In this issue:
- TWS Stance on Proposed NADCA Certification
- Urban/Suburban Canada Goose Committee Comments
- TWS 5th Annual Conf. Preliminary Program Notes
- Foreign Member's Contributions
- 1998 Working Group Executive Board Election Results
- Working Group Membership Address/Phone/Email List
September 23 1998 6-8 pm
Hyatt Grand Ballroom E
Preliminary Agenda (we encourage additions)
Welcome
Minutes
Reports
Membership/Treasurers
Translocation
Urban goose management
Urban deer management
NWCO certification/licensing
Policy statement on trapping
1998 1999 TWS annual meeting special sessions
2nd International Wildlife Management Congress 1999
WDMWG communication
Installation of new officers
New business
FORWARD -- Scott Hygnstrom
Fellow members--I look forward to seeing several of you at the upcoming TWS meeting in Buffalo September 22-26 1998. The program committee has put together another fine schedule of activities including among other things a workshop on fertility control symposia on public health and safety and managing abundant deer populations and a paper session on human-wildlife conflicts. Details are posted on the following column. You shouldnt have any trouble finding something of interest and importance. We will also hold our annual meeting of the WDM Working Group in conjunction with the TWS meeting (see announcement and agenda). I hope you will be able to participate and bring new ideas to the group.
I am pleased to announce the newest additions to our executive board--representatives Bill Andelt Russ Mason and Becky Stout. We welcome them aboard and look forward to their fresh energy and new ideas. In addition I would like to thank past board members Frank Boyd Kathy Fagerstone and Bob Timm for their contributions.
My term as chair of the Working Group will be ending in September and I will be turning over the reins to the witty hard-driving and ever-capable chair-elect Scott Craven. As I look back I feel we have accomplished a great deal but there is much more waiting for us in the future. With over 200 members we are the second largest and perhaps the most active Working Group in TWS. We have hosted paper sessions symposia and workshops at all five TWS annual meetings. We have produced a few position statements and have several papers and publications in the works. We have fended off a direct attack and are stronger because of the experience gained. I salute all of the board members committee chairs and members session organizers newsletter editors and others who have contributed to the Working Group. As we move into the future I expect that we will expand our activities to reflect the ever increasing demands that society places on professionals in the field of wildlife damage management. Be prepared.
"Public Health and Safety and Wildlife in Conflict?"
Tuesday September 22 1:20-5:20pm
Organizers:
Dennis Slate USDA-APHIS-WS Concord NH
Gary San Julian Penn. State U. University Park PA
We expect this timely topic to generate interest among professionals involved in wildlife damage management as well as wildlifers in general. This symposium includes 11 presentations on diverse topics ranging from wildlife attacks on people to wildlife impact on safe air travel. The session will include 6 presentations on historic and prospective
rabies management strategies. One presentation specifically focuses on rabies management in the Buffalo-Niagara Frontier to prevent raccoon rabies from entering Ontario Canada. "We want to see a full room of wildlifers to provoke their thoughts on significant management challenges that result from human-wildlife conflicts that impact public health and safety" say Slate and San Julian.
"The Status and Future of Wildlife Fertility Control" Thursday September 24 8:00am - 9:00pm
Organizers: Paul Curtis Cornell Univ. Ithaca NY Robert Warren Univ. Georgia Athens GA
Increasingly fish and wildlife agency managers biologists and administrators are being questioned by the public concerning the applicability of fertility control for managing free-ranging wildlife populations. Although there is potential for fertility control to be used for regulating wildlife populations in the future the current state of this technology is primarily experimental. Many practical legal policy economic public and regulatory hurdles remain before fertility control can be applied routinely in wildlife population management. This workshop is designed to provide an open forum for presentation and critical discussion of timely topics relevant to wildlife fertility control. The intended audience is biologists managers and administrators with state and federal wildlife agencies; policy-makers in suburban communities and non-governmental organizations; and university scientists. Considering the diverse audience presentations at the workshop will primarily be in lecture format rather than highly technical research papers. To help achieve the objective of informing a diverse audience 5 discussion periods have been scheduled during the day-long workshop to provide more than 3 hours for the audience to ask questions. A special resource technology fair has also been scheduled to display the latest technology developments for fertility control methods. One of the major products from the course will be an indexed 3-ring binder (i.e. workbook) containing copies of all articles and readings provided by the speakers. The invited speakers are nationally recognized experts who are working on many aspects of the biological and social dimensions of wildlife fertility control. The maximum attendance for this workshop is 100 people. All attendees will pay a $55 registration fee in addition to the registration fee for The Wildlife Societys 5th Annual Conference (1-day registration is available). For additional information about workshop content contact: Paul Curtis (607) 255-2835 pdc1@cornell.edu or Robert Warren (706) 542-6474 warren@ smokey.forestry.uga.edu. Questions about registration should be directed to: Lorraine LeShack (301) 897-9770 or lorraine@wildlife.org.
