Faunal Force

Bobcat

Mark Wiley, Radford, Virginia, using remote cameras got this excellent picture of a bobcat in Floyd County, Virginia, 4:13 am, May 15, 2009.  He said, "I've seen a bobcat in Floyd on 2 occasions - once while climbing the ridge while I was hunting and another time ambushing a turkey." Mark's about 50 so such sightings, even clear pictures, are rare.

I have dreams of a rural enterprise related to bobcats. They are scarce and with coming land use changes, they are likely to need intensive management. We know much about them now but a major  sustained research program is needed for them to clarify their population status, likely impacts from housing and industrial development and carbon storage and biomass production, their disease relations (rabies, etc.), effects of an increasing coyote population and the effects of hunting and trapping on the state population.

What’s an Atlatl? Primitive High Tech

I just have to call spear points “arrowheads.”  That’s the way I was “brought up.” It probably does not make any difference. The arrow is a much more modern invention than the spear. Sharpening a long stick was a major advance by primitive people over using a rock for collecting fish, reptiles, and small birds and mammals. Tying a sharp rock onto a stick must have been a great day for the remembered praise for the inventor. The practice surely spread rapidly, regionally, and only by personal demonstrations. Before people added rocks to sticks they were throwing spears with incredible force using the atlatl (pronounce it at-ul-at-ul)

The atlatl was a throwing stick, a device with a hook at the end that went into the end of the spear. The device added distance to the thrown projectile and force against large prey.

It was a spear “handle” that effectively gave the thrower a longer than natural arm. Later a doughnut shaped stone was added to the atlatl. With each throw, the stone slid from the hand up the atlatl toward the spear. These had to have been the first delvings into applications of ideas about centrifugal force.

A sport has emerged and there are pockets of interest.  An association exists and I think new interests will be gained from people traveling less, becoming more attached to their past, and becoming more interested in primitive weapons and survival techniques and surviving.   

I have plans for a Spear-Throwing Group within my dream of Rural System.

 

Wildlife Law Enforcement Officer Patrols

 

 I was asked recently, which was better, using marked or unmarked vehicles in patrols by wildlife law enforcement officers? I studied with graduate students wildlife law enforcement problems for many years. Such studies are rare, especially considering the great costs of  enforcement to the wildlife resource agencies.

I knew of no related studies but suspected that some had been attempted. I suggested that if they could be found or if one was to be designed, then the following should be done:

1. Decide why? What is the purpose of the patrol: displaying presence, education, deterrence, apprehension, quantifying the number of violators by season and time of day, density of violators? All of these? [I expected several and so suggested numerically weighting each relative to the most important one.]
2. Decide on the areas of concern and make a computer map(s) of them. [It's not all area in the region, only the areas where there may be game, only near violator access by roads and trails, not near certain things like power plants, and not near the agents' homes.]
3. Narrow the period of concern. [Cleve Cowles' PhD dissertation (Cowles, C. J. 1979. Optimal deployment of wildlife law enforcement agents with analyses of agent productivity. Unpub. Ph.D. Dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va.xi + 230 p. )shows how to re-allocate agents to areas where boating, fishing, etc. needs and users and law violators change seasonally.]
4. Experimentally allocate parked but well-marked vehicles [These may not even be workable, but they are marked and conspicuous) throughout several areas and compare arrest rates to areas where there are none.
5.  Do the same with patrols of conspicuously marked and unmarked vehicles in areas. Density of vehicles =  number of hours per square mile (i.e., length x viewing width).
6. Use questionnaire samples to determine the number of people that have seen marked vehicles. (What would be the desired proportion of people who have seen a marked vehicle within the past month?)
7. Ask all or a sample of arrested people whether a marked or unmarked vehicle was involved in their arrest.
8. As with Vilkitis’s work  (Vilkitis, J. R. 1968. Characteristics of big game violators and extent of their activity in Idaho. MS Thesis, Univ. Idaho, Moscow, Idaho. 202 pp. ) it might be desirable to desirable to simulate in the field  (or simulate for discussion) 10 to 100 poaching events and see which type vehicle is most likely to be positively involved for a desirable outcome.
9. Determine the area around a point (an agent stopping and getting out of a patrol vehicle) from which an average poacher's shot can be heard.
10. The patrol is often for detection of violations, that is to get a minimum rate.  By using a standard patrol and standard stops (e.g., like regularly spaced, early morning spring-time stops to listen for drumming ruffed grouse) it may be possible to use gun shots-heard as an index to potential activity in the zone around the road. A little geometry can work out distances heard and density of poachers per unit area per unit time.  Seasonal differences or differences between years with marked and unmarked cars might be compared to give rough indices, set some bounds, and perhaps show some accountability if not justification for more agents or patrol activity.
11. If angler violations are of concern, only person-to-person work seems likely to be effective.  If deterring crime, all the efforts from newspapers, school work, marked vehicles, signs, reports of arrests, increasing fines, changing the regulations, embarrassment, etc. will be needed ... and then the marked/unmarked question can be evaluated. That's pretty far down the list of problems and decisions.
12. This is a good time to re-think the fossil energy costs of patrol. There are going to be some severe cutbacks and we'll need to build some new strategies for the new violator after many more of them move to the cities but come out for night-time fun in the "game" against the agents.

