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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The deep-sea researchers were surveying an ocean ridge off the coast of Hawaii in 2015 and amid ordinary ocean floor fare — a bit of coral, some volcanic rock — they came across something surprising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where did this guy come from? Holy cow!” one researcher said to his colleague.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the moment \u003ca href=\"http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1504/logs/dive11/dive11.html\">caught on camera\u003c/a>, the brain-like curves of a sponge about the size of a minivan came into view. As one of the scientists exclaimed in the video, “This is the largest thing I’ve seen underwater.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, \u003ca href=\"http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12526-016-0508-z#aboutarticle\">a new study reports\u003c/a> that it is the largest sponge ever documented, at about 11.5 feet long, more than 6.5 feet wide and 4.9 feet high. That’s about the size of a minivan. In the video, the researchers immediately voiced their suspicion that it could be the biggest sponge in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_728606\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 691px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-728606\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/sponge-a.jpg\" alt=\"The massive sponge photographed at a depth of 2117 meters in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument by a the ROV Deep Discoverer and b its companion ROV Seirios. \" width=\"691\" height=\"825\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/sponge-a.jpg 691w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/sponge-a-400x478.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 691px) 100vw, 691px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The massive sponge photographed at a depth of 2117 meters in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument by a the ROV Deep Discoverer and b its companion ROV Seirios. \u003ccite>(Marine Biodiversity/Screen Shot by NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>According to the study published in \u003cem>Marine Biodiversity\u003c/em>, it was discovered in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands during an expedition of the Okeanos Explorer – the “\u003ca href=\"http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/about.html\">only federally funded U.S. ship\u003c/a> assigned to systematically explore our largely unknown ocean for the purpose of discovery and the advancement of knowledge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study says that massive sponges like this one provide “key ecosystem services such as filtering large amounts of seawater, as well as providing important habitat to a myriad of invertebrate and microbial species.” Here’s more:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“The finding of such an enormous and presumably old sponge inside the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument underscores the need to protect this area using the highest conservation measures available.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>It adds that sponges are difficult to date, but some species in shallow waters could live for more than 2,300 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers also stress that this find highlights how much remains to be discovered in the deep seas: “We’re going to all these places that we’ve never been before, going to depths that we haven’t been before, so we don’t really know what we’re going to find.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Deep+Sea+Explorers+Discover+A+Sponge+The+Size+Of+A+Minivan&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "These Lizards Have Been Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors for 15 Million Years",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]Every spring, keen-eyed biologists carrying fishing poles search the rolling hills near Los Banos, about two hours southeast of San Francisco. But they’re not looking for fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re catching lizards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research team collects Western side-blotched lizards, which come in different shades of blue, orange and yellow. They’re studying the intricate mating strategies that earned the diminutive reptiles the nickname “rock-paper-scissors lizards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dramas that play out between the lizards of these three colors offer the researchers a window into how how species evolve and diversify.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690248\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-690248\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-1440x810.jpg\" alt=\"From left: blue, orange and yellow side-blotched lizards. The males of each color have different strategies to get mates\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-960x540.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left: blue, orange and yellow side-blotched lizards. The males of each color have different strategies to get mates \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The males of each color are able to outcompete one of the others’ colors for mates but is susceptible to the other color. It reminded the researchers of the rock-paper-scissors game where rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper and paper beats rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690253\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_RockPaperScissors_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-690253\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_RockPaperScissors_500.gif\" alt=\"Each of the three colors of male side-blotched lizard uses a strategy that allows it to outcompete one of the others but leaves it vulnerable to the other.\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Each of the three colors of male side-blotched lizard uses a strategy that allows it to outcompete one of the others but leaves it vulnerable to the other. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The lizards look like tiny dinosaurs, but are actually more closely related to iguanas. At about two inches long, they may not appear ferocious, but that won’t stop them from issuing threat displays — which looks like a series of pushups — to lizard and human intruders alike. It’s one of the territorial behaviors that first caught the eye of \u003ca href=\"http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/~barrylab/lizardland/game.html\">Barry Sinervo\u003c/a>, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. Sinervo leads the team as they unlock an incredibly intricate and ancient game of strategy that steers the love lives of these colorful creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690257\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_Pushups_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-690257\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_Pushups_500.gif\" alt=\"A male side-blotched lizard performing pushups as threat display\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A male side-blotched lizard performing pushups as threat display \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s all about territories. Orange males tend to be the biggest and most aggressive. They hold large territories with several females each and are able to oust the somewhat smaller and less aggressive blues. Blue males typically hold smaller territories and are more monogamous, each focusing his interest on a single female. Yellow males tend not to even form exclusive territories. Instead they use stealth to find unaccompanied females with whom to mate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690258\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-690258\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-400x300.png\" alt=\"Side-blotched lizards range over much of the western United States and into Mexico.\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-400x300.png 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-800x600.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-768x576.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-960x720.png 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Side-blotched lizards range over much of the western United States and into Mexico. \u003ccite>(IUCN Red List of Threatened Species)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The yellow males are particularly successful with females that live in territories held by their more aggressive orange competitors. Because the orange males spread their attention among several females, they aren’t able to guard each individual female against intruding yellow males. But the more monogamous blues males are more vigilant and chase sneaky yellow males away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690260\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_Fight_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-690260\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_Fight_500.gif\" alt=\"A male side-blotched lizard chases an invading male out of its territory.\" width=\"500\" height=\"278\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A male side-blotched lizard chases an invading male out of its territory. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Their different strategies keep each other in check making the system stable. Sinervo believes this game has likely been in play for at least 15 million years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the males are only partially responsible for that long run. Female side-blotched lizards have their own strategies when it comes to choosing a mate. They tend to prefer males of their own color, but also give preference to whichever color of male is less abundant that season. So if there are fewer blues this season, the females give preference to the blue males. That keeps any one color from being outcompeted by one of the others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The whole system is incredibly complicated to study. According to Sinervo, “the males have three strategies and females have two strategies when it comes to selecting a mate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690261\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-690261\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye.jpg\" alt=\"Rafa Lara, a member of the UC Santa Cruz research team, looks at the variation in throat color while collecting side-blotched lizards \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-960x540.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rafa Lara, a member of the UC Santa Cruz research team, looks at the variation in throat color while collecting side-blotched lizards \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even after the mating is done, the pregnant females have a whole extra level of strategy when it comes to the number of eggs to lay and the size of the eggs. By adjusting the level of hormones in the eggs, females can even adjust the the color and aggressiveness of their offspring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Samples taken by the field team this summer are part of a next step in the study to determine the genetics behind this complex behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It turns out to be beautiful mathematics,” says Sinervo, “and it turns out to be central to game theory so it’s interesting to people in economics and evolution both. So it just becomes this endless source of fascination for humans as it has all of these beautiful mathematical properties.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Male side-blotched lizards have more than one way to get the girl. Orange males are bullies. Yellows are sneaks. Blues team up with a buddy to protect their territories. Who wins? It depends — on a genetic game of roshambo. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Every spring, keen-eyed biologists carrying fishing poles search the rolling hills near Los Banos, about two hours southeast of San Francisco. But they’re not looking for fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re catching lizards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research team collects Western side-blotched lizards, which come in different shades of blue, orange and yellow. They’re studying the intricate mating strategies that earned the diminutive reptiles the nickname “rock-paper-scissors lizards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dramas that play out between the lizards of these three colors offer the researchers a window into how how species evolve and diversify.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690248\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-690248\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-1440x810.jpg\" alt=\"From left: blue, orange and yellow side-blotched lizards. The males of each color have different strategies to get mates\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-three-colors-in-hand-960x540.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left: blue, orange and yellow side-blotched lizards. The males of each color have different strategies to get mates \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The males of each color are able to outcompete one of the others’ colors for mates but is susceptible to the other color. It reminded the researchers of the rock-paper-scissors game where rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper and paper beats rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690253\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_RockPaperScissors_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-690253\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_RockPaperScissors_500.gif\" alt=\"Each of the three colors of male side-blotched lizard uses a strategy that allows it to outcompete one of the others but leaves it vulnerable to the other.\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Each of the three colors of male side-blotched lizard uses a strategy that allows it to outcompete one of the others but leaves it vulnerable to the other. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The lizards look like tiny dinosaurs, but are actually more closely related to iguanas. At about two inches long, they may not appear ferocious, but that won’t stop them from issuing threat displays — which looks like a series of pushups — to lizard and human intruders alike. It’s one of the territorial behaviors that first caught the eye of \u003ca href=\"http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/~barrylab/lizardland/game.html\">Barry Sinervo\u003c/a>, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. Sinervo leads the team as they unlock an incredibly intricate and ancient game of strategy that steers the love lives of these colorful creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690257\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_Pushups_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-690257\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_Pushups_500.gif\" alt=\"A male side-blotched lizard performing pushups as threat display\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A male side-blotched lizard performing pushups as threat display \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s all about territories. Orange males tend to be the biggest and most aggressive. They hold large territories with several females each and are able to oust the somewhat smaller and less aggressive blues. Blue males typically hold smaller territories and are more monogamous, each focusing his interest on a single female. Yellow males tend not to even form exclusive territories. Instead they use stealth to find unaccompanied females with whom to mate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690258\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-690258\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-400x300.png\" alt=\"Side-blotched lizards range over much of the western United States and into Mexico.\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-400x300.png 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-800x600.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-768x576.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution-960x720.png 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/1024px-Uta_stansburiana_distribution.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Side-blotched lizards range over much of the western United States and into Mexico. \u003ccite>(IUCN Red List of Threatened Species)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The yellow males are particularly successful with females that live in territories held by their more aggressive orange competitors. Because the orange males spread their attention among several females, they aren’t able to guard each individual female against intruding yellow males. But the more monogamous blues males are more vigilant and chase sneaky yellow males away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690260\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_Fight_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-690260\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL312_Lizards_Fight_500.gif\" alt=\"A male side-blotched lizard chases an invading male out of its territory.\" width=\"500\" height=\"278\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A male side-blotched lizard chases an invading male out of its territory. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Their different strategies keep each other in check making the system stable. Sinervo believes this game has likely been in play for at least 15 million years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the males are only partially responsible for that long run. Female side-blotched lizards have their own strategies when it comes to choosing a mate. They tend to prefer males of their own color, but also give preference to whichever color of male is less abundant that season. So if there are fewer blues this season, the females give preference to the blue males. That keeps any one color from being outcompeted by one of the others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The whole system is incredibly complicated to study. According to Sinervo, “the males have three strategies and females have two strategies when it comes to selecting a mate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_690261\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-690261\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye.jpg\" alt=\"Rafa Lara, a member of the UC Santa Cruz research team, looks at the variation in throat color while collecting side-blotched lizards \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/DL309-Lizards-blue-lizards-with-researcher-eye-960x540.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rafa Lara, a member of the UC Santa Cruz research team, looks at the variation in throat color while collecting side-blotched lizards \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even after the mating is done, the pregnant females have a whole extra level of strategy when it comes to the number of eggs to lay and the size of the eggs. By adjusting the level of hormones in the eggs, females can even adjust the the color and aggressiveness of their offspring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Samples taken by the field team this summer are part of a next step in the study to determine the genetics behind this complex behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It turns out to be beautiful mathematics,” says Sinervo, “and it turns out to be central to game theory so it’s interesting to people in economics and evolution both. So it just becomes this endless source of fascination for humans as it has all of these beautiful mathematical properties.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Droves of baby starfish are returning to Oregon and Northern California’s shores after a wasting disease decimated whole populations of the creatures over the past two years along the West Coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Data collected by Oregon State University researchers shows an unprecedented number of baby starfish, or sea stars, survived the summer and winter of 2015, \u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/1WR9Y4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Eureka Times Standard reported\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”mrf0qUMoIDoHBlRwnLgSSQC0ZPA2LJGc”]”When we looked at the settlement of the larval sea stars on rocks in 2014 during the epidemic, it was the same or maybe even a bit lower than previous years,” Oregon State University marine biology professor Bruce Menge said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But a few months later, the number of juveniles was off the charts— higher than we’d ever seen — as much as 300 times normal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A similar increase was found at sites just north of Trinidad, California, near Patrick’s Point State Park. A baby starfish boom also was noted in the summer of 2014 near Santa Cruz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A virus killed millions of starfish on the Pacific Coast from Southern California to Alaska by causing them to lose their limbs and eventually disintegrate into slime and piles of tiny bones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cause of the massive outbreak remains unclear. Some have hypothesized it to be abnormally warm waters in the Pacific Ocean, which have wreaked havoc on marine ecosystems for the past two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humboldt State University Marine Lab Director Brian Tissot disagrees with that hypothesis since the virus spread during colder months and didn’t expand as much during the abnormally warm 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no clear environmental cue,” Tissot said, adding the deadly wasting disease has declined in intensity but remains present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts say that while it’s encouraging to see the abundance of baby starfish, the disease, competition and environmental factors make their survival difficult.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Droves of baby starfish are returning to Oregon and Northern California’s shores after a wasting disease decimated whole populations of the creatures over the past two years along the West Coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Data collected by Oregon State University researchers shows an unprecedented number of baby starfish, or sea stars, survived the summer and winter of 2015, \u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/1WR9Y4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Eureka Times Standard reported\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>”When we looked at the settlement of the larval sea stars on rocks in 2014 during the epidemic, it was the same or maybe even a bit lower than previous years,” Oregon State University marine biology professor Bruce Menge said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But a few months later, the number of juveniles was off the charts— higher than we’d ever seen — as much as 300 times normal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A similar increase was found at sites just north of Trinidad, California, near Patrick’s Point State Park. A baby starfish boom also was noted in the summer of 2014 near Santa Cruz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A virus killed millions of starfish on the Pacific Coast from Southern California to Alaska by causing them to lose their limbs and eventually disintegrate into slime and piles of tiny bones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cause of the massive outbreak remains unclear. Some have hypothesized it to be abnormally warm waters in the Pacific Ocean, which have wreaked havoc on marine ecosystems for the past two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humboldt State University Marine Lab Director Brian Tissot disagrees with that hypothesis since the virus spread during colder months and didn’t expand as much during the abnormally warm 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no clear environmental cue,” Tissot said, adding the deadly wasting disease has declined in intensity but remains present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts say that while it’s encouraging to see the abundance of baby starfish, the disease, competition and environmental factors make their survival difficult.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "What if You Could Put Your Pregnancy on Hold? These Animals Can.",