Preliminary Program for
A practical view of excellence in wildlife stewardship through conservation and environmental education - 1 day
The status and future of wildlife fertility control - 1 day & eve. (hosted by the WDMWG)
Statistical analysis of GIS and spatially correlated field data - 1 day
Writing and publishing: a studentšs guide to the process in The Wildlife Society - _ day
The cost of ignorance: a crisis in wildlife research in North America - _ day
Ecological restoration and biodiversity: theory and application - 1 day
Ecology and conservation of webless wetland birds - _ day
European wildlife land and people: a tapestry of science management and history - 1 day
Evaluating the role of hypothesis testing/power analysis in wildlife science - _ day
The importance of ecological economics to wildlife conservation - _ day
Managing abundant white-tailed deer populations in the eastern United States - 1 day
Public health and safety and wildlife in conflict? - _ day (hosted by the WDMWG).
The role of large scale experiments in wildlife management: principles and practice - 1 day
Striving for excellence in wildlife stewardship in education: making programs marketable measurable and mission-driven - _ day
Wildlife toxicology in the Great Lakes: a forensic approach - _ day
Wildlife toxicology in northeastern North American ecosystems - _ day
The WDMWG committee applauds NADCA for beginning a dialogue concerning the education and training requirements for NWCO. We believe this is an excellent first step in the development of national standards regarding NWCO training and education requirements. While it is a good beginning the committee recognizes significant problems exist with the draft program. The first of which NADCA is promoting calls for a national NWCO Certification program. This in fact is not a certification program and the WDMWG does not endorse a certification program for NWCO. The recommendations offered by NADCA are guidelines for licensing and the WDMWG concurs with NADCA by requiring minimum licensing standards that include educational material relevant to the NWCO business.
Second theWDMWG does not believe it is NADCAs role to write draft regulations regarding oversight of NWCO. As evidence of particular problems with drafting regulations Bluett pointed out the sale trade barter....is prohibited etc. should not be included in any regulations because of potential problems with capturing more animals than the offending animals etc. Martin pointed out the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation would not support that woodchucks could be controlled by burrow fumigation - prior approval from a district biologist is required before wildlife are relocated etc.
The WDMWG recommends the following as a protocol for developing minimum national licensing standards: State wildlife agencies should provide administrative oversight of NWCO programs within their jurisdiction. As a part of this oversight state agencies should require all NWCO to complete an application for licensing and that a fee be assessed to cover the cost of implementing the NWCO program at the state level. NWCO should possess a valid NWCO license but depending on state statues. They would not be required to have a valid hunting or trapping license because the NWCO would be a special license. Furthermore state agencies should require NWCO show evidence of knowledge training experience and expertise in the handling of nuisance wildlife situations through completion of an educational program and examination prior to licensing.
While it would be desirable to have NWCO pass a trapper education and hunter education course the WDMWG does not believe it should be required. The committee recommends that the International Association or another representative organization develop a comprehensive NWCO educational manual and self-study guide where-in the NWCO could study the manual and study guide. The study guide would contain 400 possible examination questions and NWCO would be advised that 100 examination questions will be randomly selected from the possible questions for the closed book test. States would be allowed to modify the manual to include local variances in procedures and laws. State agencies would also determine the level of competency required (example 70 or 80% correct) prior to issuing a license. Topics that would be included in the manual would include: State and Federal Laws Related to Wildlife Management
Population Biology and Natural History of Selected Species
Humane Treatment of Animals
Euthanasia Techniques
Professionalism & Ethics
State agencies should also require NWCO to keep complete and accurate records regarding the numbers of each species captured and the disposition of those animals the condition of animals captured and any other important information. States should conduct a criminal background check prior to issuing a license to a NWCO. State agencies develop a group of interested stakeholders (an advisory committee) to consider the needs and desires of all parties when drafting and implementing licensing requirements and standards.