I’ll welcome advice on effective patrol strategies and especially a research strategy when the intended consequence of a patrol is unsure or mixed.

Shepp Pond Lessons

In 1959 or 60 when I was a Virginia state wildlife biologist working on a cooperative project with the US Forest Service I was told by my supervisor that money had become available to do the Shepp pond project. It was a project he had proposed several years prior and finally authorized and funded. I was to supervise it, it being on my district, part on the then-Pedlar Ranger District near Glasgow Virginia.

The site was a high elevation marsh (a half-acre as I recall it now) near a small "wildlife clearing" in the forest. We enlarged such clearings and turned them into pastures for deer and for wild turkey nesting areas in the borders. We often built small (bull-dozer blade-wide "waterholes" (temporary water supplies) at the sides of such areas to provide water for various wild fauna. In some areas we built small ponds for fish and wild fauna.

I destroyed the marsh and turned the area into a pond with an earthen dam.

I knew I had done something wrong. I did not know what. I discussed my misgivings but was not opposed to the project. I did not know enough to be strongly for or against it. Soil conditions were right for the project and there did not seem to be permanent water available for fauna. It  was completed. Shortly thereafter I asked for a leave of absence for graduate school. I knew I was not the ecologist I needed to start becoming.

I could not explain the indentation in the land, the nature of the soil, the presence of the stems (there had to have been a dry period for germination). I knew there were plants with which I was not familiar but their sources unknown. I did not know how to age the pond or appreciate the historical record its pollen layers held. I knew of its amphibians but only later learned of its great richness for plants as well as wild fauna.

The lessons: learn the area well (the inventory); value it well; look for options (perhaps another pond nearby could have produced permanent water for a lower price and saved the marsh); question "the resource" (perhaps this was a remote area never again seen by more than 5-6 people, perhaps not unique); learn the importance of free water to each species, for some have no needs, others have essential life-cycle adaptation; appraise objectives (deer, black bear, wild turkey and other game or wild fauna for gaining and holding ecological richness?); ponder future values (could amphibian and songbird richness some day be more important to more people than more deer?); learn the history of the site, e.g., in the growth rings of the shrub stems, fires, seed rain; and learn how to articulate the value of such areas and investments in their protection.

And then develop the means to protect them and manage them for the desired status if that is the decision. Such sites will be changing (succession or transition) and later stages may not be as desirable as the present one.

Some day I may return to Shepp pond to learn  more. I do not have time for another graduate degree.

Agency Survival

I read “The Seven Tips for Agency Survival” by Alain Thys. He was talking about marketing and ad agencies surviving, but I read it as if it was about state wildlife or game agencies. (I read most things and watch TV that way.) I have the sense that wildlife agencies now seek out marketing specialists for they are at risk, serious “down-sizing” and increasing public frustration over the difference between their past and emerging roles. They have needs, big ones, and they or their image may fail. They are threatened by being consumed by environmental agencies, surrounded by anti-hunting sentiment, and their lands (and staff) eyed by forest, park, and recreational agencies. Lands are threatened as politically innocuous routes for corridors for every power, gas, and water line from every development. A major funding source for them declines, i.e., taxes from sporting arms and ammo and fishing equipment.