"headTitle": "What if You Could Put Your Pregnancy on Hold? These Animals Can. | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Rose, an Oakland resident, will celebrate her first Mother’s Day this weekend. She’ll probably start with breakfast and a morning swim. She’ll dunk her babies underwater and wrestle them for awhile, then perhaps an afternoon nap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rose, a river otter at the Oakland Zoo, gave birth to three fuzzy pups in January. Her mother, Ginger, welcomed her fourth litter of pups in December. The proud father of both, resident Oakland Zoo stud Wyatt, completes the river otter family exhibit at the Wayne and Gladys Valley Children’s Zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As your own mother can attest (and maybe she’s reminded you on a few occasions) babies are demanding little miracles. Newborns are nearly helpless and need constant attention. River otters are no different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They literally can’t do much besides find the teet and nurse,” says Margaret Rousser, zoological manager at the Oakland Zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rose doesn’t have to worry about predators, but wild river otters are \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/03/11/river-otters-stage-a-comeback-in-bay-area\">making a comeback\u003c/a> in the Bay Area, and wild otter moms have a lot to worry about. Raccoons and dogs can dig up their natal dens. And a mom needs to be sure she can get food and keep her pups warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to give their young ones the best chance at survival, river otters and other mammals have evolved a way to time their pregnancies so babies come when the habitat has ample resources for the new family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_681281\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-681281\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--800x500.jpg\" alt=\"Newborn river otters at the Oakland Zoo get weekly checkups the staff calls 'pupdates\" width=\"800\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--400x250.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--768x480.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--1440x900.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--1920x1200.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--1180x738.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--960x600.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Newborn river otters at the Oakland Zoo get weekly checkups the staff calls “pupdates.” \u003ccite>(Reuben Maness/Oakland Zoo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pregnancy’s Pause Button\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some mammal mothers can press the pause button on an embryo’s development—it’s a process called delayed implantation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike the choice human females can make to use birth control or freeze eggs to time a pregnancy, delayed implantation is unconscious. The animal mamma’s body responds to environmental cues that tell her the habitat will support her young ones. A physiological call to action: It’s go time!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Delayed implantation has some obvious benefits. Babies literally suck up tons of energy by breastfeeding. Waiting until conditions are ripe gives the baby and the mother a better chance at survival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It helps mate selection, too. Some animals are alone most of the year; a female can go long stretches without seeing a desirable male. Delayed implantation allows her to mate when she finds a good one, and then hold onto the embryo, perhaps for months, until the timing is right for birth. If only humans were so lucky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What Is Delayed Implantation?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rose’s and Ginger’s pregnancies began just like your own mother’s did. The male’s sperm fused with their eggs to form a single-celled zygote. The zygote divided into a bundle of cells called a blastocyst. Here’s where human and otters diverge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At this stage, otter development just stops. In river otters, the blastocyst can hang out in the uterus for seven to 10 months until just the right time… BOOM. An environmental signal triggers a spike in hormones that jolts the embryo back into action to implant into the uterine wall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rose and Ginger both mated with Wyatt last spring. About 9 months later, the handlers noticed Rose acting strange. In the wild, female otters only tolerate males during mating season. At the zoo, Wyatt, Rose and Ginger are the best of buddies but during pregnancy, instinct kicks in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Rose started being cranky with Wyatt,” says Rousser. “She didn’t want anything to do with him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zoo staff, ready to monitor Rose’s pregnancy, wanted to be sure her embryo had actually implanted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So they shipped Rose’s frozen poop to Cincinnati.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reading Hormones in Otter Poop\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re Helen Bateman’s mail carrier, you really hope those packages are frozen, because you’re delivering a lot of poop to her lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every winter, zoos from all over the country send frozen otter feces to Bateman — she’s a research associate at the Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Bateman ‘reads’ the poop for a spike in progesterone, the hormone that tells her when implantation occurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a lot of carnivores, it’s in the poop,” she says, adding that it’s difficult to get urine samples from water-loving otters. “They’re not so good at peeing on cue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bateman gives the zoos a 10-day window for the birth. River otters are predictable— they give birth 63 to 74 days after implantation.\u003cbr>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"//giphy.com/embed/DwnjlKzICUYtG\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"giphy-embed\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\">\u003c/iframe>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>A Scientific Mystery\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Delayed implantation pops up across the mammal spectrum, including in species of marsupials, rodents, and mustelids, like river otters. But we still don’t know exactly how it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of what we do know is from experiments on the mink, courtesy of the fur coat industry, Bateman says. These experiments show that seasonal light cues trigger implantation. This makes sense—at high latitudes, longer days signal the passing of winter. As the snow melts, a mink mother has access to the nutrition she needs to grow a healthy pup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Day length also seems to be a trigger for polar bears. For some bats and seals, rainfall and temperature seem to be other factors in implantation. There’s also a genetic component. Probably, it’s a mix of all of these.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For endangered species populations researchers are trying to breed in captivity such as polar bears and giant pandas, delayed implantation makes the process complicated, Bateman says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She points out that scientists can’t manipulate endangered species to test what works best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists think that the widespread existence of delayed implantation in mammals is evidence that a common ancestor of all mammals was probably a delayed implanter. As evolutionary branches diverged over millions of years, groups dropped the trait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So actually, humans might be the strange ones. Our ancestor lost the ability long ago.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Rose, an Oakland resident, will celebrate her first Mother’s Day this weekend. She’ll probably start with breakfast and a morning swim. She’ll dunk her babies underwater and wrestle them for awhile, then perhaps an afternoon nap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rose, a river otter at the Oakland Zoo, gave birth to three fuzzy pups in January. Her mother, Ginger, welcomed her fourth litter of pups in December. The proud father of both, resident Oakland Zoo stud Wyatt, completes the river otter family exhibit at the Wayne and Gladys Valley Children’s Zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As your own mother can attest (and maybe she’s reminded you on a few occasions) babies are demanding little miracles. Newborns are nearly helpless and need constant attention. River otters are no different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They literally can’t do much besides find the teet and nurse,” says Margaret Rousser, zoological manager at the Oakland Zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rose doesn’t have to worry about predators, but wild river otters are \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/03/11/river-otters-stage-a-comeback-in-bay-area\">making a comeback\u003c/a> in the Bay Area, and wild otter moms have a lot to worry about. Raccoons and dogs can dig up their natal dens. And a mom needs to be sure she can get food and keep her pups warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to give their young ones the best chance at survival, river otters and other mammals have evolved a way to time their pregnancies so babies come when the habitat has ample resources for the new family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_681281\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-681281\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--800x500.jpg\" alt=\"Newborn river otters at the Oakland Zoo get weekly checkups the staff calls 'pupdates\" width=\"800\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--400x250.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--768x480.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--1440x900.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--1920x1200.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--1180x738.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/Newborn-river-otter--960x600.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Newborn river otters at the Oakland Zoo get weekly checkups the staff calls “pupdates.” \u003ccite>(Reuben Maness/Oakland Zoo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pregnancy’s Pause Button\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some mammal mothers can press the pause button on an embryo’s development—it’s a process called delayed implantation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike the choice human females can make to use birth control or freeze eggs to time a pregnancy, delayed implantation is unconscious. The animal mamma’s body responds to environmental cues that tell her the habitat will support her young ones. A physiological call to action: It’s go time!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Delayed implantation has some obvious benefits. Babies literally suck up tons of energy by breastfeeding. Waiting until conditions are ripe gives the baby and the mother a better chance at survival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It helps mate selection, too. Some animals are alone most of the year; a female can go long stretches without seeing a desirable male. Delayed implantation allows her to mate when she finds a good one, and then hold onto the embryo, perhaps for months, until the timing is right for birth. If only humans were so lucky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What Is Delayed Implantation?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rose’s and Ginger’s pregnancies began just like your own mother’s did. The male’s sperm fused with their eggs to form a single-celled zygote. The zygote divided into a bundle of cells called a blastocyst. Here’s where human and otters diverge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At this stage, otter development just stops. In river otters, the blastocyst can hang out in the uterus for seven to 10 months until just the right time… BOOM. An environmental signal triggers a spike in hormones that jolts the embryo back into action to implant into the uterine wall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rose and Ginger both mated with Wyatt last spring. About 9 months later, the handlers noticed Rose acting strange. In the wild, female otters only tolerate males during mating season. At the zoo, Wyatt, Rose and Ginger are the best of buddies but during pregnancy, instinct kicks in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Rose started being cranky with Wyatt,” says Rousser. “She didn’t want anything to do with him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zoo staff, ready to monitor Rose’s pregnancy, wanted to be sure her embryo had actually implanted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So they shipped Rose’s frozen poop to Cincinnati.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reading Hormones in Otter Poop\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re Helen Bateman’s mail carrier, you really hope those packages are frozen, because you’re delivering a lot of poop to her lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every winter, zoos from all over the country send frozen otter feces to Bateman — she’s a research associate at the Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Bateman ‘reads’ the poop for a spike in progesterone, the hormone that tells her when implantation occurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a lot of carnivores, it’s in the poop,” she says, adding that it’s difficult to get urine samples from water-loving otters. “They’re not so good at peeing on cue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bateman gives the zoos a 10-day window for the birth. River otters are predictable— they give birth 63 to 74 days after implantation.\u003cbr>\n\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"//giphy.com/embed/DwnjlKzICUYtG\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"giphy-embed\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\">\u003c/iframe>\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>A Scientific Mystery\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Delayed implantation pops up across the mammal spectrum, including in species of marsupials, rodents, and mustelids, like river otters. But we still don’t know exactly how it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of what we do know is from experiments on the mink, courtesy of the fur coat industry, Bateman says. These experiments show that seasonal light cues trigger implantation. This makes sense—at high latitudes, longer days signal the passing of winter. As the snow melts, a mink mother has access to the nutrition she needs to grow a healthy pup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Day length also seems to be a trigger for polar bears. For some bats and seals, rainfall and temperature seem to be other factors in implantation. There’s also a genetic component. Probably, it’s a mix of all of these.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For endangered species populations researchers are trying to breed in captivity such as polar bears and giant pandas, delayed implantation makes the process complicated, Bateman says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She points out that scientists can’t manipulate endangered species to test what works best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists think that the widespread existence of delayed implantation in mammals is evidence that a common ancestor of all mammals was probably a delayed implanter. As evolutionary branches diverged over millions of years, groups dropped the trait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So actually, humans might be the strange ones. Our ancestor lost the ability long ago.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]Those garden-variety ants in your kitchen are anything but ordinary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most likely, they’re Argentine ants, recognizable by their telltale straight lines and proficiency at capturing food, like that errant drop of honey on your counter, with stunning speed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635418\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 722px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ant-with-label_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635418\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635418\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ant-with-label_720.gif\" alt=\"The common Argentine ant is an invasive species common in temperate zones.\" width=\"722\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The common Argentine ant is an invasive species common in temperate zones. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For about 200 years, the Argentine ant expansion story has been the slow-moving train wreck of myrmecology, the study of ants. From remote origins in the Paraná River valley in Paraguay and Argentina, this virulent invasive species has moved out to claim much of the world’s most desirable territory, whether you’re an ant or a human.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wherever they go, Argentine ants eliminate the competition — mostly other ants, but sometimes bees, termites and ladybugs — with a take-no-prisoners approach. Invade, dismember, consume. Repeat. Resistance is futile. The basic wisdom among ant scientists is that if you see Argentines, it’s already too late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The invasion got personal for \u003ca href=\"http://web.stanford.edu/~dmgordon/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Deborah Gordon\u003c/a>, a professor of biology who studies ants at Stanford University, 12 years ago when Argentine ants broke into her lab overnight. The invaders destroyed a harvester ant colony she was studying, killing the queen. Harvester queens live deep underground, and acquiring one for study is a back-breaking process. “They’re very precious,” she recalled, “I don’t think I’ll ever recover.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635419\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 721px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_harvester-down_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635419\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635419\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_harvester-down_720.gif\" alt=\"Argentine ants can defeat much larger foes, like this harvester ant.\" width=\"721\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Argentine ants can defeat much larger foes, like this harvester ant. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So you can imagine Gordon’s surprise when researchers in her lab found one common native California ant species thriving behind enemy lines, in Argentine ant territory near Palo Alto. This stubborn survivor is called the winter ant, and its persistence, through a novel defensive strategy, seems to offer hope that invasions on the scale of the Argentine ant can be halted, and even reversed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Argentine ants first came to the U.S. through New Orleans onboard coffee ships from Brazil in the 1890s. They have since made landfall in California, Japan and the Mediterranean coast, following the many sea and land routes of human commerce. “What we’ve learned is they don’t become established at a certain distance from people,” said Gordon, “They need us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As early as the 1970s, scientists began to notice a peculiar fact about the Argentine ant and its unusual success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the ant world, colony-mates all carry the same smell, embedded in the waxy stuff that makes their exoskeletons shiny. A single tap of antennae is enough to tell friend from foe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635421\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 721px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ant-touch-antenna_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635421\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635421\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ant-touch-antenna_720.gif\" alt=\"Ants can tell friend from foe with a tap of the antennae.\" width=\"721\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ants can tell friend from foe with a tap of the antennae. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Usually, when ants from different colonies are put together, even from the same species, they fight. Warfare among colonies is a major factor keeping ant populations in balance. But Argentine worker ants can be combined from colonies in Spain, Japan and California, and they will recognize each other — they won’t fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without this natural check, researchers say, a single colony of ants from Argentina has spread across continents and oceans. “They escaped the war zone,” said \u003ca href=\"https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people/brian-whyte\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brian Whyte\u003c/a>, a Ph.D. student in evolutionary biology at UC Berkeley, “and the colony doesn’t seem to have a limit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A 2010 paper called the so-called super-colony “the most populous known animal society.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Its trillions upon trillions of inhabitants dwarf the human population by a long shot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not all Argentine ants get along so well. Scientists, including \u003ca href=\"http://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/dholway\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">David Holway\u003c/a> from UC San Diego and \u003ca href=\"https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people/neil-tsutsui\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Neil Tsutsui\u003c/a> from UC Berkeley, have mapped out a handful of super-colonies worldwide. “They have very clean, demarcated boundaries,” said Holway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635423\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 721px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-king-of-the-mountain_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635423\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635423\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-king-of-the-mountain_720.gif\" alt=\"Argentine ant super-colonies have spread to every continent except Antarctica.\" width=\"721\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Argentine ant super-colonies have spread to every continent except Antarctica. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The picture that seemed to emerge amounted to a battle of empires dividing up the world, yet still fighting bitterly wherever their territories met.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"https://jrbp.stanford.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jasper Ridge,\u003c/a> a 1,200-acre Stanford preserve in the hills west of Palo Alto, is different. In 1993, Gordon’s laboratory began tracking ant populations there. At the time, Jasper Ridge was unconquered territory for the Argentines, but they already had been spotted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s unusual to be able to monitor an invasion,” Gordon said. She predicted that within one to five years, it would all be over. “I thought they would just move quickly through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A series of Ph.D. students conducting the field research, including Katherine Fitzgerald and Nicole Heller, who tracked ants at Jasper for six years, began to notice a different trend. One species of native ant was holding its own inside the boundary of the Argentine advance. “They were coping, increasing their distribution over time,” said Heller, who’s now the director of conservation science at the \u003ca href=\"https://openspacetrust.