Finally the WDMWG recommends that states consider (but not require) proof of financial responsibility (surety bond or liability insurance) prior to issuing a license to protect the state agency the NWCO and NWCO clients.
Report submitted by Tom Barnes
Thanks to the following individuals for contributing to this issue: Tom Barnes Greg Baxter Dick Curnow Paul Curtis Pall Hersteinsson Scott Hygnstrom Lorraine LeSchack Nate Miller and Dennis Slate.
If there are any items you wish to have included in the next newsletter the Fall 1998 issue please get them to me no later than 30 September. Thanks.
Art Smith
(608) 263-5687 - voice (608) 262-6099 - fax
aesmith1@facstaff.wisc.edu - email.
The Working Group was requested by Tom Franklin to develop a stance representing TWS on urban/suburban wildlife
conflicts. Initial species of concern were Canada geese and white-tailed deer. The Working Group formed 2
separate committees to address each species. Most members of the committee volunteered to serve at a special
meeting hosted by the Working Group at the Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference December 1997 Milwaukee WI.
Art Smith served as chair other committee members were Gray Anderson Jon Bergquist Charlie Brown Scott Craven
Paul Curtis Debra Doncaster John Hadidian Martin Lowney Barry MacKey John Maestrelli David Reinhold Gary San
Julian John Sullivan Steve Wilds Phil Whitford and Gary Witmer. Independent to Tom Franklin's request Art Smith
and Scott Craven had been developing a manual for urban/suburban Canada goose management "A techniques guide
for the management of Canada geese in the urban environment" hereafter referred to as "the guide."
Tom Franklin's request and the focus of the guide were similar so the committee's work centered
around critical
problems
associated with urban/suburban Canada goose conflicts and a possible role the guide has in answering those
problems.
Committee members were provided a draft of the guide and asked to answer the following questions
1) define the most pressing human/goose problems and how we may address them;
2) if you agree that there is a lack of appropriate reference material does the guide fill the void if not what type of document is necessary;
3) are there techniques which are missing in the guide;
4) does a "human dimensions" section needs to be included in the guide or does a separate document need to be produced; and
5) if a separate document is necessary can/should
it be generalized for use with other species specifically white-tailed deer? In addition several members were
asked to review the Rules and Regulations section of the guide.
There were few direct responses to the first question. This may be because of the inclusion of the guide and
several questions directly relating to the guide. It also may be because the members see this as a rather
obvious question. Regarding the guidešs ability to fulfill a reference void all responding members agreed
that the guide sufficiently fulfilled a techniques reference niche. For question 3 which asked if any
techniques were missed in the guide all committee members felt that the guide was fairly comprehensive.
The majority of responding committee members agreed that the guide needed a summary section on the human
dimensions of urban/suburban Canada goose management and a complete treatment on the subject should be
addressed in a separate manuscript. A single member advised that a separate human dimensions document
should be avoided and a complete treatment on human dimensions should be included within the guide.
For question 5 "if a separate document is necessary can/should it be generalized for use in other arenas
specifically human/white-tailed deer conflicts?" the committee split their answers giving legitimate reasons
given for both views.
The committee found that "A techniques guide for the management of Canada geese in the urban environment" is a needed and comprehensive document. Although unasked of the committee several members expressed the opinion that The Wildlife Society should endorse the guide. The committee also recommends that a separate comprehensive document on human dimensions in wildlife should be produced. Dan Decker Human Dimensions Research Unit Cornell University was approached regarding the development of a human dimensions in urban/suburban Canada goose management manuscript. He was excited about the possibility of producing a human dimensions document and indicated his interest in taking the leadership on it. The decision on whether to produce species-specific human dimensions manual or to combine several species into one manual should probably be left until a later time. report submitted by Art Smith
Officers:
Chair: Scott Hygnstrom
Chair Elect: Scott Craven
Sec./Tres.: Dave Williams
Board Members: Frank Boyd, Dick Curnow ,Kathy Fagerstone ,Jim Miller ,Rick Owens, Bob Timm
Most research and literature on wildlife damage management are focused on species and events specific to North America. This is somewhat unfortunate since many of the problems we face are not unique, and are shared by others throughout the world. The following articles were contributed by members of this Working Group who live and work outside of North America. This is the first of at least a 3-part series, culminating in an overview which will be written by Jonathan Reynolds, United Kingdom. My thanks to those members who have already sent in their articles, some of which will be appearing in upcoming issues.
