I recently traveled with a few colleagues to north-central Baja California, Mexico, to conduct field research for the San Diego Zoo’s Golden Eagle Project (see previous post, Golden Eagle Helicopter Survey). A wind farm is being designed for future development in the Sierra Juarez, and the San Diego Zoo is involved with pre-construction research of habitat use and demographics of golden eagles. The objective of the project is to examine what parts of the mountain range are used by eagles and how and when they use each part. Our findings may help to minimize future interactions between eagles and turbines.

I am the new field ornithologist for the Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research and just joined the team in August. Because so little is known about the eagles in the area, we’ve had to resort to good, old-fashioned detective work—that means sitting and waiting to see eagles. On our last trip in September, we saw several raptor species including turkey vultures, peregrine falcons, and American kestrels during our surveillance from our high perch at the edge of the desert, but no eagles (darn!). We have previously observed eagles in this area and know that they breed here because of nest surveys that took place last March from a helicopter (brrrrr). However, we don’t know if they stick around all year or if they leave after the breeding season is over. So we decided we needed to increase our surveillance effort for the eagles during the non-breeding season. Our objective in the week-long observation period was to make note of any eagle (and other bird) activity in the area—but Mother Nature had other plans for us.

The first day that we were there, it was really windy–the winds were gusting up to 65 miles per hour (105 kilometers per hour)! We know this because another part of our mission was to set up weather stations that send all the data they gather directly to us at the Institute’s Beckman Center via the Internet (in real time!). Birds (especially big, heavy ones like eagles) don’t like to fly when it’s too windy because it takes a lot of energy to stay in air in those conditions, so we only stayed out for half the day. We’re lucky nobody got blown off the mountain! We went back out the next morning to continue our surveillance, and it snowed! The snow only lasted for about 30 minutes, but the wind had shifted, and it was cold (which is saying a lot, because I’m from Wisconsin!). The rest of the day was sunny, but still a little windy, and we still didn’t see any eagles. Our week continued much the same way—clear and windy and no eagles.

I’m not going to lie; at times we got pretty bored. But we also got to spend a week outside without worrying about e-mails and cell phones and all the other activities that take up too much time in our lives. We got to enjoy just being out in nature, which is the reason most of us became ecologists—to save nature so future generations can enjoy it, too. So the lesson from this trip is that I have to be patient—sooner or later, I’ll see an eagle and, in the meantime, I’ve got a great view!

Colleen Wisinski is a research associate with the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

What I want to talk about to today is hope—hope for conservation, and hope for our planet even though it is facing unprecedented environmental challenges. I’m in Churchill in Manitoba, Canada, working with friends and collaborators at Polar Bears International. It’s a surreal experience going out on the Tundra Buggies and seeing wild polar bears. But underneath this joyful experience there is also sadness, because I know that this “polar bear capital” may one day have no polar bears. By now, most of us know that the polar bears are losing their sea-ice habitat and here, at the southern end of their range, they will disappear first. We’ve already lost almost a quarter of them in the past 15 years. In another 15, there may be no polar bears left in Churchill.

So, given this gloomy scenario, why am I writing about hope? Well, what’s the alternative? Despair? Gloom and doom? That never got anyone anywhere. Yes, we have to face up to this crisis, but the good news is that we are the ones that got us into this mess, so we can get us out. We’re consuming too many resources. We use energy like there’s no tomorrow. But there is a tomorrow, for us and for nature. We have to change our ways. If we do, if we make those daily decisions to do the right thing, it will make a difference. I won’t go into what doing the right thing is here—we know the answer more or less: turn off the light; turn down your thermostat; drive less, carpool more; keep our forests. All these things help us reduce our carbon footprint and slow down the climate change we set in motion by overproducing these greenhouse gases.