Thys had tips for marketing and advertising agencies to break out of their downward spiral.  He (as I) recommended conversations about the goodness of each for such agencies. Making seven tips requires over-generalizing for them and it certainly does for extending them to the faunal agency. The similarities are useful:


TIP 1: TAKE THE LEAD IN RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI) CONVERSATIONS RATHER THAN UNDERGOING THEM

Marketing effectiveness specialists will probably come invited (rarely hired) to the wildlife agency. Marketing and its difference with advertising will still be a question. Leaders will not know what to request but they will want to know the costs and payoffs right away – urban and rural, hunters and non hunters, anglers and hunters and composites?  They will be nervous because they are at odds with their internal “conservation education” units and public relations units that cannot be called that. The tip seems to me to be: be clear (for either type) about your objectives and perceived future role, reject most old data because things are changing too fast and the audiences to be addressed may be unique, and then to take the lead in measuring and managing ROI yourself and be ready for the conversation after three years. The data to be needed then is being collected today.


TIP 2: DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF

Thys said to look at a list of  agencies and to say in one word how each truly differentiates itself in the marketplace, at least the wildlife or faunal management arena.  It is difficult. There are few. Approach from the public or clients. The agency needs a brand name, needs to differentiate itself among natural resource, or conservation, nature, or environmental agencies. Agencies should clearly state what they are about, state it often and in several ways, and live by it.  Clients should be made to love the agency brand, yet not even contemplate the indifference they display today.  The marketer may not be able to make their own agency stand out in the crowd. Perhaps the wildlife agency needs to find an agency that can do so.


TIP 3: STOP ADVERTISING, START COMMUNICATING
To prempt spinning out of control, agencies (both advertising and wildlife) must let go of their addiction to channel-centric communication planning, and focus on what matters to the end-consumer.  They need to start recommending initiatives which are rooted in respect, insight, and passion.  Messages need to be relevant and incite people to say "tell me more" rather than to reach for the zapper. Difficult… but it avoids the “route to irrelevance.”


TIP 4: LEARN ABOUT THE STUFF THAT REALLY WORKS
Realize the richness of retail and shop-staff.  The telephone people of the wildlife agencies are, (my experience) the world’s worst first-contacts. Email and standard mail (if responses are ever made)  are too informal and  reflect poorly on the agency care and competence. The world has massively moved on-line and blogging is now essential. Employees need to be tinkering with alternative media, branded storytelling, and the techniques that really matter.

TIP 5: CHALLENGE THE INDUSTRY ORTHODOXIES

Agencies that want to succeed in tomorrow's “market place” need to resist the temptation to go along with old practices, policies, and politics, and actively start breaking bad habits and alignments. It may be painful but not as much as a major reduction in force or agency department re-distribution ... or loss.

TIP 6: IF IT HAS NO MEANING, STOP DOING IT

There has to be a clear agency message. There have to be special events and changes and discoveries that enlighten the true meaning and measures of success of the agency. Being the vanilla-flavor agency today will not be sufficient. 

TIP 7: IF YOU DON'T WANT TO OR CAN'T IMPLEMENT THE ABOVE, HARVEST AND START OVER

There is no need to keep or try to re-build an inadequate, poor, or tarnished “brand” or agency  name. The costs may be too great; success questionable.

Basic biology: migrate, mutate, encyst…or die.

Area and Density

Managers talk about animal density. Density is an expression of numbers per unit area. Numbers of animals are difficult to estimate and usually are expressed as some number "between X and Y." There is imagined some invisible fluid fence that determines the boundary of the area for the wild, mobile animals. Estimating the area is difficult.

The number of acres in an area being sampled is needed. The total area is critical. It is usually best to divide the area into relevant units, (e.g., summer and winter range), and sample each separately. If the area cannot be estimated very precisely, efforts to make precise estimates of the other components of the density-estimation method may be a bit irrational. New technology can help (e.g., GPS, GIS) but managers and those who depend upon them have to be realistic about their limitations and express them clearly for greater cost effectiveness and accountability.

Riparian Volume

Riparian means the land and community along the sides of and closely associated with fresh, unbound water. The riparian zone is the banks and adjacent areas of water bodies, rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds, water courses, seeps, and springs, the water of which provides soil moisture conditions greater than in the adjacent areas.

