A Northwoods Almanac for 1/21/22

A Northwoods Almanac for Jan. 21 – Feb. 3, 2022   by John Bates

 

Sightings – Bobcat, Red Fox, Fisher, Lyme Disease, Pine Grosbeaks

            On 1/11, Mona Wiechmann in Manitowish Waters sent me several videos and a photo of a bobcat that in mid-morning was slowly walking up her driveway, and as a lover of wildlife, she said it “made my day.” She noted that it was the second year in a row she had seen a bobcat in her driveway, and that she currently has no squirrels, which is, of course, the likely consequence of having a bobcat ranging around her property. 

bobcat photo by Mona Wiechmann

            A reader in Lac du Flambeau also sent me night videos of a red fox walking past his security camera, and then a while later, a fisher following the tracks of the fox. The question, of course, arose whether a fisher is a predator of red fox. Mary, Callie, and I once witnessed a red fox chasing a fisher up a tree, and then jumping up again and again against the tree in an apparent effort to get the fisher. So, who’s the predator of whom? I think it’s a toss-up.

            Speaking of red fox, they are preyed upon by coyotes, or minimally chased away by coyotes, while coyotes are preyed upon, or chased away, by wolves. I bring this up because red fox are superb mousers, and there’s significant research showing that mice spread Lyme disease, particularly white-footed mice, which are the principal natural reservoirs for Lyme disease bacteria. 

            It works like this. Adult ticks, which mostly feed upon white-tailed deer, drop off and lay their eggs on the forest floor. The eggs hatch out the next year into larvae, and the larvae eventually get infected with Lyme when they feed on an animal that carries the bacteria, which is most often white-footed mice. The larval ticks then molt into infected nymphs that can infect humans and other mammals the following year.

            In eastern and central North America, the host most likely to transmit an infection to a feeding tick is the white-footed mouse, which infects between 40% and 90% of feeding larvae. Eastern chipmunks and shrews tend to be moderate sources, while most other mammalian, avian, and reptilian hosts are much less common sources.

            And mice reproduce very rapidly. White-footed mice reach maturity at about one month, and mother mice can have anywhere from three to six babies. After birthing a litter, female mice can be ready to reproduce again, meaning they may be nursing one litter while carrying another. These mice can do this again and again throughout their lives, which typically last about six to 10 months.

white-footed mouse

            Researchers say there are areas in the United States where Lyme disease is rare and, in those places, few or none of the white-footed mice are infected. But in areas out East and like our area with high rates of Lyme disease, at least half and sometimes up to 90 percent of the mice are infected with Lyme bacteria.

            So, fox eat mice; coyotes eat fox; wolves eat coyotes. As a general rule then, where coyote numbers are kept low, fox numbers increase, mice numbers then decrease, and Lyme disease decreases. Thus, the best way to keep tick numbers down is to keep both deer and mice populations low via keeping fox and wolf numbers high.

red fox photo by Bob Kovar

            Having had Lyme twice, I’m all in on this.

            Finally, action at area bird feeders is slow. In Manitowish, we have a small flock of pine grosbeaks visiting our feeders, and a couple of purple finches, but that’s it for the visiting winter finch population. No redpolls, no pine siskins, no evening grosbeaks. We did have a flock of 11 bohemian waxwings for one day last week, but they’ve moved on. Our lack of good fortune in seeing these birds usually means there’s good food resources further north, and these birds have little reason to risk the flight south. I suspect that’s the case.

 

Wintering Golden Eagles

            Mary and I’ve seen only two golden eagles ever in our area over the last 37 years. But in fact golden eagles are regularly present in the state, just not in our area, nor during any other season other than winter. 

golden eagle

            Golden eagles weren’t previously even considered regular inhabitants of Wisconsin. But 25 years ago, winter sightings in the far western part of the state led to a mid-winter survey to document what has turned out to be a regular wintering population of golden eagles in the Mississippi River blufflands of Wisconsin, as well as Minnesota and Iowa. The high count year was 2019 with 145, while 2021 yielded 126 individuals. The latest survey just took place on 1/15.

            Golden eagles are quite different from fish-eating bald eagles in that they feed on upland prey such as wild turkeys and rabbits. They really like to hunt open, south-facing sides of bluffs that are referred to as “goat prairies”. 

            No golden eagles nest in Wisconsin – their range is much further west, barely reaching into the Dakotas. But a small number somehow figured out the eastward migration route to the Mississippi River, and now they’re regular winter inhabitants. 

 

Do Older Forests Sequester More Carbon Than Younger Forests? Yes.

