid oil and gas exploration in the West, especially in 
Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and Utah. Other elements, such as the West 
Nile virus, drought, and residential development may also be taking a 
toll on sage-grouse.

About half of the remaining sagebrush habitat in the West is on 
BLM-managed lands, so that this agency's ability to help - or hinder - 
sage-grouse conservation is unprecedented. Current measures being used 
by the BLM to manage sage-grouse populations during energy development 
are inadequate. "A pile of current, peer-reviewed science is being 
ignored, and it's costing us our grouse," said Rollin Sparrowe of 
Wyoming, a TRCP board member and former president of both the Wildlife 
Management Institute and The Wildlife Society.

TRCP and NAGP proposed that all BLM Field Offices review the 
appropriateness of existing regulatory measures, updating those that are 
found to be inadequate, and encouraging investigators to use the best 
scientific and commercial data available in making future decisions. 
Perhaps most significant of the proposed changes is the one that states 
that the required buffer between any oil and gas drilling and 
sage-grouse leks should be extended from a quarter mile to two miles.
You can read the entire petition from TRCP and NAGP here:
http://www.trcp.org/documents/sage_grouse_petition2.pdf

An attorney for the two groups said the government was obligated to 
consider the petition, but not adopt it, so a decision could take 
several months.

The two organizations maintain that unless drilling is curtailed, 
sage-grouse could end up listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), 
shutting down public hunting and creating restrictions on drilling, 
residential development, and agriculture.

This ESA consideration is a second sage-grouse development worthy of 
note here. In late June, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service closed the 
comment period for sage-grouse inclusion under the ESA. The USFWS says 
it will decide by December whether to put the bird on the endangered 
species list. The agency refused to do so in 2005. However, a judge in 
December ordered the USFWS to reevaluate that decision after determining 
that it was tainted by political interference from a Bush administration 
official who resigned in 2007.


TIP OF THE MONTH: RE-LEARN ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA

We've mentioned a number of field guides in this month's E-bulletin. If 
you're an experienced birder, you may not always pull out your favorite 
field guide on your outings.

So, for those particularly skilled readers who find themselves in that 
position, we recommend a challenge. Indeed, even for those who are 
beginners and intermediate birders who regularly rely on field guides, 
we offer a similar suggestion for this tip of the month.

If you use Kenn Kaufman's GUIA DE CAMPO A LAS AVES DE NORTEAMERICA 
(Houghton Mifflin, 2005) in the field, you can actually learn - or 
re-learn - all the birds and their field marks... in Spanish!

Can you say "wing bars" in Spanish? Can you describe an American Robin 
in Spanish?

Well, using the book you can find out! Why not give it a try?


WONDERFUL WETLANDS

We end this month's E-bulletin with an upbeat study about the tremendous 
value of coastal wetlands, those mega-important bird habitats that most 
E-bulletin readers probably already appreciate.

In a study published in mid-July in AMBIO, a journal of the Royal 
Swedish Academy of Sciences, U.S. coastal wetlands were found to provide 
more than $23 billion in annual storm protection services to cities and 
regions most vulnerable to hurricane and tropical storm surges.

The Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont 
prepared the study, which finds that "coastal wetlands provide 
'horizontal levees' that are maintained by nature and are far more 
cost-effective than constructed levees." (Our aside: Do the words 
'Louisiana' and 'Katrina' resonate here?)

The researchers added, "If the frequency and intensity of hurricanes 
increases in the future, as some are predicting as a result of climate 
change, the value of coastal wetlands for protection of these storms 
will also increase."

The researchers drew their findings from modeling done for 34 major U.S. 
hurricanes dating back to 1980, including 2005's record-breaking year 
for both the number of storms making landfall in the U.S. and their 
devastating economic impacts.

The study concludes that the preservation and restoration of coastal 
wetlands is an extremely cost-effective strategy for society.

You can find the full study here:
http://www.allenpress.com/pdf/AMBI-37-4-241.pdf

- - - - - - - - -
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