Environmental Consultant, Newcastle NSW
Lecturer in biology, University of Newcastle NSW
Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in Natural Systems Management, University of Queensland
B. Natural Resources, University of New England, Armidale NSW Australia. 1979
Ph.D. Graduate School of the Environment, Macquarie University: Sydney Australia. 1992
Specific interests:
Management of black-striped wallabies (Macropus dorsalis) and koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus)
Ecology of Egrets
Prevalence of lead poisoning in ducks
Environmental problem solving
Since European settlement the Australian landscape has been altered to a degree that is probably hard for most non-residents to appreciate. The human population is highly urbanized and lives mostly along the coast. The only animals that directly threaten personal safety are crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus), much less frequently dingoes (Canis lupus), and very occasionally cassowaries (Casuarius casuarius). These animals live well away from the major urban centers and cause problems only when people venture into their habitats. However, a wide range of elapid snakes do live closely with people and kill about 2 people per year. They are managed by manipulating cover, capture and relocation, or a substantial clout with a blunt object.
Damage from wildlife is overwhelmingly agricultural - to crops, pasture, fences, water supplies, and livestock. Agricultural authorities took the lead in wildlife management, with the sole motivation of minimizing economic loss. The first control measures were applied to predators. For example thylacines (or Tasmanian Tigers, Thylacinus cyncocephalus) were perceived to be sheep killers and in 1836 The Van Diemen's Land Company employed a trapper to control them, and shortly thereafter provided bounties for thylacine scalps. The last thylacine bounty was paid in 1909. This animal has been presumed extinct since 1936, but there is still uncertainty about the role bounties played in its extinction.
Control of dingoes and wedge-tailed eagles (Aquila audax) has proceeded in similar fashion on the mainland. Bounties are still offered to members of the public for dingo scalps, and "doggers" are employed to kill dingoes in some local government areas in Queensland. Dingoes are baited, often from the air, with compound 1080 (Sodium Monoflouroacetate), in New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland. In certain circumstances landholders can obtain a permit from state fauna authorities allowing them to kill native animals that they believe are causing economic loss. These permits often apply to macropodids such as black-striped wallabies (Macropus dorsalis), or red-necked wallabies (M. rufogriseus).
The most usual control over non-predatory pests is lethal, mostly by shooting. The current kangaroo harvest, which takes more than a million animals annually from four species, began as a control measure. Shooting is used to control other agricultural pests such as feral pigs (Sus scrofa), goats (Capra hircus), donkeys (Equus asinus), horses (E. caballus), and foxes (Canis vulpes). Biological control has also been important for some species. The myxoma virus was released 1950 and initially had a dramatic impact on rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) populations, that had caused severe overgrazing in some places. Since then rabbits have been managed by shooting, ripping warrens and managing cover. In October 1995 rabbit calicivirus accidentally escaped while it was being evaluated for planned release.
Since then rabbit calicivirus has spread widely, and has reduced populations by more than 90% in some places, but had little effect in others. The impact of predators like dingoes and wedge-tailed eagles is under scrutiny now that they have fewer rabbits to prey on. Rabbit calicivirus has recently been deliberately, but illegally, introduced into New Zealand. Separating the pest from the resource has also been employed. There is, for example, a fence stretching more than 5,300 km from the coast of the Southern Ocean in South Australia, almost to the Pacific coast in Queensland. It is called, with characteristic understatement, "the dog fence" since it was built to keep dingoes out of the sheep-grazing zone.