Riparian "zones" are usually addressed as areas but they are sinusoidal volumes with width, depth (of the water and underground), height and length along waterways and sources. Of course areas along rivers influenced by tides create a problem for a precise definition. Occasionally a salinity of 0.5 ppt is used as the dividing content, less being riverine, more being estuarine. The riparian volume usually supports vegetation significantly different from that of adjacent inland areas. It is a distinctively different aggregation of plants and animals from that adjacent to it, more influenced by wetness than dryness. Some people think of them as the ecosystem between the aquatic and terrestrial.

From my Trevey system. 

Ranging

"It took time, but ranging became for me an umbrella word under which the concepts and essential associated activities of managed tourism, ecotourism, and engaging in dispersed outdoor recreation can be well and properly studied, developed, managed, and improved. It became the collector where theories can be developed, analyses made, models created, evaluations made and monitoring done, predictions made, and programs administered.

"Perhaps it is too big, too inclusive, but current divisions are ineffectively small with wasteful duplications and few useful connections."

From my free book on the Internet, Rural System ...Just Dreaming , Chapter 18.

Access

There is a conceptual problem with wilderness game. If it cannot be seen and cannot be reached, is it a resource?  Even if it is called one, then can the game or faunal space agency claim credit for having produced it (or managed it)? If management can be seen as a costly activity, then accountability seems reasonable and then comes the question of how many extra animals or game-related experiences did the manager produce for the money invested in him or her?

I think faunal resource managers have to be very careful about their claims for roles. One standard needed is that of what nature would have produced without the manager being present. Another standard needs to be the demand by the public as well as specific resource users among them. The more difficult demand that needs to be assessed is that of guests, foreign resource users, and nearby system managers somehow dependent upon the nearness of the resource. What will be the demand expressed by future people?

Game produced from using specific funds needs to be accessible to the investors. Knowledge about it or images of it may be one minimum form of such access. Access to existing game, with no increase in the numbers of animals, can still be viewed as successful if the measure of success is defined and counted  as extra or new dependable opportunities, sightings, quality-weighted days afield, etc. A boardwalk (here) can supply access in wet areas year around for faunal system users of all types.

Gaining hunting rights or opening private land to hunters is a conventional game management practice. Much private land is now closed to hunting.

A simple low-cost bridge (built by 2 people in 10 hours) can provide access to research and special areas, reduce down time, reduce animal disturbance, and stabilize riparian conditions. A rail may be necessary for some users and local legal issues have to be faced. Posts for handles were placed on this curved bridge for a trail over a stream that was only occassionally torential.

Conventional logging operations build roads to remove timber and in so doing opens up areas for other users. Roads create problems among users for they are costly to maintain, shed silt into streams valuable within a fishery, and may be hazardous to truckers, hunters, and and other users confronting loaded trucks. Of course they are not allowed within wilderness areas. Often only logging can pay the cost of needed roads that can also be used to gain hunting and other wildlife-related resource benefits.  Country roads (depending on their type and use rates) seem to have influence on animals (e.g., elk) using the areas near them. Closed roads or those only little used can have positive effects on edge-nesting turkeys and ruffed grouse. Roads provide access to poachers and thus create another factor to balance in decision making.

In the nearby picture, the road is sloped outward and an inner ditch is not used to channel water. This is preferred in most cases. When an inside ditch is used (as below), culverts are needed to move rain and storm  water across the road. These add to expense and require long-term management. The soil at the outlet of the culvert needs special attention. Erosion there often has long-lasting, profound effects. The design and management of high quality back-country roads is an essential part of superior watershed management or crescent management. Without it, access is always in doubt, costs are never contained, and the timely control of road use for multiple benefits made difficult. The problems within wildlife or faunal system management are not all biological or ecological.

Solutions vs. Continuance

Management of faunal resource systems requires an attitude rarely stressed in modern society. There are few quick-fixes; no completion dates; no delivery parties. There is little gratification; things do not come in TV intervals. Management is like owning a dairy herd. There is hard work and it may not be interrupted. Continuous is the word for it, not continual. There are projects, programs, and adjustments, but even these are expected and part of the normal flowing series of operations. It is easy to become pessimistic within the milieu.

The work was once said to be like that of the medical doctor (Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There). It may be more like nursing in a former place for the mentally ill. The primary task is to prevent the patients from hurting each other. There are no cures. There is adaptive work to be done, improving feedback.