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Peninsula Open Space Trust,\u003c/a> an environmental organization in Palo Alto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635422\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_winter-ant-waving_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635422\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635422\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_winter-ant-waving_720.gif\" alt=\"Winter ants have been able to survive the Argentine ant invasion.\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Winter ants have been able to survive the Argentine ant invasion. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The winter ant has several advantages over the Argentine: deeper nests, a different cycle of seasonal activity. But other ant species with similar advantages have fallen before the Argentine onslaught. What, the Stanford researchers wondered, was different here?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2008, Gordon was using the ant counts at Jasper Ridge to teach undergraduates about invasion ecology. In their final project, where Argentine and winter ants were observed side-by-side in controlled conditions, one group of students claimed to have made a novel discovery. Winter ants, the students found, showed a distinct behavior when they were put on the defensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students watched the winter ants wave their abdomens at their enemies, known as “gaster-flagging” in ant circles, before a cloudy liquid blob appeared at the tip. Approaching the secretion sent the Argentines reeling away. Touching it could kill them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_637187\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_winter-ant-turns-on-argentine_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-637187\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-637187\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_winter-ant-turns-on-argentine_720.gif\" alt='The winter ants waves its toxic secretion at an attacker. The behavior is known as \"gaster-flagging.\"' width=\"720\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The winter ants waves its toxic secretion at an attacker. The behavior is known as “gaster-flagging.” \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gordon admitted she was skeptical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t completely believe it,” she said, “but by the end of the class I was persuaded there was enough there to explore.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next two years, the students repeated and studied the winter ant’s apparently novel defensive behavior. They also analyzed the the secretion. (Turns out it comes from the same gland used by the ants’ ancestors, wasps, to sting.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the students’ data was published, asserting that the winter ant’s defensive secretion “may account for its ability to persist” in Argentine-invaded territory, the ant counts at Jasper Ridge had long surpassed Gordon’s initial expectation of one to five years. The ant population data, now at 20 years and counting, bears out the students’ findings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the preserve’s winter ants are not only surviving, they’re now pushing back, opening up space for other native ant populations to rebound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether scientists (and the pest control industry) can take a lesson from the winter ant or will remain on the sidelines of this epic ant battle is still unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some invasive species may be successful in the beginning, but in the long term may not do as well,” Gordon said. “It’s about how it plays out over time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635425\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 722px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ants-attack-harvester_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635425\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635425\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ants-attack-harvester_720.gif\" alt=\"The Argentine ant strategy is to exhaust and dismember their enemies.\" width=\"722\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Argentine ant strategy is to exhaust and dismember its enemies. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The public can participate in the semi-annual ant survey at Jasper Ridge by \u003ca href=\"https://jrbp.stanford.edu/research/jrbp-ant-survey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contacting the preserve directly.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Those garden-variety ants in your kitchen are anything but ordinary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most likely, they’re Argentine ants, recognizable by their telltale straight lines and proficiency at capturing food, like that errant drop of honey on your counter, with stunning speed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635418\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 722px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ant-with-label_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635418\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635418\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ant-with-label_720.gif\" alt=\"The common Argentine ant is an invasive species common in temperate zones.\" width=\"722\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The common Argentine ant is an invasive species common in temperate zones. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For about 200 years, the Argentine ant expansion story has been the slow-moving train wreck of myrmecology, the study of ants. From remote origins in the Paraná River valley in Paraguay and Argentina, this virulent invasive species has moved out to claim much of the world’s most desirable territory, whether you’re an ant or a human.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wherever they go, Argentine ants eliminate the competition — mostly other ants, but sometimes bees, termites and ladybugs — with a take-no-prisoners approach. Invade, dismember, consume. Repeat. Resistance is futile. The basic wisdom among ant scientists is that if you see Argentines, it’s already too late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The invasion got personal for \u003ca href=\"http://web.stanford.edu/~dmgordon/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Deborah Gordon\u003c/a>, a professor of biology who studies ants at Stanford University, 12 years ago when Argentine ants broke into her lab overnight. The invaders destroyed a harvester ant colony she was studying, killing the queen. Harvester queens live deep underground, and acquiring one for study is a back-breaking process. “They’re very precious,” she recalled, “I don’t think I’ll ever recover.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635419\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 721px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_harvester-down_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635419\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635419\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_harvester-down_720.gif\" alt=\"Argentine ants can defeat much larger foes, like this harvester ant.\" width=\"721\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Argentine ants can defeat much larger foes, like this harvester ant. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So you can imagine Gordon’s surprise when researchers in her lab found one common native California ant species thriving behind enemy lines, in Argentine ant territory near Palo Alto. This stubborn survivor is called the winter ant, and its persistence, through a novel defensive strategy, seems to offer hope that invasions on the scale of the Argentine ant can be halted, and even reversed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Argentine ants first came to the U.S. through New Orleans onboard coffee ships from Brazil in the 1890s. They have since made landfall in California, Japan and the Mediterranean coast, following the many sea and land routes of human commerce. “What we’ve learned is they don’t become established at a certain distance from people,” said Gordon, “They need us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As early as the 1970s, scientists began to notice a peculiar fact about the Argentine ant and its unusual success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the ant world, colony-mates all carry the same smell, embedded in the waxy stuff that makes their exoskeletons shiny. A single tap of antennae is enough to tell friend from foe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635421\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 721px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ant-touch-antenna_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635421\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635421\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ant-touch-antenna_720.gif\" alt=\"Ants can tell friend from foe with a tap of the antennae.\" width=\"721\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ants can tell friend from foe with a tap of the antennae. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Usually, when ants from different colonies are put together, even from the same species, they fight. Warfare among colonies is a major factor keeping ant populations in balance. But Argentine worker ants can be combined from colonies in Spain, Japan and California, and they will recognize each other — they won’t fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without this natural check, researchers say, a single colony of ants from Argentina has spread across continents and oceans. “They escaped the war zone,” said \u003ca href=\"https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people/brian-whyte\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brian Whyte\u003c/a>, a Ph.D. student in evolutionary biology at UC Berkeley, “and the colony doesn’t seem to have a limit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A 2010 paper called the so-called super-colony “the most populous known animal society.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Its trillions upon trillions of inhabitants dwarf the human population by a long shot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not all Argentine ants get along so well. Scientists, including \u003ca href=\"http://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/dholway\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">David Holway\u003c/a> from UC San Diego and \u003ca href=\"https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people/neil-tsutsui\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Neil Tsutsui\u003c/a> from UC Berkeley, have mapped out a handful of super-colonies worldwide. “They have very clean, demarcated boundaries,” said Holway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635423\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 721px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-king-of-the-mountain_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635423\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635423\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-king-of-the-mountain_720.gif\" alt=\"Argentine ant super-colonies have spread to every continent except Antarctica.\" width=\"721\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Argentine ant super-colonies have spread to every continent except Antarctica. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The picture that seemed to emerge amounted to a battle of empires dividing up the world, yet still fighting bitterly wherever their territories met.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"https://jrbp.stanford.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jasper Ridge,\u003c/a> a 1,200-acre Stanford preserve in the hills west of Palo Alto, is different. In 1993, Gordon’s laboratory began tracking ant populations there. At the time, Jasper Ridge was unconquered territory for the Argentines, but they already had been spotted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s unusual to be able to monitor an invasion,” Gordon said. She predicted that within one to five years, it would all be over. “I thought they would just move quickly through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A series of Ph.D. students conducting the field research, including Katherine Fitzgerald and Nicole Heller, who tracked ants at Jasper for six years, began to notice a different trend. One species of native ant was holding its own inside the boundary of the Argentine advance. “They were coping, increasing their distribution over time,” said Heller, who’s now the director of conservation science at the \u003ca href=\"https://openspacetrust.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Peninsula Open Space Trust,\u003c/a> an environmental organization in Palo Alto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635422\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_winter-ant-waving_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635422\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635422\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_winter-ant-waving_720.gif\" alt=\"Winter ants have been able to survive the Argentine ant invasion.\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Winter ants have been able to survive the Argentine ant invasion. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The winter ant has several advantages over the Argentine: deeper nests, a different cycle of seasonal activity. But other ant species with similar advantages have fallen before the Argentine onslaught. What, the Stanford researchers wondered, was different here?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2008, Gordon was using the ant counts at Jasper Ridge to teach undergraduates about invasion ecology. In their final project, where Argentine and winter ants were observed side-by-side in controlled conditions, one group of students claimed to have made a novel discovery. Winter ants, the students found, showed a distinct behavior when they were put on the defensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students watched the winter ants wave their abdomens at their enemies, known as “gaster-flagging” in ant circles, before a cloudy liquid blob appeared at the tip. Approaching the secretion sent the Argentines reeling away. Touching it could kill them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_637187\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_winter-ant-turns-on-argentine_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-637187\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-637187\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_winter-ant-turns-on-argentine_720.gif\" alt='The winter ants waves its toxic secretion at an attacker. The behavior is known as \"gaster-flagging.\"' width=\"720\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The winter ants waves its toxic secretion at an attacker. The behavior is known as “gaster-flagging.” \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gordon admitted she was skeptical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t completely believe it,” she said, “but by the end of the class I was persuaded there was enough there to explore.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next two years, the students repeated and studied the winter ant’s apparently novel defensive behavior. They also analyzed the the secretion. (Turns out it comes from the same gland used by the ants’ ancestors, wasps, to sting.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the students’ data was published, asserting that the winter ant’s defensive secretion “may account for its ability to persist” in Argentine-invaded territory, the ant counts at Jasper Ridge had long surpassed Gordon’s initial expectation of one to five years. The ant population data, now at 20 years and counting, bears out the students’ findings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the preserve’s winter ants are not only surviving, they’re now pushing back, opening up space for other native ant populations to rebound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether scientists (and the pest control industry) can take a lesson from the winter ant or will remain on the sidelines of this epic ant battle is still unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some invasive species may be successful in the beginning, but in the long term may not do as well,” Gordon said. “It’s about how it plays out over time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_635425\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 722px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ants-attack-harvester_720.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-635425\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-635425\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/DL308_argentine-ants-attack-harvester_720.gif\" alt=\"The Argentine ant strategy is to exhaust and dismember their enemies.\" width=\"722\" height=\"405\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Argentine ant strategy is to exhaust and dismember its enemies. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The public can participate in the semi-annual ant survey at Jasper Ridge by \u003ca href=\"https://jrbp.stanford.edu/research/jrbp-ant-survey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contacting the preserve directly.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "grizzly-bears-are-everywhere-in-california-but-the-woods",
"title": "Move to Return Grizzly Bears to California Will Be an Uphill Push",
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"headTitle": "Move to Return Grizzly Bears to California Will Be an Uphill Push | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Who says the grizzly bear has vanished from California? On the contrary, it’s nearly ubiquitous in the Golden State—on everything from the state flag to T-shirts and coffee mugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, the bears themselves have been absent for nearly a century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the Gold Rush, the best guess is there were probably 10,000 grizzlies in California. But in the space of about 75 years, they were trapped and hunted into extinction. Though no one can say with certainty when the last bear expired, by 1930 even unconfirmed sightings had winked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They can be brought back,” insists Noah Greenwald, conservation director for the Arizona-based \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Center for Biological Diversity\u003c/a>. In 2014, it \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/grizzly_bear/pdfs/Grizzly_Recovery_Plan_Petition_.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">petitioned\u003c/a> the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to expand areas for grizzly recovery into California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_663467\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-663467 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Darley-After-a-Day-of-Sport.jpg\" alt=\"The Gold Rush and repeating rifle proved to be the undoing of the California Grizzly. By the mid 1920s, they had been trapped and hunted into extinction.\" width=\"750\" height=\"557\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Darley-After-a-Day-of-Sport.jpg 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Darley-After-a-Day-of-Sport-400x297.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Gold Rush and repeating rifle proved to be the undoing of the California Grizzly. By the mid 1920s, they had been trapped and hunted into extinction. \u003ccite>(University of California/Bancroft Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That petition was denied. The agency said it didn’t want to divert resources from its efforts to rebuild the brown bears’ populations elsewhere \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141130-grizzly-reintroduction-cascades-national-park-environment/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in the Lower 48\u003c/a>. Currently wildlife officials estimate there are no more than 2,000 grizzlies spread across Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington (with a much larger population in Alaska).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Certainly in Yellowstone National Park, which gets more than three million visitors a year, grizzly bears are a tremendous draw there and a real source of joy,” observes Greenwald.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yes, they can be a source of danger. A female grizzly with cubs killed a hiker in Yellowstone last year—but bear attacks are exceedingly rare. So the Center for Biological Diversity is betting on taking its case directly to the public. It’s gathered about 13,000 signatures on an online petition, and is about to launch the next phase of a \u003ca href=\"http://bringbackthebears.org/#home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">web and social media campaign\u003c/a> under the banner, “Bring Back the Bear.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_663472\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 465px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-663472\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-800x450.jpg\" alt='The \"Bring Back the Bear\" campaign features a bearless state flag.' width=\"465\" height=\"262\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 465px) 100vw, 465px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The “Bring Back the Bear” campaign features a bearless state flag. \u003ccite>(Gyro/Center for Biological Diversity)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I do think it’s something—with some education and with further study—something that people could and will rally around,” Greenwald speculates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hollywood hasn’t exactly advanced the cause, doing for Grizzlies more or less what “Jaws” did for sharks—last year’s \u003ca href=\"http://oscar.go.com/news/winners/the-revenant-wins-3-2016-oscars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oscar nominee\u003c/a> for best picture being only the latest example. Leonardo DiCaprio’s violent encounter with a mama grizzly was likely the most talked-about scene in “The Revenant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There Are Bears—And Then There Are Grizzlies\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Right now, the only encounter possible with a native California grizzly, is at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.californiamuseum.org/bear-mind\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California Museum\u003c/a> in Sacramento, where Monarch, the bear that served as a model for the state flag, stands stuffed behind glass walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clearly some prefer their grizzlies that way and they’re not alone. State wildlife officials are, to say the least, skeptical of the bid to reestablish the bears in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Listen to the Story:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nhttp://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2016/04/WEBGrizzlyBearsMiller160502.mp3\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Yellowstone grizzly recording by Bernie Krause/\u003ca href=\"http://www.wildsanctuary.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wild Sanctuary\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marc Kenyon is a bear biologist; a big, bearded bear of a guy himself, Kenyon heads the state’s Human-Wildlife Conflict Program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That grizzly would turn this thing into a tin can in a hurry,” says Kenyon, showing me the trailers his agency uses to trap and transport injured or wayward black bears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kenyon’s agency puts the number of black bears in California at somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000—but clearly black bears are not grizzlies, which can easily be twice the size, a thousand pounds or more. And even though the bears would be placed in remote areas, there’s no guarantee they would stay put.