Dolphin Drama And Grizzly Bear Renaissance
Transcript for:
Dolphin Drama And Grizzly Bear Renaissance MR. SAM LITZINGER
12:06:37
From WAMU 88.5 and American University in Washington, it's "The Animal House," connecting you with everything that concerns the animal world. I'm Sam Litzinger. Later, naturalist and NBC "Today Show" contributor David Mizejewski will help us celebrate Natural Squirrel Appreciation Day. Two grizzly bear experts will talk about the reasons behind the iconic animal's resurgence. Dr. Gary Weitzman will answer your questions about pets.
MR. SAM LITZINGER
12:06:58
First though, we're gonna travel to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where every year at this time, picturesque surroundings become a dramatic setting for animal rescue. Scores of dolphins swimming in shallow waters close to the shore are stranded. Many of the them, unfortunately, will die before they can be moved to safety. For some reason, the number of beached dolphins in Cape Cod this winter far exceeds those in previous years.
MR. SAM LITZINGER
12:07:20
Brian Sharp of the International Fund for Animal Welfare is leading the rescue effort. He takes a few minutes from his busy schedule to give us an update on this tough situation. Brian, glad to have you with us in "The Animal House."
MR. BRIAN SHARP
12:07:29
Hi, good afternoon, Sam.
LITZINGER
12:07:30
How many dolphins are we talking about here this time?
SHARP
12:07:33
Well right now, actually, we're finishing up our day. We've got four of our staff have been out in the field all day trying to collect information on some of the dead animals, and right now we're looking like our number has actually increased to 76 animals since this past Thursday. So in the last six days we've had 76 common dolphins. One of the most interesting things about this mass stranding is the geographical scale. This is spread out over five different towns and covers about 25 miles of coastline. So the stranding site, if you will, has been extremely large.
LITZINGER
12:08:07
Now you mentioned mass stranding. Is that common, or do you typically see maybe one or two dolphins coming ashore?
SHARP
12:08:14
We see both here on Cape Cod. Mass strandings for us can be very common from January through April, but typically they're much smaller than this.
LITZINGER
12:08:23
Do you have any idea what's going on this time?
SHARP
12:08:26
We know that there have been a lot of animals in the area. We think these animals get in close to shore feeding and then, you know, with weather conditions, or if animals come into shallow areas, that's when the stranding conditions occur. Because Cape Cod is such a stranding hotspot, our geography is very unique in the fact that we're basically a sand spit or a hook that sticks out in the ocean and, you know, we have very good food resources in the area so, you know, it's very common to see large groups of dolphins, whales, feeding in the area.
SHARP
12:08:56
But because we stick out in the oceans, we tend to get animals that are typically offshore coming in closer to shore, and when they come in closer to shore, you mix that with the fact that, you know, during different times of the year we can have tides, you know, our common tides are nine to 10 feet, sometimes it can exceed that when we have stormy conditions, you know, an animal is in 10 feet of water, and then six hours later it's high and dry.
LITZINGER
12:09:17
It must be both deeply satisfying and sometimes deeply saddening because I'm assuming you do lose some animals, but on the other hand, think of how many you're saving.
SHARP
12:09:25
Yeah. And it is, it can be a little bit of a roller coaster. I mean, just today we had one report of a live animal that unfortunately died about half hour before we were able to get on scene.
LITZINGER
12:09:35
You've been doing this for awhile. Do you envision a day when these dolphin strandings are relatively few and far between?
SHARP
12:09:43
You know, we do know that, you know, strandings especially on Cape Cod have happened for hundreds of years, so it's not something that is brand new to us, but one of the things that we want to make sure is that, you know, strandings aren't happening for other reasons, you know, if they are, because of weather, if they are because of tide. We want to make sure that we're monitoring this and making sure that it's not occurring because of other reasons also.
LITZINGER
12:10:05
And remind people what they should do if maybe they're on a beach someplace and they do see a stranded dolphin.
SHARP
12:10:10
Oh, that's a great question, and there are agencies like ours set up throughout the United States. So if you ever do see a stranded dolphin or seal, please call your local stranding agency, and if you're not sure, contact the local police department and they'll be able to hopefully patch that call to -- there are agencies all throughout the United States that'll take calls like this and you'll get a professional responder out there, and they'll be able to give the best care to the animal.
LITZINGER
12:10:33
Brian Sharp of the International Fund for Animal Welfare doing some fascinating work. Brian, I know you're busy. Thank you very much for spending time with us here in "The Animal House."
SHARP
12:10:40
All right. Thanks a lot, Sam.
SHARP
12:10:45
The Grizzly Bear of Yellowstone National Park received a major thumbs up recently when a federal appeals court ruled that wildlife managers made a mistake when they removed Endangered Species Act protection from the iconic animal. Here to give some details of the ruling and its implications, Mark Pearson, conservation program director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in Bozeman, Montana. Mark, glad to have you with us in "The Animal House."
MR. MARK PEARSON
12:11:09
Glad to be here.