Another large fence protects wheat farming areas in Western Australia from damage from red kangaroos (M. rufus), western grey kangaroos (M. fuliginosus), and emus (Dromaius novaehollaniae). Recently feral goats have been mustered and removed live from range land grazing lands, and have become a substantial source of income for graziers. Experiments are also under way to develop a method to capture kangaroos around water points so they can be removed from some of the same lands, allowing more domestic stock to be run Rodents are an old and important part of the native mammalian fauna, but it is the recent imports that cause the greatest problems. There are periodic and explosive eruptions of mice (Mus domesticus) that attack grain in the field, and in storage. The only successful management is poisoning. In sugar cane fields, rats (Rattus sordidus) gnaw through the outer skin of the cane and allow entry of bacteria that reduce the cane's sugar content. These losses are managed by poisoning and modifying nearby habitat where the rats breed.
Damage to horticultural and grain crops also comes from birds and fruit bats. Management has been netting the most valuable crops, shooting ducks on rice fields, or manipulating the time when crops are sown so that the crop ripens when native grasses are seeding and provide a preferred food. Managing non-agricultural damage has lagged well behind, and is largely confined to control of competitors with, and predators of, native wildlife. Once again the main emphasis has been on lethal control by shooting and poisoning. For example there has been a very successful campaign to eradicate water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) from wetlands and flood plains of the Northern Territory. These animals have been largely shot from helicopter, as have donkeys, pigs, goats and feral horses.
There is, however, some feral fauna that is left unmolested. Camels (Camelus dromedarius) and banteng (Bos javanicus) have well established populations that have in some cases been shown to cause damage to vegetation and destroy shelter for native fauna, yet there does not seem to be sufficient political will to mitigate that damage.
In particular circumstances a good deal of effort has been applied to excluding and eradicating foxes and feral cats (Felis cattus) so that they cannot kill valuable native animals. Perhaps the best example is in Western Australia where burrowing bettongs (Bettongia lesueur) and western barred bandicoots (Perameles bougainville) have been re-introduced to the mainland from their last refuge on offshore islands. The main new thrust of non-lethal management is towards fertility control. This is largely driven by contingency planning to cope with exotic disease that may enter Australia and be harbored by many of the pest animals noted above.
In comparison the non-agricultural damage from wildlife is trivial, and is largely confined to issues like kangaroos causing collisions on roads, brush-tailed possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) invading ceilings in urban houses, and sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) damaging communications aerials, wiring and exposed woodwork on houses.
Behavioral and population ecology of small and medium sized carnivores. Due to its geography and location at high latitudes in the North Atlantic Ocean, the vertebrate fauna of Iceland is relatively poor, particularly with respect to mammals. In spite of this Icelanders have had their share of wildlife-human conflicts. The only native terrestrial mammal is the arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) but the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and American mink (Mustela vison) were introduced in the 18th and 20th centuries, respectively. Iceland was initially settled from Norway in the late 9th century AD. The first law which can be directly related to wildlife-human conflicts in Iceland dates from 1295 AD. According to this law, each farmer either had to kill one adult or two juvenile foxes or else pay a special tax which was then used to employ fox hunters. Hunting methods originally were trapping by rock-traps and smoking foxes out of their dens. As guns became available, these were taken into use, poison (strychnine) became available in the late 19th century but was finally prohibited in 1964 in order to protect the Gray Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) population which had turned out to be the main victim of the poisoning campaign. Until 1994 laws on fox hunting aimed at the extermination of arctic foxes and no area was exempt from hunting. Local authorities were to employ fox hunters to search each known den and kill the inhabitants. They were paid wages by the hour, in addition to traveling expenses and a bounty for each fox killed. The state paid about half of all these expenses.
According to the present law on hunting and conservation of wildlife, dating from 1994, the arctic fox is a protected species and hunting is only permitted in order to reduce or prevent damage. Methods of hunting, however, where it is still practiced, still include den hunting during the breeding season. Throughout the centuries, lamb predation has been the major cause of the extermination campaigns against the arctic fox. However, sheep husbandry practices have improved markedly in the latter half of this century. Thus lambing mostly takes place at home on the farms and, indeed, mostly indoors, so that lambs are not released onto their summer pastures until they are too old for most arctic foxes to prey on.