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One thing I can tell you about bears is that bears roam,” says Kenyon. “And they’ll roam a long distance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Center for Biological Diversity has identified nearly 8,000 square miles of potential habitat in the remote Sierra Nevada, with a smaller area near the Oregon border. Kenyon’s not sure it’s enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can only imagine how far a grizzly bear in California might roam,” he says, “in search for food, in search for mates, in search for its own habitat, its own territory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"show-for-small-only\">\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_665058\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-665058\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Grizzly_Mobile.jpg\" alt=\"Source: Center for Biological Diversity\" width=\"750\" height=\"1135\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Center for Biological Diversity\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"show-for-medium-up\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"sharedaddy\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-665057\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Grizzly_Desktop.jpg\" alt=\"Source: Center for Biological Diversity (Teodros Hailye/KQED)\" width=\"100%\"> Source: Center for Biological Diversity (Teodros Hailye/KQED)\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"sharedaddy\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Even advocates, like nature journalist Jason Mark, concede that this wouldn’t be an easy lift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to at all underestimate the challenge of something ambitious like this,” says Mark, author of “\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Satellites-High-Country-Searching-Wild/dp/1610915801\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says the hardest part might be “changing the way that we think of what wild nature is good for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Is it good, for us, just as a place to go recreate and watch and look at, or does wild nature have some intrinsic rights of its own?” he asks. “And in that sense the bear does have a right to return to what was once its homeland.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mark says the large carnivores could have ecological benefits, aiding in seed dispersal and balancing populations of smaller prey animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Kenyon isn’t convinced that it’s the best thing for species like California’s declining deer population, or even for the bears themselves at this point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a stable grizzly bear population, we’re looking in excess of 200 animals—that can find each other,” says Kenyon. By comparison, the Yellowstone \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151001-grizzly-bears-animals-science-conservation-nation/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grizzly population\u003c/a> numbers about 700.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you get down to a density where the animals can’t find each other, you’re lessening the chance for them to breed,” he says, “and then you’re lessening the chance for the species to survive in the long term.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_663468\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-663468\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Merriam-Map-of-Bear-Habitat.jpg\" alt=\"C. Hart Merriam's hand-colored map shows grizzlies in widely varied habitats across California. He also identified several subspecies.\" width=\"750\" height=\"952\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Merriam-Map-of-Bear-Habitat.jpg 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Merriam-Map-of-Bear-Habitat-400x508.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">C. Hart Merriam’s hand-colored map shows grizzlies in widely varied habitats across California. He also identified six subspecies. \u003ccite>(University of California/Bancroft Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grizzlies … in Oakland?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which brings us to the Oakland Zoo, where construction crews have started work on its \u003ca href=\"http://www.californiatrail.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California Trail\u003c/a> project. The exhibit will feature the state’s iconic critters from big cats to condors, and the centerpiece will be a three-acre grizzly “habitat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, unfortunately they tell sort of the sad history of humans and wildlife here in California,” says Colleen Kinzley, who directs animal care, conservation and research at the zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want people to be aware of that,” she says. “I mean, despite the fact that the grizzly bear is on our flag and our state seal, many people don’t know that grizzlies existed in California and are really a part of this habitat and environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”tNDxIqCQ6OM8KhFUGLYNbB9Hg9p1oQ7s”]The zoo is preparing for its first bears-in-residence sometime next year. And Kinzley says the best way to “bring back the bears” in the wild would be to let them come back on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t just plop a large predator into a location and say, ‘Alright, everybody just get along,'” she says. “The bear will lose if you don’t have complete buy-in from all the different constituencies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would be a long shot, to be sure, but it’s theoretically possible that, say, the tiny population of \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141130-grizzly-reintroduction-cascades-national-park-environment/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grizzlies in the Washington Cascades\u003c/a> might work their way down into California, much as wolves have \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/08/20/gray-wolf-pups-found-in-california-first-in-nearly-a-century/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">drifted down\u003c/a> from Oregon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be a long way off but I think probably easier than getting everyone to agree to bring bears from somewhere and put them in California,” says Kinzley. Kenyon agrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In any case, it’s likely that for a long time to come, the only way to see live grizzlies in California will be with a big fence around them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Featured art by Laura Cunningham, author of \u003ca href=\"https://heydaybooks.com/book/a-state-of-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A State of Change\u003c/a> and co-founder of the desert conservation group \u003ca href=\"http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Basin and Range Watch\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A small but persistent movement to bring the grizzly back to California is about to take it to the next level.",
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"title": "Move to Return Grizzly Bears to California Will Be an Uphill Push | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Who says the grizzly bear has vanished from California? On the contrary, it’s nearly ubiquitous in the Golden State—on everything from the state flag to T-shirts and coffee mugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, the bears themselves have been absent for nearly a century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the Gold Rush, the best guess is there were probably 10,000 grizzlies in California. But in the space of about 75 years, they were trapped and hunted into extinction. Though no one can say with certainty when the last bear expired, by 1930 even unconfirmed sightings had winked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They can be brought back,” insists Noah Greenwald, conservation director for the Arizona-based \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Center for Biological Diversity\u003c/a>. In 2014, it \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/grizzly_bear/pdfs/Grizzly_Recovery_Plan_Petition_.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">petitioned\u003c/a> the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to expand areas for grizzly recovery into California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_663467\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-663467 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Darley-After-a-Day-of-Sport.jpg\" alt=\"The Gold Rush and repeating rifle proved to be the undoing of the California Grizzly. By the mid 1920s, they had been trapped and hunted into extinction.\" width=\"750\" height=\"557\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Darley-After-a-Day-of-Sport.jpg 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Darley-After-a-Day-of-Sport-400x297.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Gold Rush and repeating rifle proved to be the undoing of the California Grizzly. By the mid 1920s, they had been trapped and hunted into extinction. \u003ccite>(University of California/Bancroft Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That petition was denied. The agency said it didn’t want to divert resources from its efforts to rebuild the brown bears’ populations elsewhere \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141130-grizzly-reintroduction-cascades-national-park-environment/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in the Lower 48\u003c/a>. Currently wildlife officials estimate there are no more than 2,000 grizzlies spread across Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington (with a much larger population in Alaska).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Certainly in Yellowstone National Park, which gets more than three million visitors a year, grizzly bears are a tremendous draw there and a real source of joy,” observes Greenwald.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yes, they can be a source of danger. A female grizzly with cubs killed a hiker in Yellowstone last year—but bear attacks are exceedingly rare. So the Center for Biological Diversity is betting on taking its case directly to the public. It’s gathered about 13,000 signatures on an online petition, and is about to launch the next phase of a \u003ca href=\"http://bringbackthebears.org/#home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">web and social media campaign\u003c/a> under the banner, “Bring Back the Bear.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_663472\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 465px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-663472\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-800x450.jpg\" alt='The \"Bring Back the Bear\" campaign features a bearless state flag.' width=\"465\" height=\"262\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/No-Bearflag_2000.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 465px) 100vw, 465px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The “Bring Back the Bear” campaign features a bearless state flag. \u003ccite>(Gyro/Center for Biological Diversity)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I do think it’s something—with some education and with further study—something that people could and will rally around,” Greenwald speculates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hollywood hasn’t exactly advanced the cause, doing for Grizzlies more or less what “Jaws” did for sharks—last year’s \u003ca href=\"http://oscar.go.com/news/winners/the-revenant-wins-3-2016-oscars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oscar nominee\u003c/a> for best picture being only the latest example. Leonardo DiCaprio’s violent encounter with a mama grizzly was likely the most talked-about scene in “The Revenant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There Are Bears—And Then There Are Grizzlies\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Right now, the only encounter possible with a native California grizzly, is at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.californiamuseum.org/bear-mind\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California Museum\u003c/a> in Sacramento, where Monarch, the bear that served as a model for the state flag, stands stuffed behind glass walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clearly some prefer their grizzlies that way and they’re not alone. State wildlife officials are, to say the least, skeptical of the bid to reestablish the bears in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Listen to the Story:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nhttp://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2016/04/WEBGrizzlyBearsMiller160502.mp3\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Yellowstone grizzly recording by Bernie Krause/\u003ca href=\"http://www.wildsanctuary.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wild Sanctuary\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marc Kenyon is a bear biologist; a big, bearded bear of a guy himself, Kenyon heads the state’s Human-Wildlife Conflict Program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That grizzly would turn this thing into a tin can in a hurry,” says Kenyon, showing me the trailers his agency uses to trap and transport injured or wayward black bears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kenyon’s agency puts the number of black bears in California at somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000—but clearly black bears are not grizzlies, which can easily be twice the size, a thousand pounds or more. And even though the bears would be placed in remote areas, there’s no guarantee they would stay put.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One thing I can tell you about bears is that bears roam,” says Kenyon. “And they’ll roam a long distance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Center for Biological Diversity has identified nearly 8,000 square miles of potential habitat in the remote Sierra Nevada, with a smaller area near the Oregon border. Kenyon’s not sure it’s enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can only imagine how far a grizzly bear in California might roam,” he says, “in search for food, in search for mates, in search for its own habitat, its own territory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"show-for-small-only\">\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_665058\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-665058\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Grizzly_Mobile.jpg\" alt=\"Source: Center for Biological Diversity\" width=\"750\" height=\"1135\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Center for Biological Diversity\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"show-for-medium-up\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"sharedaddy\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-665057\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Grizzly_Desktop.jpg\" alt=\"Source: Center for Biological Diversity (Teodros Hailye/KQED)\" width=\"100%\"> Source: Center for Biological Diversity (Teodros Hailye/KQED)\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"sharedaddy\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Even advocates, like nature journalist Jason Mark, concede that this wouldn’t be an easy lift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to at all underestimate the challenge of something ambitious like this,” says Mark, author of “\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Satellites-High-Country-Searching-Wild/dp/1610915801\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says the hardest part might be “changing the way that we think of what wild nature is good for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Is it good, for us, just as a place to go recreate and watch and look at, or does wild nature have some intrinsic rights of its own?” he asks. “And in that sense the bear does have a right to return to what was once its homeland.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mark says the large carnivores could have ecological benefits, aiding in seed dispersal and balancing populations of smaller prey animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Kenyon isn’t convinced that it’s the best thing for species like California’s declining deer population, or even for the bears themselves at this point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a stable grizzly bear population, we’re looking in excess of 200 animals—that can find each other,” says Kenyon. By comparison, the Yellowstone \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151001-grizzly-bears-animals-science-conservation-nation/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grizzly population\u003c/a> numbers about 700.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you get down to a density where the animals can’t find each other, you’re lessening the chance for them to breed,” he says, “and then you’re lessening the chance for the species to survive in the long term.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_663468\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-663468\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Merriam-Map-of-Bear-Habitat.jpg\" alt=\"C. Hart Merriam's hand-colored map shows grizzlies in widely varied habitats across California. He also identified several subspecies.\" width=\"750\" height=\"952\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Merriam-Map-of-Bear-Habitat.jpg 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Merriam-Map-of-Bear-Habitat-400x508.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">C. Hart Merriam’s hand-colored map shows grizzlies in widely varied habitats across California. He also identified six subspecies. \u003ccite>(University of California/Bancroft Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grizzlies … in Oakland?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which brings us to the Oakland Zoo, where construction crews have started work on its \u003ca href=\"http://www.californiatrail.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California Trail\u003c/a> project. The exhibit will feature the state’s iconic critters from big cats to condors, and the centerpiece will be a three-acre grizzly “habitat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, unfortunately they tell sort of the sad history of humans and wildlife here in California,” says Colleen Kinzley, who directs animal care, conservation and research at the zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want people to be aware of that,” she says. “I mean, despite the fact that the grizzly bear is on our flag and our state seal, many people don’t know that grizzlies existed in California and are really a part of this habitat and environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>The zoo is preparing for its first bears-in-residence sometime next year. And Kinzley says the best way to “bring back the bears” in the wild would be to let them come back on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t just plop a large predator into a location and say, ‘Alright, everybody just get along,'” she says. “The bear will lose if you don’t have complete buy-in from all the different constituencies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would be a long shot, to be sure, but it’s theoretically possible that, say, the tiny population of \u003ca href=\"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141130-grizzly-reintroduction-cascades-national-park-environment/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grizzlies in the Washington Cascades\u003c/a> might work their way down into California, much as wolves have \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/08/20/gray-wolf-pups-found-in-california-first-in-nearly-a-century/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">drifted down\u003c/a> from Oregon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be a long way off but I think probably easier than getting everyone to agree to bring bears from somewhere and put them in California,” says Kinzley. Kenyon agrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In any case, it’s likely that for a long time to come, the only way to see live grizzlies in California will be with a big fence around them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Featured art by Laura Cunningham, author of \u003ca href=\"https://heydaybooks.com/book/a-state-of-change/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A State of Change\u003c/a> and co-founder of the desert conservation group \u003ca href=\"http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Basin and Range Watch\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Opinion: It’s Time to Bring the Grizzly Bear Back to California",
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"content": "\u003cp>In the mid-19th century, there were as many as 10,000 brown bears in California — a greater population density than in Alaska today. The last documented sighting was in 1924. Now all that remains is the profile of the powerful bruin on the state flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No doubt some people will freak out at the prospect of the Lower 48’s biggest predator haunting the woods. But there are good reasons to return the animal to the Bear Flag Republic. Grizzly reintroduction would have clear ecological benefits. And it would have cultural benefits, too, by prompting us to rethink what nature is “good for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is already crawling with predators. We have mountain lions in Los Angeles — where the Internet-famous “\u003ca href=\"http://www.urbancarnivores.com/p22-the-hollywood-lion/\">Hollywood Lion\u003c/a>” stalks mule dear in Griffith Park — and one in San Francisco, too, where \u003ca href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/r-mountain-lion-spotted-roaming-around-san-francisco-2015-7\">a cougar was captured on a security camera\u003c/a> last summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">‘The presence of grizzlies and mountain lions and wolves are reminders that nature in its wilder states is not here to serve us’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The reappearance of mountain lions is an example of what conservation biologists call “rewilding.” In some instances, like that of the mountain lion, the wild animals find their way back on their own. In other cases, state or federal agencies have made determined efforts to bring back animals hunted and trapped to oblivion or pushed out by development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reintroduction of gray wolves to the Northern Rockies in the late 1990s is the best-known rewilding story. Twenty-one years after wolves were returned to Yellowstone National Park, there is an established population and some have migrated as far as Northern California, where, in August, a pack was confirmed in the state for the first time since 1924.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The return of the gray wolf to the rural West has been hugely controversial, marked by serial court cases, Capitol Hill maneuverings, vigilantism (in the form of poaching animals listed as endangered) and fiery debates that have scorched western communities. For many ranchers and hunters, the return of the wolf represents a dangerous surrendering of human control over the landscape. To supporters of rewilding, the success of the wolf is a kind of ecological restorative justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_654142\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-654142\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Sheet-Music-I-Love-You-CA.jpg\" alt=\"Grizzlies appear to have loved California's varied habitats--but do Californians love the bears enough to bring them back?\" width=\"750\" height=\"1020\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Sheet-Music-I-Love-You-CA.jpg 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Sheet-Music-I-Love-You-CA-400x544.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grizzlies appear to have loved California’s varied habitats–but do Californians love the bears enough to bring them back? \u003ccite>(University of California/Bancroft Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bringing back grizzly bears to California is the latest rewilding idea. Last year, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/\">Center for Biological Diversity\u003c/a>, an Arizona-based conservation group, filed a petition with the \u003ca href=\"http://www.fws.gov/\">U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service\u003c/a> to consider reintroducing the grizzly in the Southwest and California. The agency denied the request, and now the organization plans to petition the \u003ca href=\"https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/\">California Department of Fish and Wildlife\u003c/a> to bring back the bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Grizzly bears were a common part of the California landscape and had been there for eons, and we wiped them out,” says \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/about/staff/index.html#noah\">Noah Greenwald\u003c/a>, the endangered species coordinator at the Center for Biological Diversity. “By bringing them back we would be righting a historic wrong.