LITZINGER
12:11:10
What was the court's reasoning here? Why did the court decide they still need protection?
PEARSON
12:11:15
The primary reason was the uncertain impact of climate change on the future viability of Grizzly Bears. In the last few years, there has been a tremendous die off of white bark pine as a result of a mountain pine beetle infestation, and the mountain pine beetle explosion here has been a result of much warmer winters than historically occurred. The reason that all matters for Grizzly Bears is that the seeds produced in the pinecones of white bark pine is a critical food source for Grizzly Bears in the fall.
PEARSON
12:11:49
Our argument was that the loss of white bark pine as a consequence of climate change was a critical factor in the long-term viability of Grizzly Bears, and the Fish and Wildlife Service had not done a very good job at assessing what the consequences of that change were gonna be.
LITZINGER
12:12:05
In the end, how closely can humans and Grizzlies coexist? Is it the case that we probably have to kind of seal off some areas and let the Grizzlies alone?
PEARSON
12:12:15
There's one of the federal bear biologists has a wonderful quote about the most important habitat for the Grizzly Bear is in the human heart. That's gonna be crucial to the long-term survival of Grizzly Bears is whether we as people are willing to make accommodation for them and change our habits and practices enough to ensure that bears have some places where they get priority.
LITZINGER
12:12:39
Mark Pearson is conservation program director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He joined us from Bozeman, Montana to talk about the recent federal ruling that restores federal protection for the Grizzly Bears of Yellowstone National Park. Mark, thank you very much for being with us in "The Animal House."
PEARSON
12:12:53
Happy to be here, enjoyed talking with you.
LITZINGER
12:12:55
Laws that are designed to protect and cultivate the Grizzly Bear seem to be having the desired effect. Reports of Grizzly sightings and human encounters are increasing. Our next guest in "The Animal House" is one of the people responsible for this turn of events. Chris Servheen is Grizzly Bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and he's here to tell us more about the reasons behind the Grizzly's return to prominence. Chris joins us from KUFM, Montana Public Radio. All right. So how many are out there, and I guess we should start with your neighborhood. How many are around you out there?
DR. CHRIS SERVHEEN
12:13:26
Well, in the Northern Rockies and the North Cascades, we have the remaining populations of Grizzly Bears in the lower 48 states, and there's about 1,700 Grizzly Bears in the four states of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington, and there's about three times or more as many bears today in the Northern Rockies as there were in 1975. So about 95 percent of the bears live in two big populations, the Yellowstone population, which is about 600, and the Northern Continental Divide population, which most people know as the Glacier Bob Marshall Complex.
LITZINGER
12:13:59
Is this a sort of population explosion for the Grizzlies?
SERVHEEN
12:14:02
Well, they're doing really well. In most of the range, they're expanding in numbers.
LITZINGER
12:14:07
What do you do technically to get these hard numbers for the Grizzlies?
SERVHEEN
12:14:11
Well, there's a tremendous base of science that we have that is the foundation of our recovery program, and we spend a lot of money and a lot of time understanding the biology of the bears, and we have GPS collars which we put on the bears. They record the location of the bear every hour, 24 hours a day. They store the data on the collar and we can fly over the collar with a small plane with a biologist with a laptop, he can then download that collar to the laptop in the airplane and get the most recent location data.
SERVHEEN
12:14:41
Those movement data really tell us where the bears go, how they relate to human activities, how the populations expand. We have stable isotopes that we monitor. For what the bears eat, there are very stable isotopes in the foods, and when they grow their hair coat, of course, those isotopes are transferred to the hair. So we can take a hair sample from a bear and we can tell what he's eating for the past six months.
SERVHEEN
12:15:04
So the stable isotope data is really important for us to understand the detailed food habits of the animals, and maybe they're eating things like garbage, and we call tell that they're eating garbage by looking at the stable isotopes, versus bears that may be living in more remote areas that never eat things like garbage.
LITZINGER
12:15:20
That's fascinating. Chris Servheen is a Grizzly Bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and he's been talking to us about Grizzly Bears. Thank you very much, Chris.
SERVHEEN
12:15:29
Good to talk to you.
LITZINGER
12:15:35
In a few moments, Dr. Gary Weitzman will join us with answers to your questions about pets. Later, we explore animal myths with author Paul Trout and naturalist David Mizejewski helps us celebrate National Squirrel Appreciation Day. Now that animal is also at the center of today's Critter Quiz. Squirrels belong to the order Rodentia. With 1650 species, rodents are the largest group of living mammals. Approximately 300 wild squirrel species live in places all over the world with one notable exception. Do you know the name of that location? We'll have the answer just before the end of today's program.
LITZINGER
12:16:08
Next week in "The Animal House," a groundbreaking development in veterinary medicine.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1
12:16:12
These owners came to me and they said, we have this fish, we're really attached to him, he's been standing on his head for two years, what can you do? And by trial and error, that fish had surgery and lived six years.
LITZINGER
12:16:22
Believe it or not, surgery has become a viable procedure for improving the health of your pet fish. Find out how, next week in "The Animal House."
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