The ewes are also generally healthier and in better physical condition all around nowadays, making them better able to defend their lambs against the fox. At the same time as lamb predation became less important, an increased demand for eider (Somateria mollissima) down has resulted in farmers becoming more concerned with damage caused by the foxes in eider colonies. As eiders tend to nest in large but very dense colonies, protecting them from fox predation during the critical period in spring, is a relatively simple affair compared to trying to reduce arctic fox numbers over large areas, and in general it can be stated that conflicts over arctic foxes have been vastly reduced in recent years in spite of the fact that the arctic fox population has increased three- or fourfold over the last quarter-century. The American mink escaped from fur farms in the 1930's and within 40 years it had spread throughout Iceland. Damage caused by mink is mostly in eider colonies, but it has also been found to affect the nesting distribution and possibly population size of some other bird species.
The mink is hunted over most of Iceland and local authorities are partially re-reimbursed by the state for the expense. Hunters use dogs to find dens in summer and trap them in winter. Semi-domesticated reindeer were initially introduced to Iceland in order to "farm" them in the same way as the Lapps did. However, this "farming" never happened and reindeer have roamed free in Iceland since then. Their numbers increased quickly and by the early to mid-19th century many farmers had come to regard them as a pest, partly due to their over-grazing of lichens, which had been harvested by farmers, and partly for real or imagined grazing competition with sheep. Reindeer went extinct in southwestern Iceland at the turn of this century and almost went extinct in eastern Iceland. They were then totally protected for over almost four decades while their numbers were building up again. In the late 1980's and early 1990's complaints were becoming loud that they were damaging forestry, which is a recent industry in eastern Iceland. Another common complaint was that they were damaging wire fences during winter. Until the early 1990's, hunting quotas were determined bythe state government and it was in the hands of the local governments to employ hunters to fill the quota. In the early 1990's this changed.
Reindeer hunting was opened to the general public and the increased revenue generated by selling hunting licenses was partly used to compensate farmers for damage and partly to monitor the reindeer population. Also, a decision was made to reduce the population size by up to 50% in order to minimize conflict with forestry and to prevent over-grazing of lichens which had become apparent in some areas within the reindeer's range. At present these management practices appear to be satisfactory to most parties concerned.
Among the birds, conflicts have arisen over certain gull species, ravens and geese. In particular, Greater and Lesser Black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus and L. fuscus)), Glaucous Gulls (L. hyperboreus) and Herring Gulls (L. argentatus), all of which prey on eider ducklings and congregate around fish-processing plants, slaughter-houses, rubbish tips, etc. have come into conflict with man.
Nesting colonies around Reykjavik International Airport have also caused aviation hazards. Most of these species have experienced considerable population increase in this century, presumably due to improved access to food with increased oceanic fishing operations and fish processing. In the 1970's and 1980's phenyl-barbiturate was used in an attempt to reduce the size of these populations but it has been stopped due to hazards to other wildlife. New and tougher regulations about treatment of waste from fish processing plants, slaughterhouses, and of sewage, have reduced the problem in some areas. The shooting of gulls at Reykjavik International Airport has resulted in the nesting colony shifting further away from the airstrips with a marked drop in bird-strike frequency. At the moment considerable effort is being put into landscaping and shrub-planting at the airport in order to make it unattractive to the gulls as a nesting area, in the hope that shooting will soon be a management tool of the past there.
Many Icelanders would never dream of harming the legendary ravens (Corvus corax) but to others they are a pest. Again, they tend to be attracted to eider colonies where they prey on eggs and occasionally kill new-born lambs. Shooting is the most common method of relieving this problem.
Occasional farmers complain about the grazing of geese (Anser anser and A. brachyrhynchus) on fields in spring. A few licenses are issued to these farmers each year in order for them to shoot geese in their fields. Otherwise geese, like other game birds, can only be hunted in autumn. In general, it can be stated that Law No. 64/1994, on the Hunting and Conservation of Wildlife, which replaced three separate legislation's on foxes and mink, reindeer and birds, has better defined the real goals of wildlife management and wildlife damage control, making it necessary to justify any measures taken to reduce wildlife-human conflicts, particularly if this involves lethal methods.
Art Smith