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_663460\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 689px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-663460\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Coho-griz-negative-copy103-copy.jpg\" alt=\"Grizzlies originally occupied varied habitats in California, including river valleys during seasons when salmon were plentiful.\" width=\"689\" height=\"856\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Coho-griz-negative-copy103-copy.jpg 689w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Coho-griz-negative-copy103-copy-400x497.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 689px) 100vw, 689px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grizzlies originally occupied varied habitats in California, including river valleys during seasons when salmon were plentiful. \u003ccite>(Laura Cunningham/Basin and Range Watch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Returning grizzlies to California would have real ecological advantages. Wildlife biologists have shown that restoring large predators to a landscape can have consequences that ripple across an ecosystem. This phenomenon is called “trophic cascades.” Imagine: a wolf reappears on the scene. Suddenly, the elk and deer have to be alert. Their newly cautious behavior gives aspen and willow a chance to thrive, which provide fresh habitat for beaver and songbirds.\u003ca href=\"https://environment.yale.edu/profile/david-mattson/\"> David Mattson\u003c/a>, a lecturer at the \u003ca href=\"http://environment.yale.edu/\">Yale School of Forestry\u003c/a>, says grizzlies would have “demonstrable ecosystem effects” were they reintroduced to California. Brown bears would assist with seed dispersal and soil aeration as they tear into the ground hunting for gophers and voles. Coastal grizzly would move nutrients upstream and inland via their consumption of spawning salmon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But state wildlife officials are cool on the idea. “Grizzly bears traditionally would roam oak woodlands and even beaches and eat whale carcasses and whatnot,” says California Fish and Wildlife spokesperson \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-traverso-895208a\">Jordan Traverso\u003c/a>. “So you’d be introducing them in places where people are now, not the typical black bear habitat. So we are not supportive of that proposal, even a little bit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_654222\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-654222 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale.jpeg\" alt=\"Grizzly bears feeding on a beached whale carcass, as imagined by artist Laura Cunningham.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale.jpeg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-400x256.jpeg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-800x512.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-768x492.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-1440x922.jpeg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-1920x1230.jpeg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-1180x756.jpeg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-960x615.jpeg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grizzly bears feeding on a beached whale carcass, as imagined by artist Laura Cunningham. \u003ccite>(Laura Cunningham/Basin and Range Watch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still, the idea is not as outlandish as it might sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A study of Europe published in the journal Science found that large carnivores are successfully sharing landscapes with people. Some 17,000 brown bears (\u003cem>Ursus arctos\u003c/em>, essentially the same species as the North American grizzly) live in 22 European countries, making the bear the most abundant large carnivore on the continent. Europe is also home to 12,000 wolves, twice as many as in the United States, despite the continent having twice the population density. The study found that large carnivores “have shown an ability to recolonize areas with moderate human densities if they are allowed, and to persist in highly human-dominated landscapes and in the proximity of urban areas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://web.stanford.edu/~mwlewis/\">Martin Lewis\u003c/a>, a geographer at \u003ca href=\"http://www.stanford.edu/\">Stanford\u003c/a> who has studied the politics of rewilding, says the problem with grizzly reintroduction is not a lack of suitable habitat. But, he says, “there are questions about coexistence. People can learn to live with them, but there will be trade-offs. There will be encounters, and some of those encounters will be negative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”yXiMJJ9nodz2h61dfgro0bCts8PBMEwe”]Let’s face it. Wolves eat cattle and prized game like elk. Grizzlies sometimes attack backpackers. Mountain lions sometimes go after hikers. Acknowledging such dangers is not being callous toward human life, but recognizes that the lives of these animals, and the role they play in the environment, also matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The risks are worth it. The presence of grizzlies and mountain lions and wolves are reminders that nature in its wilder states is not here to serve us, and that wild animals and wild places have their own interests. Can we cohabitate with wild animals though they might pose a threat to us?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such coexistence will require us to rethink some of our assumptions about wild nature. Do we want nature to always conform neatly to human desires — a garden to be tended by our hands, or an idyllic retreat imagined by the Romantics? Or are we willing to live with a nature that is wilder? A nature that is uncontrolled, unpredictable, and possibly dangerous. One where you could end up as lunch if you’re not careful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To accept the return of large carnivores will demand a selflessness to which, as a species, we are unaccustomed. It will also require a measure of courage. After all, it’s easy to love a nature that just looks pretty. It’s a much more difficult task to live with a nature that can be threatening — a wolf pack in the pasture, a lion on the prowl under streetlights and, yes, grizzlies in the woods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jason Mark is the author of “\u003ca href=\"http://www.islandpress.org/book/satellites-in-the-high-country\">Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man\u003c/a>” and editor of Sierra magazine.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Featured art by Laura Cunningham, author of \u003ca href=\"https://heydaybooks.com/book/a-state-of-change/\">A State of Change\u003c/a> and co-founder of the desert conservation group \u003ca href=\"http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/\">Basin and Range Watch\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A naturalist and author argues that the state's symbol belongs back in the state — and not just on t-shirts and coffee mugs.",
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"title": "Opinion: It’s Time to Bring the Grizzly Bear Back to California | KQED",
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"headline": "Opinion: It’s Time to Bring the Grizzly Bear Back to California",
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"nprByline": "\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/authors/jason-mark\" target=\"_blank\">Jason Mark\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra\" target=\"_blank\">Sierra Magazine\u003c/a>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the mid-19th century, there were as many as 10,000 brown bears in California — a greater population density than in Alaska today. The last documented sighting was in 1924. Now all that remains is the profile of the powerful bruin on the state flag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No doubt some people will freak out at the prospect of the Lower 48’s biggest predator haunting the woods. But there are good reasons to return the animal to the Bear Flag Republic. Grizzly reintroduction would have clear ecological benefits. And it would have cultural benefits, too, by prompting us to rethink what nature is “good for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is already crawling with predators. We have mountain lions in Los Angeles — where the Internet-famous “\u003ca href=\"http://www.urbancarnivores.com/p22-the-hollywood-lion/\">Hollywood Lion\u003c/a>” stalks mule dear in Griffith Park — and one in San Francisco, too, where \u003ca href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/r-mountain-lion-spotted-roaming-around-san-francisco-2015-7\">a cougar was captured on a security camera\u003c/a> last summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">‘The presence of grizzlies and mountain lions and wolves are reminders that nature in its wilder states is not here to serve us’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The reappearance of mountain lions is an example of what conservation biologists call “rewilding.” In some instances, like that of the mountain lion, the wild animals find their way back on their own. In other cases, state or federal agencies have made determined efforts to bring back animals hunted and trapped to oblivion or pushed out by development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reintroduction of gray wolves to the Northern Rockies in the late 1990s is the best-known rewilding story. Twenty-one years after wolves were returned to Yellowstone National Park, there is an established population and some have migrated as far as Northern California, where, in August, a pack was confirmed in the state for the first time since 1924.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The return of the gray wolf to the rural West has been hugely controversial, marked by serial court cases, Capitol Hill maneuverings, vigilantism (in the form of poaching animals listed as endangered) and fiery debates that have scorched western communities. For many ranchers and hunters, the return of the wolf represents a dangerous surrendering of human control over the landscape. To supporters of rewilding, the success of the wolf is a kind of ecological restorative justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_654142\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 750px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-654142\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Sheet-Music-I-Love-You-CA.jpg\" alt=\"Grizzlies appear to have loved California's varied habitats--but do Californians love the bears enough to bring them back?\" width=\"750\" height=\"1020\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Sheet-Music-I-Love-You-CA.jpg 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Sheet-Music-I-Love-You-CA-400x544.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grizzlies appear to have loved California’s varied habitats–but do Californians love the bears enough to bring them back? \u003ccite>(University of California/Bancroft Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bringing back grizzly bears to California is the latest rewilding idea. Last year, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/\">Center for Biological Diversity\u003c/a>, an Arizona-based conservation group, filed a petition with the \u003ca href=\"http://www.fws.gov/\">U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service\u003c/a> to consider reintroducing the grizzly in the Southwest and California. The agency denied the request, and now the organization plans to petition the \u003ca href=\"https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/\">California Department of Fish and Wildlife\u003c/a> to bring back the bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Grizzly bears were a common part of the California landscape and had been there for eons, and we wiped them out,” says \u003ca href=\"http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/about/staff/index.html#noah\">Noah Greenwald\u003c/a>, the endangered species coordinator at the Center for Biological Diversity. “By bringing them back we would be righting a historic wrong.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_663460\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 689px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-663460\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Coho-griz-negative-copy103-copy.jpg\" alt=\"Grizzlies originally occupied varied habitats in California, including river valleys during seasons when salmon were plentiful.\" width=\"689\" height=\"856\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Coho-griz-negative-copy103-copy.jpg 689w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Coho-griz-negative-copy103-copy-400x497.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 689px) 100vw, 689px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grizzlies originally occupied varied habitats in California, including river valleys during seasons when salmon were plentiful. \u003ccite>(Laura Cunningham/Basin and Range Watch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Returning grizzlies to California would have real ecological advantages. Wildlife biologists have shown that restoring large predators to a landscape can have consequences that ripple across an ecosystem. This phenomenon is called “trophic cascades.” Imagine: a wolf reappears on the scene. Suddenly, the elk and deer have to be alert. Their newly cautious behavior gives aspen and willow a chance to thrive, which provide fresh habitat for beaver and songbirds.\u003ca href=\"https://environment.yale.edu/profile/david-mattson/\"> David Mattson\u003c/a>, a lecturer at the \u003ca href=\"http://environment.yale.edu/\">Yale School of Forestry\u003c/a>, says grizzlies would have “demonstrable ecosystem effects” were they reintroduced to California. Brown bears would assist with seed dispersal and soil aeration as they tear into the ground hunting for gophers and voles. Coastal grizzly would move nutrients upstream and inland via their consumption of spawning salmon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But state wildlife officials are cool on the idea. “Grizzly bears traditionally would roam oak woodlands and even beaches and eat whale carcasses and whatnot,” says California Fish and Wildlife spokesperson \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-traverso-895208a\">Jordan Traverso\u003c/a>. “So you’d be introducing them in places where people are now, not the typical black bear habitat. So we are not supportive of that proposal, even a little bit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_654222\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-654222 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale.jpeg\" alt=\"Grizzly bears feeding on a beached whale carcass, as imagined by artist Laura Cunningham.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale.jpeg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-400x256.jpeg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-800x512.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-768x492.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-1440x922.jpeg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-1920x1230.jpeg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-1180x756.jpeg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Bears-whale-960x615.jpeg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grizzly bears feeding on a beached whale carcass, as imagined by artist Laura Cunningham. \u003ccite>(Laura Cunningham/Basin and Range Watch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still, the idea is not as outlandish as it might sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A study of Europe published in the journal Science found that large carnivores are successfully sharing landscapes with people. Some 17,000 brown bears (\u003cem>Ursus arctos\u003c/em>, essentially the same species as the North American grizzly) live in 22 European countries, making the bear the most abundant large carnivore on the continent. Europe is also home to 12,000 wolves, twice as many as in the United States, despite the continent having twice the population density. The study found that large carnivores “have shown an ability to recolonize areas with moderate human densities if they are allowed, and to persist in highly human-dominated landscapes and in the proximity of urban areas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://web.stanford.edu/~mwlewis/\">Martin Lewis\u003c/a>, a geographer at \u003ca href=\"http://www.stanford.edu/\">Stanford\u003c/a> who has studied the politics of rewilding, says the problem with grizzly reintroduction is not a lack of suitable habitat. But, he says, “there are questions about coexistence. People can learn to live with them, but there will be trade-offs. There will be encounters, and some of those encounters will be negative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>Let’s face it. Wolves eat cattle and prized game like elk. Grizzlies sometimes attack backpackers. Mountain lions sometimes go after hikers. Acknowledging such dangers is not being callous toward human life, but recognizes that the lives of these animals, and the role they play in the environment, also matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The risks are worth it. The presence of grizzlies and mountain lions and wolves are reminders that nature in its wilder states is not here to serve us, and that wild animals and wild places have their own interests. Can we cohabitate with wild animals though they might pose a threat to us?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such coexistence will require us to rethink some of our assumptions about wild nature. Do we want nature to always conform neatly to human desires — a garden to be tended by our hands, or an idyllic retreat imagined by the Romantics? Or are we willing to live with a nature that is wilder? A nature that is uncontrolled, unpredictable, and possibly dangerous. One where you could end up as lunch if you’re not careful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To accept the return of large carnivores will demand a selflessness to which, as a species, we are unaccustomed. It will also require a measure of courage. After all, it’s easy to love a nature that just looks pretty. It’s a much more difficult task to live with a nature that can be threatening — a wolf pack in the pasture, a lion on the prowl under streetlights and, yes, grizzlies in the woods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jason Mark is the author of “\u003ca href=\"http://www.islandpress.org/book/satellites-in-the-high-country\">Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man\u003c/a>” and editor of Sierra magazine.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Featured art by Laura Cunningham, author of \u003ca href=\"https://heydaybooks.com/book/a-state-of-change/\">A State of Change\u003c/a> and co-founder of the desert conservation group \u003ca href=\"http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/\">Basin and Range Watch\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Scientists have unveiled a fossilized skull from a new species of sauropod — an enormous dinosaur that walked the Earth roughly 95 million years ago. The skull found in Argentina is just the latest in a series of discoveries teaching scientists about how sauropods were once so successful as a group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there ever was a “nice” dinosaur, it would be the sauropod. In dinosaur movies, they’re the plant-eating giants with impossibly long necks and big, cowlike eyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were legions of sauropod species. They were hardy survivors, outlasting numerous other dinosaurs that went extinct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paleontologist\u003ca href=\"http://www.adelphi.edu/faculty/profiles/profile.php?PID=0663\"> Michael D’Emic\u003c/a> cut his professional teeth on sauropod bones. “If you want to study sauropods,” he says matter-of-factly, “you need help. A forklift, assistants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, a forklift. After all, he says, “sauropods are the biggest animals that ever lived.” By a country mile. “They really take the prize.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A sauropod could grow to be 120 feet long and weigh more than a humpback whale, and carry all that on four legs. D’Emic finds them fascinating: “What can nature do and how does it do it at the biggest of scales?” is the question he thinks the sauropod can answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_662807\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-662807 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/titanosaur.gif\" alt=\"titanosaur\" width=\"1000\" height=\"563\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Credit: \u003ccite>(WitmerLab/Ohio University)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>D’Emic put sauropod bones under a microscope and in a CT scanner at Adelphi University, where he works. Not just any sauropod, but a baby that hatched and died within weeks — an extremely rare find.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He learned, and \u003ca href=\"http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6284/450\">published\u003c/a> in the journal \u003cem>Science,\u003c/em> that this guy grew quickly. “It grew right out of the gate, roaring out of the gate,” D’Emic says, “extremely fast.” A unique ring in the interior of a bone marked the time the animal hatched, and how big it was: about 7 pounds. Growth marks after that recorded how fast it grew. “And by the time it died just several weeks later,” D’Emic says, “it was weighing upwards of 80 or 90 pounds — a Chihuahua to a Great Dane in six or seven weeks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>D’Emic says growing fast would have been a good strategy when size is your best defense against predators. He says the discovery is part of a renaissance in sauropod research lately — lots of new fossils are turning up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most spectacular is arguably the most complete sauropod skull ever found, uncovered in Argentina. “The head is the most important part to have” from a dinosaur, says \u003ca href=\"http://www.carnegiemnh.org/vp/lamanna.html\">Matt Lamanna\u003c/a>, a paleontologist with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. He’s a member of the team that studied the skull. He says the skull is the Rosetta Stone for understanding behavior: “You know, how it fed, what the brain was like, what the senses were like … what made the animal tick.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team called this new species \u003cem>sarmientosaurus,\u003c/em> a member of a subgroup of sauropods called titanosaurs. They describe their 19-year study of the animal in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151661\">PLOS One\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They did a CT scan of the skull, and in a sort of reverse engineering, they figured out what the brain and sense organs must have looked like. “For instance, the middle ear seems to adapted for hearing low-frequency sounds; whatever that means, we’re not totally sure,” Lamanna says. Modern-day elephants and whales communicate with low-frequency sound, which could provide a clue. The orientation of the organs of the inner ear suggest the animal’s normal posture was “neck down,” which could mean it browsed not on treetops but on ground vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team also has the neck bones, which contain something that looks like a tendon running through the neck. Lamanna says he has no idea what it was for. “Nothing like this has ever been found in any dinosaur so far in history,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken together, Lamanna says, these discoveries are finally revealing the secrets of the dinosaur age’s ultimate survivors (not counting modern birds, which descended from dinosaurs). For about 150 million years, they were too big to fail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Superhearing+And+Fast+Growth+...