            The prevailing belief on the sequestration of carbon by forests has long been that younger forests do more to capture and hold onto carbon than older forests. However, many recent studies put this notion on its head. 

            One study in the western U.S. analyzed forest inventory data collected on 3,335 plots and found that large trees play a major role in the accumulated carbon stock of these forests. Large trees accounted for 2 to 4% of all stems among five tree species; but held 33 to 46% of the total above ground carbon stored by each species. Pooled across the five dominant species, large trees accounted for 3% of the 636,520 trees occurring on the inventory plots but stored 42% of the total carbon.

            Another study in unmanaged tropical forests in Suriname, on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America, looked at three different species of trees that ranged in age from 84 to 255 years old. The study found that the older a tree is, the better it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere. In fact, the research suggests that almost 70 per cent of all the carbon stored in trees is accumulated in the last half of their lives. 

            Another study in New York modeled a 125-year old white pine for volume, and found that most of its volume was acquired after 50 years of age. In fact, 70% was added from 50 to 125 years. A full modeling of the an older pine would also need to include limb volume which favors the older tree even more, because white pines develop thick limbs that carry significantly more volume than their young counterparts. 

            The long and short of it? Planting new forests is good – we should be doing it worldwide whenever and wherever possible. But allowing existing forests to continue to mature is even better – it’s the simplest and most effective way through forests to mitigate climate change.

 

The Past Seven Years the Warmest on Record 

            The past seven years were Earth's warmest on record according to new research released this month. And July of 2021 was the hottest month humanity ever recorded.

            Back in 1988 during a record-setting hot summer, a NASA researcher testified before Congress the undeniable scientific truth: “The greenhouse effect has been detected,” James Hansen said. “And it is changing our climate now.”

            Global temperatures then were about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit above the preindustrial average. It was, at the time, the hottest 12-month period scientists had ever seen.

            None of us, however, will ever experience a year that cool again. Nor our children or grandchildren.

            Why? Because carbon dioxide remains in atmosphere for 300 to 1,000 years. Whatever CO2 we continue to emit just keeps filling the bucket. So, even as we reduce our emissions over the next decades, the bucket will continue to fill with CO2. There’s no going back.

            Since 1981, average global temperatures have increased at a rate of about 0.18 degrees Celsius (0.32 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. In the same period, the warming of oceans, which have absorbed about 90 percent of the additional heat trapped by human carbon pollution, is now eight times faster. 

            Which leads us to the goal of achieving net zero as quickly as we can. So, what is net zero?

 

The Concept of Net Zero

            There’s a serious misconception that net zero means zero emissions, and thus the end of all use of fossil fuels. That’s not what it means! We will continue to need fossil fuels for a host of applications, and we will continue to emit CO2 from other sources as well that are virtually impossible to stop. It’s not realistic to stop all emissions.

            Net zero instead means that the CO2 that we emit will have to be equally balanced by the methods we, and nature, employ to absorb or remove it. Added together the output and input will equal zero – no new CO2 added to the bucket. We can only accomplish this by first reducing as best we can the emissions we are sending into the atmosphere, and then capturing whatever carbon we’re still releasing.  The other term you may have heard to describe this is “becoming carbon neutral.” But again, it doesn’t mean no emissions. It means no more CO2 added to the bucket.

            It’s doable, and needs to be done at the very latest by 2050, or far better yet, by 2030, which by my advanced math, is not very far away. 

            If for no other reason, it’s an economic imperative. In 2021, there were 20 weather/climate disaster events in the U.S. with losses exceeding $1 billion each. These events included 1 drought event, 2 flooding events, 11 severe storm events, 4 tropical cyclone events, 1 wildfire event, and 1 winter storm event, all of which resulted in the deaths of 688 people. The 1980–2021 annual average is 7.4 events; the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2017–2021) is 17.2 events 

            Have we always had climatic disasters? Of course! But not close to this many, nor as destructive overall.

            We desperately need to cross all of our political divides on this and come together. It’s not political. Check what our military says about climate change, and what insurance companies say, both highly conservative entities. You can be very conservative politically, but still fully understand the implications of climate change and what it means for our future. I implore all of the good people of the Northwoods to independently look at the real data, and then consider how we can work together to keep the North the North, and create the best viable future for our kids, and all kids, worldwide.

 

from Berkeley Lab News Center

Celestial Events

            Before dawn on 1/29, look for Mars 2 degrees north of the waning crescent moon. The new moon occurs on 1/31. Look after dusk on 2/2 for Jupiter 4 degrees north of the waxing moon.

 

Thought for the Week

            Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes — you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone. – Rebecca Solnit