+Scientists+Learn+Why+Sauropods+Ruled&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Scientists have unveiled a fossilized skull from a new species of sauropod — an enormous dinosaur that walked the Earth roughly 95 million years ago. The skull found in Argentina is just the latest in a series of discoveries teaching scientists about how sauropods were once so successful as a group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there ever was a “nice” dinosaur, it would be the sauropod. In dinosaur movies, they’re the plant-eating giants with impossibly long necks and big, cowlike eyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were legions of sauropod species. They were hardy survivors, outlasting numerous other dinosaurs that went extinct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paleontologist\u003ca href=\"http://www.adelphi.edu/faculty/profiles/profile.php?PID=0663\"> Michael D’Emic\u003c/a> cut his professional teeth on sauropod bones. “If you want to study sauropods,” he says matter-of-factly, “you need help. A forklift, assistants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, a forklift. After all, he says, “sauropods are the biggest animals that ever lived.” By a country mile. “They really take the prize.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A sauropod could grow to be 120 feet long and weigh more than a humpback whale, and carry all that on four legs. D’Emic finds them fascinating: “What can nature do and how does it do it at the biggest of scales?” is the question he thinks the sauropod can answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_662807\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-662807 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/titanosaur.gif\" alt=\"titanosaur\" width=\"1000\" height=\"563\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Credit: \u003ccite>(WitmerLab/Ohio University)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>D’Emic put sauropod bones under a microscope and in a CT scanner at Adelphi University, where he works. Not just any sauropod, but a baby that hatched and died within weeks — an extremely rare find.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He learned, and \u003ca href=\"http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6284/450\">published\u003c/a> in the journal \u003cem>Science,\u003c/em> that this guy grew quickly. “It grew right out of the gate, roaring out of the gate,” D’Emic says, “extremely fast.” A unique ring in the interior of a bone marked the time the animal hatched, and how big it was: about 7 pounds. Growth marks after that recorded how fast it grew. “And by the time it died just several weeks later,” D’Emic says, “it was weighing upwards of 80 or 90 pounds — a Chihuahua to a Great Dane in six or seven weeks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>D’Emic says growing fast would have been a good strategy when size is your best defense against predators. He says the discovery is part of a renaissance in sauropod research lately — lots of new fossils are turning up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most spectacular is arguably the most complete sauropod skull ever found, uncovered in Argentina. “The head is the most important part to have” from a dinosaur, says \u003ca href=\"http://www.carnegiemnh.org/vp/lamanna.html\">Matt Lamanna\u003c/a>, a paleontologist with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. He’s a member of the team that studied the skull. He says the skull is the Rosetta Stone for understanding behavior: “You know, how it fed, what the brain was like, what the senses were like … what made the animal tick.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team called this new species \u003cem>sarmientosaurus,\u003c/em> a member of a subgroup of sauropods called titanosaurs. They describe their 19-year study of the animal in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151661\">PLOS One\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They did a CT scan of the skull, and in a sort of reverse engineering, they figured out what the brain and sense organs must have looked like. “For instance, the middle ear seems to adapted for hearing low-frequency sounds; whatever that means, we’re not totally sure,” Lamanna says. Modern-day elephants and whales communicate with low-frequency sound, which could provide a clue. The orientation of the organs of the inner ear suggest the animal’s normal posture was “neck down,” which could mean it browsed not on treetops but on ground vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team also has the neck bones, which contain something that looks like a tendon running through the neck. Lamanna says he has no idea what it was for. “Nothing like this has ever been found in any dinosaur so far in history,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken together, Lamanna says, these discoveries are finally revealing the secrets of the dinosaur age’s ultimate survivors (not counting modern birds, which descended from dinosaurs). For about 150 million years, they were too big to fail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Superhearing+And+Fast+Growth+...+Scientists+Learn+Why+Sauropods+Ruled&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A dead whale has washed up at a popular California surf spot, and a boat captain says he saw another whale carcass off shore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://(http://bit.ly/1SZt4Qh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Orange County Register\u003c/a> reports the first whale was spotted Sunday at Lower Trestles just south of San Clemente.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Todd Mansur, who captains a whale watching boat, tells the newspaper he expects the second whale to wash up in the next few days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each carcass is estimated at more than 40 feet long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/BEoViBYRJ3O/\u003cbr>\nhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BEmxPlgzbGh/?taken-by=kellyslater\u003cbr>\nMansur says he inspected both whales and saw no signs of marks from ships, propeller wounds or entanglements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says great white sharks were feeding on the carcasses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lifeguards were not immediately available to comment, so it was unclear what would be done with the whale that washed ashore.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>Jose Ramirez can’t complain. “I don’t worry this year for water,” he said, looking out over a field of olallieberries bursting with white blossoms. “I’m happy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramirez has been farming this plot of 25 acres (10 hectares) in Pescadero, California, for 11 years. He’s called a “tenant farmer,” an arrangement typical in this rural, coastal area of San Mateo County. The land he works is owned by the \u003ca href=\"https://openspacetrust.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Peninsula Open Space Trust\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to winter rains this year, he has enough water, which he pumps from Pescadero Creek, to allow him to plant flowers, fava beans, sage and thyme, in addition to his berries, which will become the filling in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.duartestavern.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">local tavern’s\u003c/a> signature olallieberry pie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year’s lack of water stress is a sharp contrast to the last several years when the region was slammed by drought and Ramirez fallowed nearly half his acreage. And it’s not just farmers like Ramirez who were impacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up the creek is \u003ca href=\"http://parks.smcgov.org/memorial-park\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Memorial Park\u003c/a>, one of several forested county parks that are flush in the summer with campers and hikers. But the parks, too, have felt the effects of drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2014 the San Mateo County Parks Department had to close the campground and cancel 2,500 reservations because of low water and an algae bloom in the creek – a considerable ding to revenue, said Marlene Finley, the director of San Mateo County Parks. Last year they only booked the campground at half capacity, closed the showers and brought in portable toilets to save water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_647326\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-647326\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Pescadero Creek in San Mateo County, California, is a critical source of water for people, fish and farms. During California's drought, low water in the creek has impacted fish populations, caused farmers to fallow acreage and restricted drinking water for residents. \" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-400x267.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-1440x961.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-1920x1282.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-1180x788.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-960x641.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pescadero Creek in San Mateo County, California, is a critical source of water for people, fish and farms. During California’s drought, low water in the creek has impacted fish populations, caused farmers to fallow acreage and restricted drinking water for residents. \u003ccite>(Tara Lohan)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The drought has affected us all severely,” said park ranger Vern Selvy. This south coast area has no large water utilities or big reservoirs and is not connected to any of the state or federal water projects that funnel snow melt from the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fish, farms and people here depend on the same limited water resources,” said Kellyx Nelson, executive director of \u003ca href=\"http://www.sanmateorcd.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">San Mateo County Resource Conservation District\u003c/a>, which works as an independent liaison between public agencies, landowners, land managers and special interest groups to protect, conserve and restore natural resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This resource sharing has led to innovative partnerships and projects, but big concerns still remain that have been made more obvious in times of water shortage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Self-Reliant Living\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many ways the area is self-reliant and fairly isolated. Most people who visit here snake along the curves of beautiful Highway 1 and stop to enjoy the beaches, wildlife and picture-perfect Pacific sunsets. It’s easy to miss the small roads penciled into the hillsides and the houses hidden in the thick tanoak and redwood forests just miles inland from the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who live here like the isolation, said \u003ca href=\"http://bos.smcgov.org/district-3-don-horsley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Don Horsley\u003c/a>, the San Mateo County supervisor whose district covers the area. But it comes with its own set of challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sparsely populated areas here depend on water drawn from creeks, wells and springs. The county has eight water providers classified by the state as small water systems. Some of these have only a single connection or at most 14. Other public water systems in the coast area south of Half Moon Bay serve less than 100 connections and some just a few.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of these residences were originally built as vacation homes, but now have people living in them year round,” said Horsley. This can put a strain on water resources in lean years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who rely on water pumped from Pescadero Creek and other streams or springs found they didn’t have enough water during some of the summer months of the last few drought years. Many were forced to pay companies that hauled water into the area by truck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t want more people to live in these areas but we do want to support the people and businesses which do,” said Horsley. He said his office helped by waiving fees and fast-tracking drilling permits for new wells for many of the local water providers, most of which are owned by the collection of landowners they serve. Upgraded water systems and septic systems are needed throughout the area and they are currently exploring other water sources to take the pressure off creeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well drilling can be tough though, as well as expensive. “The geology is so complex here that neighboring properties often have wells with different results,” said Nelson. “And it’s regularly getting altered by seismic activity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are also hampered by a lack of information. Not only is the geology hard to understand but so are the groundwater resources. More wells are being drilled but no one is quite sure how much groundwater is actually available or its quality. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a looming crisis,” Nelson. “We just don’t know.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Municipal water providers are required to take stock of water resources and plan decades out for projected water demand. But many areas of coastal San Mateo County don’t have municipal water providers large enough to be tasked with this state mandate. “We don’t know how much water is consumed now and we don’t know how much will be needed in the future,” said Nelson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Interconnected Communities\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_647328\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-647328\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Kellyx Nelson, executive director of San Mateo County Resource Conservation District, stands next to a retention pond on land managed by flower grower Dave Repetto in San Mateo County, California. \" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-400x267.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-1440x961.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-1920x1282.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-1180x788.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-960x641.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kellyx Nelson, executive director of San Mateo County Resource Conservation District, stands next to a retention pond on land managed by flower grower Dave Repetto in San Mateo County, California. \u003ccite>(Tara Lohan)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As self-reliant as many people and communities are here, there are also many interconnections. Part of this comes from the simple laws of nature. When something changes in the environment, like the meander of a creek or the amount of rain, it has a ripple effect on everyone from fish to farmers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take Ramirez, for example. He pumps water from Pescadero Creek, a resource he shares with steelhead trout and coho salmon. And the drought has been especially hard on the fish, with populations in critical shape as local creeks have gone dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall the last dam on the creek, which was in Memorial Park, was removed, opening up 62 miles (100km) of needed habitat that was previously out of reach for most young fish, or smolts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had three years of drought and they have a three-year life cycle,” said park ranger Vern Selvy of the salmon. “So it has been tough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fish need not just enough water, but the right kind of habitat, like pools, varying water depths and shaded, cool water. Removing dams and creating habitat complexity is also an important strategy for surviving drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we give aquatic organisms the ability to be nimble, we give them the ability to survive both drought and flood,” said Nelson. “We are trying to manage water for climate change and that means managing for a lack of water, an abundance of water and water coming at different times than it used to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both fish and farmers are trying to adapt to the same conditions. In order to maintain the watersheds for healthy fish and other wildlife, farmers like Ramirez are trying to use less creek water and use what they have more efficiently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Pacific Open Space Trust, which owns his land, has drilled a well that will help Ramirez cut down on the amount of water he draws from Pescadero Creek and he has changed to more efficient sprinkler heads on his irrigation. Another strategy is developing water storage by building retention ponds to capture rain and runoff during the winter months that can be used as a water supply in the summer when creek flows are especially low and especially critical for fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramirez is hoping to have a pond built on the property he farms. And nearby flower grower Dave Repetto wants to upgrade an existing pond on his land. It sounds like an easy solution, but its implementation is caught in a thicket of regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Projects here are critically needed, they are dire,” said Nelson. “And they are also extraordinarily complex.” To get anything done, a potential project to improve water systems or the watershed, may involve seven or eight local, state and federal agencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this is where interdependence becomes a potential detriment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfTBTM7-H90\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Repetto\u003c/a> has land just north of Pescadero in the San Gregorio watershed. There is an existing retention pond on his property, but he’s hoping to line this pond so that water is not lost. But ponds like his have become a refuge for protected species such as the San Francisco garter snake and the California red-legged frog. In order to maintain the pond and upgrade it, vegetation will need to be removed and that can negatively impact the species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re being told that in order to do this project that is being identified in the federal recovery plan for endangered salmon, that we have to do mitigation for the frog, which makes the price tag and the complexity and the timeline on these things go through the roof,” said Nelson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Farmers created habitat for a species that was pushed out of places that were developed and now it is difficult to maintain these features on the landscape because of the presence of the very thing they helped to save – that’s a catch 22,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is costing about a half a million dollars for each pond, said Nelson, and a huge amount of that is permitting expenses, biological surveys and biological monitors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doniga Markegard, of \u003ca href=\"http://www.markegardfamily.com/doniga/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Markegard Family Grass-Fed\u003c/a> which raises grass-fed beef and lamb, chicken and pasture-raised pork, has experienced this same problem. In trying to find ways to store water to adapt quickly to drought emergencies, they’ve been slowed by an expensive bureaucratic process, she said. They are tenant farmers on ranchland her husband has managed since 1987 and 2014 was the first time their water sources ran dry – both the springs and stock ponds for their animals and the spring water that supplies their home and family of six.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we just had to grow grass and move cattle around it would be easy,” she said. “But the people aspect can be challenging and time consuming. We don’t always have time to sit in all-day meetings and do a bunch of emails. We make our living ranching.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lack of rainfall in the last few years has meant slower-growing grass and slower-growing cattle. “We really need the ability as farmers and ranchers to adapt to climate change and to be able to plan for the extremes,” she said. “Unfortunately often times it is things that we would normally plan for, like water storage, we are unable to because of policies or regulations or things are just slow.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite these difficulties, Nelson said, farmers and ranchers in the area continue to innovate and try new ways to manage their land with the least impact on resources like water, because drought here hits close to home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For people who live on the bay side of San Mateo County where large projects supply water from the mountains, the drought feels like an intellectual conversation, said Nelson. “But here, people know when the water is low and they’re watching it and they’re panicked about it.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The small towns of coastal San Mateo county have weathered the drought very differently from most of the rest of Silicon Valley. Without large water projects, reservoirs or utilities to rely on, the fish, farms and people share limited water resources from creeks and aquifers.",
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"description": "The small towns of coastal San Mateo county have weathered the drought very differently from most of the rest of Silicon Valley. Without large water projects, reservoirs or utilities to rely on, the fish, farms and people share limited water resources from creeks and aquifers.",
"title": "Drought Hits Coastal Fish and Farms Hard | KQED",
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"headline": "Drought Hits Coastal Fish and Farms Hard",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Jose Ramirez can’t complain. “I don’t worry this year for water,” he said, looking out over a field of olallieberries bursting with white blossoms. “I’m happy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramirez has been farming this plot of 25 acres (10 hectares) in Pescadero, California, for 11 years. He’s called a “tenant farmer,” an arrangement typical in this rural, coastal area of San Mateo County. The land he works is owned by the \u003ca href=\"https://openspacetrust.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Peninsula Open Space Trust\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to winter rains this year, he has enough water, which he pumps from Pescadero Creek, to allow him to plant flowers, fava beans, sage and thyme, in addition to his berries, which will become the filling in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.duartestavern.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">local tavern’s\u003c/a> signature olallieberry pie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year’s lack of water stress is a sharp contrast to the last several years when the region was slammed by drought and Ramirez fallowed nearly half his acreage. And it’s not just farmers like Ramirez who were impacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up the creek is \u003ca href=\"http://parks.smcgov.org/memorial-park\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Memorial Park\u003c/a>, one of several forested county parks that are flush in the summer with campers and hikers. But the parks, too, have felt the effects of drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2014 the San Mateo County Parks Department had to close the campground and cancel 2,500 reservations because of low water and an algae bloom in the creek – a considerable ding to revenue, said Marlene Finley, the director of San Mateo County Parks. Last year they only booked the campground at half capacity, closed the showers and brought in portable toilets to save water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_647326\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-647326\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Pescadero Creek in San Mateo County, California, is a critical source of water for people, fish and farms. During California's drought, low water in the creek has impacted fish populations, caused farmers to fallow acreage and restricted drinking water for residents. \" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-400x267.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-1440x961.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-1920x1282.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-1180x788.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan-960x641.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/tara_lohan.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pescadero Creek in San Mateo County, California, is a critical source of water for people, fish and farms. During California’s drought, low water in the creek has impacted fish populations, caused farmers to fallow acreage and restricted drinking water for residents. \u003ccite>(Tara Lohan)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The drought has affected us all severely,” said park ranger Vern Selvy. This south coast area has no large water utilities or big reservoirs and is not connected to any of the state or federal water projects that funnel snow melt from the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fish, farms and people here depend on the same limited water resources,” said Kellyx Nelson, executive director of \u003ca href=\"http://www.sanmateorcd.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">San Mateo County Resource Conservation District\u003c/a>, which works as an independent liaison between public agencies, landowners, land managers and special interest groups to protect, conserve and restore natural resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This resource sharing has led to innovative partnerships and projects, but big concerns still remain that have been made more obvious in times of water shortage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Self-Reliant Living\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many ways the area is self-reliant and fairly isolated. Most people who visit here snake along the curves of beautiful Highway 1 and stop to enjoy the beaches, wildlife and picture-perfect Pacific sunsets. It’s easy to miss the small roads penciled into the hillsides and the houses hidden in the thick tanoak and redwood forests just miles inland from the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who live here like the isolation, said \u003ca href=\"http://bos.smcgov.org/district-3-don-horsley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Don Horsley\u003c/a>, the San Mateo County supervisor whose district covers the area. But it comes with its own set of challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sparsely populated areas here depend on water drawn from creeks, wells and springs. The county has eight water providers classified by the state as small water systems. Some of these have only a single connection or at most 14. Other public water systems in the coast area south of Half Moon Bay serve less than 100 connections and some just a few.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of these residences were originally built as vacation homes, but now have people living in them year round,” said Horsley. This can put a strain on water resources in lean years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who rely on water pumped from Pescadero Creek and other streams or springs found they didn’t have enough water during some of the summer months of the last few drought years. Many were forced to pay companies that hauled water into the area by truck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t want more people to live in these areas but we do want to support the people and businesses which do,” said Horsley. He said his office helped by waiving fees and fast-tracking drilling permits for new wells for many of the local water providers, most of which are owned by the collection of landowners they serve. Upgraded water systems and septic systems are needed throughout the area and they are currently exploring other water sources to take the pressure off creeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well drilling can be tough though, as well as expensive. “The geology is so complex here that neighboring properties often have wells with different results,” said Nelson. “And it’s regularly getting altered by seismic activity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are also hampered by a lack of information. Not only is the geology hard to understand but so are the groundwater resources. More wells are being drilled but no one is quite sure how much groundwater is actually available or its quality. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a looming crisis,” Nelson. “We just don’t know.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Municipal water providers are required to take stock of water resources and plan decades out for projected water demand. But many areas of coastal San Mateo County don’t have municipal water providers large enough to be tasked with this state mandate. “We don’t know how much water is consumed now and we don’t know how much will be needed in the future,” said Nelson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Interconnected Communities\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_647328\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-647328\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Kellyx Nelson, executive director of San Mateo County Resource Conservation District, stands next to a retention pond on land managed by flower grower Dave Repetto in San Mateo County, California. \" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-400x267.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-1440x961.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-1920x1282.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-1180x788.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2-960x641.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Tara-Lohan_2.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kellyx Nelson, executive director of San Mateo County Resource Conservation District, stands next to a retention pond on land managed by flower grower Dave Repetto in San Mateo County, California. \u003ccite>(Tara Lohan)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As self-reliant as many people and communities are here, there are also many interconnections. Part of this comes from the simple laws of nature. When something changes in the environment, like the meander of a creek or the amount of rain, it has a ripple effect on everyone from fish to farmers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take Ramirez, for example. He pumps water from Pescadero Creek, a resource he shares with steelhead trout and coho salmon. And the drought has been especially hard on the fish, with populations in critical shape as local creeks have gone dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall the last dam on the creek, which was in Memorial Park, was removed, opening up 62 miles (100km) of needed habitat that was previously out of reach for most young fish, or smolts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had three years of drought and they have a three-year life cycle,” said park ranger Vern Selvy of the salmon. “So it has been tough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fish need not just enough water, but the right kind of habitat, like pools, varying water depths and shaded, cool water. Removing dams and creating habitat complexity is also an important strategy for surviving drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we give aquatic organisms the ability to be nimble, we give them the ability to survive both drought and flood,” said Nelson. “We are trying to manage water for climate change and that means managing for a lack of water, an abundance of water and water coming at different times than it used to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both fish and farmers are trying to adapt to the same conditions. In order to maintain the watersheds for healthy fish and other wildlife, farmers like Ramirez are trying to use less creek water and use what they have more efficiently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Pacific Open Space Trust, which owns his land, has drilled a well that will help Ramirez cut down on the amount of water he draws from Pescadero Creek and he has changed to more efficient sprinkler heads on his irrigation. Another strategy is developing water storage by building retention ponds to capture rain and runoff during the winter months that can be used as a water supply in the summer when creek flows are especially low and especially critical for fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramirez is hoping to have a pond built on the property he farms. And nearby flower grower Dave Repetto wants to upgrade an existing pond on his land. It sounds like an easy solution, but its implementation is caught in a thicket of regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Projects here are critically needed, they are dire,” said Nelson. “And they are also extraordinarily complex.” To get anything done, a potential project to improve water systems or the watershed, may involve seven or eight local, state and federal agencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this is where interdependence becomes a potential detriment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfTBTM7-H90\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Repetto\u003c/a> has land just north of Pescadero in the San Gregorio watershed. There is an existing retention pond on his property, but he’s hoping to line this pond so that water is not lost. But ponds like his have become a refuge for protected species such as the San Francisco garter snake and the California red-legged frog. In order to maintain the pond and upgrade it, vegetation will need to be removed and that can negatively impact the species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re being told that in order to do this project that is being identified in the federal recovery plan for endangered salmon, that we have to do mitigation for the frog, which makes the price tag and the complexity and the timeline on these things go through the roof,” said Nelson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Farmers created habitat for a species that was pushed out of places that were developed and now it is difficult to maintain these features on the landscape because of the presence of the very thing they helped to save – that’s a catch 22,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is costing about a half a million dollars for each pond, said Nelson, and a huge amount of that is permitting expenses, biological surveys and biological monitors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doniga Markegard, of \u003ca href=\"http://www.markegardfamily.com/doniga/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\">Markegard Family Grass-Fed\u003c/a> which raises grass-fed beef and lamb, chicken and pasture-raised pork, has experienced this same problem. In trying to find ways to store water to adapt quickly to drought emergencies, they’ve been slowed by an expensive bureaucratic process, she said. They are tenant farmers on ranchland her husband has managed since 1987 and 2014 was the first time their water sources ran dry – both the springs and stock ponds for their animals and the spring water that supplies their home and family of six.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we just had to grow grass and move cattle around it would be easy,” she said. “But the people aspect can be challenging and time consuming. We don’t always have time to sit in all-day meetings and do a bunch of emails. We make our living ranching.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lack of rainfall in the last few years has meant slower-growing grass and slower-growing cattle. “We really need the ability as farmers and ranchers to adapt to climate change and to be able to plan for the extremes,” she said. “Unfortunately often times it is things that we would normally plan for, like water storage, we are unable to because of policies or regulations or things are just slow.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite these difficulties, Nelson said, farmers and ranchers in the area continue to innovate and try new ways to manage their land with the least impact on resources like water, because drought here hits close to home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For people who live on the bay side of San Mateo County where large projects supply water from the mountains, the drought feels like an intellectual conversation, said Nelson. “But here, people know when the water is low and they’re watching it and they’re panicked about it.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The sun has just set at the Watsonville Slough. Biologist Gary Kittleson and I are putting on headlamps and waders. We are searching for California red-legged frogs. Kittleson is an expert on the species. He’s working with a young tech company that is using sound to find out how many of the frogs remain in the slough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This red-legged frog has had more than it’s “15 minutes” of fame. Many believe it was the amphibian in Mark Twain’s first breakthrough short story,\u003ca href=\"http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/price/frog.htm\"> “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”\u003c/a> Today, it’s listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and its population numbers \u003ca href=\"http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/136113/0\">continue to decline\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">‘You’re going to start having cameras, acoustic sensors, and satellites trained on these important parts of the world.’ \u003ccite>Matthew McKown, CEO of Conservation Metrics\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/california-red-legged-frog-named-state-amphibian/\">Red-legged frogs \u003c/a>are the state amphibian and once abounded in California. But in the 19th and 20th centuries they were over-hunted — it seems that people loved to eat their legs. Today these amphibians are losing habitat and are threatened by invasive species like the American bullfrog. Few California red-legged frogs remain. Some years Kittleson says he’d be ecstatic to see just one or two in the slough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.landtrustsantacruz.org/watsonville-slough-farm/\">The Watsonville Slough \u003c/a>in Santa Cruz County provides vital marshland habitat for California red-legged frogs. To get an accurate count of the dwindling population here, scientists like Kittleson are trying something new. They are teaming up with \u003ca href=\"http://conservationmetrics.com/\">Conservation Metrics\u003c/a>, a tech company that specializes in big data and sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/ZZ/20141109/NEWS/141104235\">Kittleson\u003c/a>, a consulting biologist with a private practice, is the expert on the ground for the project. Over the years he has identified a piece of old farmland in the Watsonville Slough as a hotspot for red-legged frogs. They seem to be drawn to some low-lying ponds once used to raise pigs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.landtrustsantacruz.org/\">The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County\u003c/a> owns this piece of land. It is working to save the frogs here by doing things like putting mesh wire around their eggs to protect them from predators. The Land Trust hired Kittleson to do population counts, to see if conservation efforts are working.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_637841\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-637841\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Conservation Metrics uses song meters to record red-legged frog calls all night.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-1440x1080.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-1920x1439.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-1180x885.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-960x720.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Conservation Metrics uses song meters to record red-legged frog calls all night. \u003ccite>(Conservation Metrics)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kittleson spends a few hours out here at a time, wading through swamp water, peering into brush, and listening for red-legged frogs. Picking out their low calls is no easy task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The slough is rife with chorus frogs, which make repeated, loud, high-pitched calls. The sound is deafening. Kittleson and I have stopped at the edge of a small pool of water. The chorus is all I can hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kittleson begins explaining the history of the pond to me, and then abruptly stops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a red-legged frog,” he says. We listen. I hear nothing. “It probably won’t call again because we are talking,” Kittleson says. His ears are so finely tuned, he can hear red-legged frogs even while he talks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/259317553″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sorting Out the Soundscape\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Field observation like this is the old way of counting animals. At best Kittleson says you only get a tiny slice of good data — a sample of a sample of a sample. That’s why the Land Trust is partnering with Conservation Metrics. The company has put up \u003ca href=\"http://www.wildlifeacoustics.com/\">song meters\u003c/a>, which continuously record the nighttime soundscape. Near the edge of the pond, Kittleson points out one of the recording devices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s the song meter, mounted on fence posts,” he says, “It’s recording us now.” The green box has microphones protruding from each side. They’re like little ears, capturing everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far Conservation Metrics has gathered 1,630 hours of recordings, which translates into 241 gigabytes of data. Down at its office in Santa Cruz, the company turns the recordings into images called spectrograms. Employee Jeff Schlueter writes algorithms so the computer can sift through hours and hours of audio in the spectrograms and isolate the red-legged frog calls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_633578\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-633578\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Spectrogram-inspection-e1460423793529.jpg\" alt=\"Jeff Schlueter writes algorithms to sort through hours and hours of recordings.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jeff Schlueter (at left) writes algorithms to sort through hours and hours of recordings. \u003ccite>(Sam Harnett/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Conservation Metrics the red-legged frog survey is a relatively small project, more of a pilot program to show its approach can be helpful with a variety of species. Up until now Conservation Metrics has worked mostly with song birds. This year, the company is running 42 projects in 15 countries, and it is handling about 50 terabytes of data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using algorithms, one person with a computer can sort through the data for each project and get a population count that would normally take a whole team of field biologists. Matthew McKown founded Conservation Metrics about three years ago after seeing the potential of big data in conservation when he was a graduate student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our whole point is to make conservation better,” McKown says, “so we’re trying to make it as cheap as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McKown is capitalizing on the rapidly plummeting cost of gathering and crunching data. He says the conservation world has just recently entered the big data era.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_637753\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-637753\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"The top band on this spectrogram shows sound made my chorus frogs, the red-legged calls are hiding down at the bottom.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-1180x885.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-960x720.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The top band on this spectrogram shows sound made by chorus frogs, the red-legged calls are hiding down at the bottom. \u003ccite>(Conservation Metrics)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Scientists are now collecting and analyzing audio, video, satellite imagery, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/supercomputers-map-out-super-endangered-species-in-3-d/\">GPS data from all kinds of animals\u003c/a> like the California condor and the dugong, a threatened relative of the manatee. McKown says surveillance and big data are going to start playing a bigger role in protecting endangered species and threatened habitats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What you’re going to start having is cameras, acoustic sensors, and satellites trained on these important parts of the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the marsh near Watsonville, Kittleson says he hopes better data will give us clues about how to save the California red-legged frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are now waist-deep in swamp water, sweeping the pond with our headlamps, looking for the glare of frog eyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then Kittleson finally spots one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The frog is sitting on a tiny log, floating by the water’s edge. Kittleson is not optimistic about the future of the species. It’s habitat, which once covered most of California, \u003ca href=\"https://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/profile/speciesProfile.action?spcode=D02D\">continues to shrink \u003c/a>and its population continues to decline. But Kittleson says getting good data on the number of frogs that remain is the only chance we have to start moving in the right direction.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The sun has just set at the Watsonville Slough. Biologist Gary Kittleson and I are putting on headlamps and waders. We are searching for California red-legged frogs. Kittleson is an expert on the species. He’s working with a young tech company that is using sound to find out how many of the frogs remain in the slough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This red-legged frog has had more than it’s “15 minutes” of fame. Many believe it was the amphibian in Mark Twain’s first breakthrough short story,\u003ca href=\"http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/price/frog.htm\"> “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”\u003c/a> Today, it’s listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and its population numbers \u003ca href=\"http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/136113/0\">continue to decline\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">‘You’re going to start having cameras, acoustic sensors, and satellites trained on these important parts of the world.’ \u003ccite>Matthew McKown, CEO of Conservation Metrics\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/california-red-legged-frog-named-state-amphibian/\">Red-legged frogs \u003c/a>are the state amphibian and once abounded in California. But in the 19th and 20th centuries they were over-hunted — it seems that people loved to eat their legs. Today these amphibians are losing habitat and are threatened by invasive species like the American bullfrog. Few California red-legged frogs remain. Some years Kittleson says he’d be ecstatic to see just one or two in the slough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.landtrustsantacruz.org/watsonville-slough-farm/\">The Watsonville Slough \u003c/a>in Santa Cruz County provides vital marshland habitat for California red-legged frogs. To get an accurate count of the dwindling population here, scientists like Kittleson are trying something new. They are teaming up with \u003ca href=\"http://conservationmetrics.com/\">Conservation Metrics\u003c/a>, a tech company that specializes in big data and sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/ZZ/20141109/NEWS/141104235\">Kittleson\u003c/a>, a consulting biologist with a private practice, is the expert on the ground for the project. Over the years he has identified a piece of old farmland in the Watsonville Slough as a hotspot for red-legged frogs. They seem to be drawn to some low-lying ponds once used to raise pigs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.landtrustsantacruz.org/\">The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County\u003c/a> owns this piece of land. It is working to save the frogs here by doing things like putting mesh wire around their eggs to protect them from predators. The Land Trust hired Kittleson to do population counts, to see if conservation efforts are working.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_637841\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-637841\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Conservation Metrics uses song meters to record red-legged frog calls all night.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-1440x1080.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-1920x1439.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-1180x885.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/CMI_Songmeter_Watsonville-960x720.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Conservation Metrics uses song meters to record red-legged frog calls all night. \u003ccite>(Conservation Metrics)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kittleson spends a few hours out here at a time, wading through swamp water, peering into brush, and listening for red-legged frogs. Picking out their low calls is no easy task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The slough is rife with chorus frogs, which make repeated, loud, high-pitched calls. The sound is deafening. Kittleson and I have stopped at the edge of a small pool of water. The chorus is all I can hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kittleson begins explaining the history of the pond to me, and then abruptly stops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a red-legged frog,” he says. We listen. I hear nothing. “It probably won’t call again because we are talking,” Kittleson says. His ears are so finely tuned, he can hear red-legged frogs even while he talks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cdiv class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__shortcodes__shortcodeWrapper'>\n \u003ciframe width='”100%”' height='”166″'\n scrolling='no' frameborder='no'\n src='https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/259317553″&visual=true&”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false”'\n title='”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/259317553″'>\n \u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/div>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sorting Out the Soundscape\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Field observation like this is the old way of counting animals. At best Kittleson says you only get a tiny slice of good data — a sample of a sample of a sample. That’s why the Land Trust is partnering with Conservation Metrics. The company has put up \u003ca href=\"http://www.wildlifeacoustics.com/\">song meters\u003c/a>, which continuously record the nighttime soundscape. Near the edge of the pond, Kittleson points out one of the recording devices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s the song meter, mounted on fence posts,” he says, “It’s recording us now.” The green box has microphones protruding from each side. They’re like little ears, capturing everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far Conservation Metrics has gathered 1,630 hours of recordings, which translates into 241 gigabytes of data. Down at its office in Santa Cruz, the company turns the recordings into images called spectrograms. Employee Jeff Schlueter writes algorithms so the computer can sift through hours and hours of audio in the spectrograms and isolate the red-legged frog calls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_633578\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-633578\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/Spectrogram-inspection-e1460423793529.jpg\" alt=\"Jeff Schlueter writes algorithms to sort through hours and hours of recordings.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jeff Schlueter (at left) writes algorithms to sort through hours and hours of recordings. \u003ccite>(Sam Harnett/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Conservation Metrics the red-legged frog survey is a relatively small project, more of a pilot program to show its approach can be helpful with a variety of species. Up until now Conservation Metrics has worked mostly with song birds. This year, the company is running 42 projects in 15 countries, and it is handling about 50 terabytes of data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using algorithms, one person with a computer can sort through the data for each project and get a population count that would normally take a whole team of field biologists. Matthew McKown founded Conservation Metrics about three years ago after seeing the potential of big data in conservation when he was a graduate student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our whole point is to make conservation better,” McKown says, “so we’re trying to make it as cheap as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McKown is capitalizing on the rapidly plummeting cost of gathering and crunching data. He says the conservation world has just recently entered the big data era.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_637753\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-637753\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"The top band on this spectrogram shows sound made my chorus frogs, the red-legged calls are hiding down at the bottom.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-1180x885.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5-960x720.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/RLF01_RLF01_0_20160218_182000_000_startsec_2287_label_5.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The top band on this spectrogram shows sound made by chorus frogs, the red-legged calls are hiding down at the bottom. \u003ccite>(Conservation Metrics)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Scientists are now collecting and analyzing audio, video, satellite imagery, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/supercomputers-map-out-super-endangered-species-in-3-d/\">GPS data from all kinds of animals\u003c/a> like the California condor and the dugong, a threatened relative of the manatee. McKown says surveillance and big data are going to start playing a bigger role in protecting endangered species and threatened habitats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What you’re going to start having is cameras, acoustic sensors, and satellites trained on these important parts of the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the marsh near Watsonville, Kittleson says he hopes better data will give us clues about how to save the California red-legged frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are now waist-deep in swamp water, sweeping the pond with our headlamps, looking for the glare of frog eyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then Kittleson finally spots one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The frog is sitting on a tiny log, floating by the water’s edge. Kittleson is not optimistic about the future of the species. It’s habitat, which once covered most of California, \u003ca href=\"https://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/profile/speciesProfile.action?spcode=D02D\">continues to shrink \u003c/a>and its population continues to decline. But Kittleson says getting good data on the number of frogs that remain is the only chance we have to start moving in the right direction.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Tiny Forage Fish at Bottom of Marine Food Web Get New Protections",
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"content": "\u003cp>Sardines, herring and other small fish species are the foundation of the marine food web—they’re essential food for birds, marine mammals and other fish. But globally, demand for these so-called forage species has exploded, with many going to feed the livestock and fish farming industries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”hubLZghGaTkFNKjQ0Snw7bd68OuLcPrN”]Some of these species are already heavily fished, and it will take time for them to recover. But other forage species have not yet been commercially targeted. And this week, the U.S. government passed measures—backed by environmentalists as well as fishermen—to protect these critical fish and invertebrate species in waters off the U.S. West Coast before they’re overfished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/04/04/2016-07516/fisheries-off-west-coast-states-comprehensive-ecosystem-based-amendment-1-amendments-to-the-fishery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rule\u003c/a> passed Monday by the National Marine Fisheries Service makes it illegal for commercial fishermen to develop new fisheries for hundreds of forage species unless scientists have first determined that targeting them will have no negative impacts on the marine ecosystem, existing fisheries and fishing communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forage species include such creatures as lanternfishes, Pacific saury, silversides, eulachon, surf smelt and neon flying squid. Some of these species have hardly been fished at all. They may live in deep water far from shore and are relatively absent from public awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Just because people haven’t heard of a lot of these species yet, it’s really only a matter of time and economics before it becomes viable to put out huge nets that catch the entire base of our food web,” Geoff Shester, California Campaign Director with the group Oceana, says in an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other forage fish species are already in trouble. Pacific sardines are at their lowest numbers in decades. Pacific herring have also declined. In the waters off Peru, the anchoveta has been heavily fished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shester says demand for forage species, which are potentially easy targets due to their tendency to gather in dense schools, is growing as aquaculture and livestock industries expand. A study published last year in \u003cem>Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture\u003c/em>reported that aquaculture production doubled from 2000 to 2012, when about 55 million tons of fish and crustaceans were reared on farms. These animals rely heavily on fishmeal and oil, and in 2012, about 18 million tons of wild-caught seafood was rendered into these products, according to the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The demand for fish oil and fishmeal is going through the roof,” Shester says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new rule comes on the heels of two similar initiatives, both passed in 2009. One prohibits targeted commercial fishing for West Coast krill, an important marine food source for which fishing interest has rapidly grown in other parts of the ocean. Another law limits commercial fishing in parts of the Arctic Ocean as global warming melts sea ice and makes the region accessible to vessels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_624030\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-624030\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/sardines.jpg\" alt=\"Some forage fish species are already in trouble. Pacific sardines are at their lowest numbers in decades. \" width=\"800\" height=\"493\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/sardines.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/sardines-400x247.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/sardines-768x473.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Some forage fish species are already in trouble. Pacific sardines are at their lowest numbers in decades. \u003ccite>(Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yvonne deReynier, senior resource management specialist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, says lanternfishes are one of the most ecologically important groups of fishes that will benefit from the new protections. Lanternfishes, also called myctophids, may be the most abundant vertebrate group on the planet in terms of biomass, or weight. According to a \u003ca href=\"http://usa.oceana.org/blog/myctophids-small-fish-and-colossal-action-protect-them\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report by Oceana\u003c/a>, the 246 species of myctophids in the ocean represent about two-thirds of the biomass, or weight, of all deep sea fishes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But large natural abundance of lanternfishes and other forage species doesn’t necessarily buffer them against overfishing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t know what the effects of fishing on these species could be in 50 years, but we aren’t taking any chances,” says Anna Weinstein, marine program director for Audubon California, one of the groups that supported the restrictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says saury and neon flying squid have already become subjects of commercial fishing interest in other nations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So this action couldn’t have come at a better time,” Weinstein says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The forage fish protections affect the band of water between 3 and 200 miles from shore off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington – an area covering about 280,000 square miles. Weinstein says the rule will have a wide array of trickledown benefits for fishermen, marine mammals and seabirds. A great deal of conservation effort and money, she says, has already been focused on protecting islands where birds like albatrosses, puffins and shearwaters breed. Now, she says, their key food sources are protected, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists around the world have endorsed the idea of protecting important forage species before they become exploited. A 2012 report from a group of 13 scientists called the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force called for paying closer attention to the vulnerabilities of forage fishes and how overfishing these species can negatively impact many larger species that prey on them. According to the report, titled \u003cem>Little Fish, Big Impact\u003c/em>, overfishing has contributed to the declines of the Peruvian anchoveta, Chesapeake Bay menhaden and other ecologically critical species. The authors call for setting lower catch limits for important forage species while boosting the minimum biomass that must be left in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oceana’s Shester says the new policy is long overdue and that many overfishing crises, including the current collapse of the Pacific sardine, could have been avoided if fishery regulators had taken a more precautionary approach to management years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With Pacific sardines, the fishery’s managers waited until numbers were at 10 percent,” Shester says. “We saw warning signs that the fishery was collapsing five years ago, but only when it had collapsed did we do anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Protecting forage species now, he says, doesn’t put them off limits forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just means that we need to take a step back before we proceed and start catching them,” Shester says. “It puts the burden of proof on the fishermen to show beforehand that they aren’t going to harm the ecosystem if they catch these species, and only then can they put nets in the water.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Demand for sardines and other small species has exploded, with many being used as feed for livestock and fish farming. New rules aim to protect these species from overfishing off the U.S. West Coast.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Sardines, herring and other small fish species are the foundation of the marine food web—they’re essential food for birds, marine mammals and other fish. But globally, demand for these so-called forage species has exploded, with many going to feed the livestock and fish farming industries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>Some of these species are already heavily fished, and it will take time for them to recover. But other forage species have not yet been commercially targeted. And this week, the U.S. government passed measures—backed by environmentalists as well as fishermen—to protect these critical fish and invertebrate species in waters off the U.S. West Coast before they’re overfished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/04/04/2016-07516/fisheries-off-west-coast-states-comprehensive-ecosystem-based-amendment-1-amendments-to-the-fishery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rule\u003c/a> passed Monday by the National Marine Fisheries Service makes it illegal for commercial fishermen to develop new fisheries for hundreds of forage species unless scientists have first determined that targeting them will have no negative impacts on the marine ecosystem, existing fisheries and fishing communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forage species include such creatures as lanternfishes, Pacific saury, silversides, eulachon, surf smelt and neon flying squid. Some of these species have hardly been fished at all. They may live in deep water far from shore and are relatively absent from public awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Just because people haven’t heard of a lot of these species yet, it’s really only a matter of time and economics before it becomes viable to put out huge nets that catch the entire base of our food web,” Geoff Shester, California Campaign Director with the group Oceana, says in an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other forage fish species are already in trouble. Pacific sardines are at their lowest numbers in decades. Pacific herring have also declined. In the waters off Peru, the anchoveta has been heavily fished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shester says demand for forage species, which are potentially easy targets due to their tendency to gather in dense schools, is growing as aquaculture and livestock industries expand. A study published last year in \u003cem>Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture\u003c/em>reported that aquaculture production doubled from 2000 to 2012, when about 55 million tons of fish and crustaceans were reared on farms. These animals rely heavily on fishmeal and oil, and in 2012, about 18 million tons of wild-caught seafood was rendered into these products, according to the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The demand for fish oil and fishmeal is going through the roof,” Shester says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new rule comes on the heels of two similar initiatives, both passed in 2009. One prohibits targeted commercial fishing for West Coast krill, an important marine food source for which fishing interest has rapidly grown in other parts of the ocean. Another law limits commercial fishing in parts of the Arctic Ocean as global warming melts sea ice and makes the region accessible to vessels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_624030\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-624030\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/sardines.jpg\" alt=\"Some forage fish species are already in trouble. Pacific sardines are at their lowest numbers in decades. \" width=\"800\" height=\"493\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/sardines.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/sardines-400x247.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/04/sardines-768x473.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Some forage fish species are already in trouble. Pacific sardines are at their lowest numbers in decades. \u003ccite>(Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yvonne deReynier, senior resource management specialist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, says lanternfishes are one of the most ecologically important groups of fishes that will benefit from the new protections. Lanternfishes, also called myctophids, may be the most abundant vertebrate group on the planet in terms of biomass, or weight. According to a \u003ca href=\"http://usa.oceana.org/blog/myctophids-small-fish-and-colossal-action-protect-them\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report by Oceana\u003c/a>, the 246 species of myctophids in the ocean represent about two-thirds of the biomass, or weight, of all deep sea fishes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But large natural abundance of lanternfishes and other forage species doesn’t necessarily buffer them against overfishing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t know what the effects of fishing on these species could be in 50 years, but we aren’t taking any chances,” says Anna Weinstein, marine program director for Audubon California, one of the groups that supported the restrictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says saury and neon flying squid have already become subjects of commercial fishing interest in other nations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So this action couldn’t have come at a better time,” Weinstein says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The forage fish protections affect the band of water between 3 and 200 miles from shore off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington – an area covering about 280,000 square miles. Weinstein says the rule will have a wide array of trickledown benefits for fishermen, marine mammals and seabirds. A great deal of conservation effort and money, she says, has already been focused on protecting islands where birds like albatrosses, puffins and shearwaters breed. Now, she says, their key food sources are protected, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists around the world have endorsed the idea of protecting important forage species before they become exploited. A 2012 report from a group of 13 scientists called the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force called for paying closer attention to the vulnerabilities of forage fishes and how overfishing these species can negatively impact many larger species that prey on them. According to the report, titled \u003cem>Little Fish, Big Impact\u003c/em>, overfishing has contributed to the declines of the Peruvian anchoveta, Chesapeake Bay menhaden and other ecologically critical species. The authors call for setting lower catch limits for important forage species while boosting the minimum biomass that must be left in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oceana’s Shester says the new policy is long overdue and that many overfishing crises, including the current collapse of the Pacific sardine, could have been avoided if fishery regulators had taken a more precautionary approach to management years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With Pacific sardines, the fishery’s managers waited until numbers were at 10 percent,” Shester says. “We saw warning signs that the fishery was collapsing five years ago, but only when it had collapsed did we do anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Protecting forage species now, he says, doesn’t put them off limits forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just means that we need to take a step back before we proceed and start catching them,” Shester says. “It puts the burden of proof on the fishermen to show beforehand that they aren’t going to harm the ecosystem if they catch these species, and only then can they put nets in the water.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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},
"closealltabs": {
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"order": 1
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
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"order": 9
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"source": "NPR"
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"hyphenacion": {
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"order": 15
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"jerrybrown": {
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"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
},
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},
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"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
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"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
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},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
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"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
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"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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