So, today, why am I hopeful? Well, it’s inspiring to be here with these people, the people affiliated with Polar Bears International who are so passionate, so dedicated to making a difference. We are doing something—that always gives hope. We are reaching out to students around the country and helping them to understand climate change, its impacts on polar bears and other wildlife, and how they can do something. Doing something always helps create hope. I recommend YOU do something. It will make you feel better, I promise.

Part of the PBI Team: Evan Richardson, a wildlife ecologist for Environment Canada and a Ph.D. student at University of Alberta.

We’re also working with many other zoos in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to fill in other information gaps—things that the field biologists don’t know because it is too difficult to study in the wild bears that range over hundreds of miles in search of seals. Things like reproduction, physiology, and olfactory communication. And, most importantly, we are talking about climate change and all the threats to nature as we know it. We are talking to anyone who will listen. We have to get this message out, now, before it’s too late.

And I have hope because I look around and see people talking more about going green. I see business and government investing in green technology. Maybe more people will walk the talk. Maybe the momentum is starting to change. Maybe we can reverse climate change and other destructive activities. I hope so.

Ron Swaisgood is director of Applied Animal Ecology for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

Watch the San Diego Zoo’s polar bears daily on Polar Cam.

Culprits of the nighttime shakedown? Visitors to the Tundra Lodge are common, including some devious ones that shook the lodge in the wee hours of the night.

This really is shaping up to be an amazing experience. Each day I go out on the Tundra Buggy, run by Frontiers North Adventures. Oh, and by the way, they are giving us a free pass on the Tundra Buggy and a room in the Tundra Lodge. They like what we are doing, trying to bring more attention to the plight of the polar bear. And it’s hard to imagine a species more deserving of attention than polar bears. They are the world’s largest terrestrial carnivores, and they are impressive.

My first night in the Tundra Lodge, I awoke to more than a little gentle rocking. The Tundra Lodge is somewhat like a train car up on monster truck wheels. Apparently, one of the polar bears thought it might be fun to give us all a little shake. I saw visions of our “enrichment feeders” we give our bears at the San Diego Zoo—objects they have to shake until some tasty treat drops out. Was I the tasty treat? Of course, several feet above the ground and separated by a steel wall, I was safe. But that’s the kind of place Churchill is. Wild tundra. Subarctic wilderness. Polar bears shaking your lodge.

Up close and personal! Okay, so I did use a zoom lens, but this guy was pretty close. What an incredible opportunity to see these wild bears!

A yearling cub spots a big male nearby. Vigilance pays off for youngsters. If they don’t stay away from adult males, they may end up becoming a snack.

Families of three are less frequent than they were a decade ago. This female is doing well to have two surviving cubs.

Although addressing a serious issue, this has been great fun, joining in with so many inspired and inspiring people, literally motivated to change the world. And all against this wonderful backdrop, the tundra of Churchill. Look at the pictures I’m posting. These really are fabulous animals. C’mon guys, we can’t let this animal disappear.

Ron Swaisgood is director of Applied Animal Ecology for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

Watch the San Diego Zoo’s polar bears daily on Polar Cam.

A large outdoor mural in the main plaza of Urcos, Peru, includes important icons of the local culture: an Andean bear, an ukuku, and El Señor de Qoyllor Rit’i.

The e-mail that started me on these two posts highlighted a Web site showing some hunters with big game “trophies.” In this case, the trophies were taxidermy mounts of large mammals, mostly carnivores. In the background was a stuffed Andean bear, and the presence of this stuffed bear disturbed the e-mail’s writer and at least some of its readers.
Aside from some legal and conservation issues, what was it that bothered people? Was it merely the carcass of a dead bear that got people riled? No, I doubt that was it, because bears die all the time. Was it because the stuffed bear was disgusting looking? Maybe some people thought so, but I think Andean bears are pretty neat looking; there are plenty of stuffed bears in natural history museums, and most people don’t take offense at them, so I don’t think that’s what irritated people.

I think what struck a nerve was that the stuffed bear had presumably been hunted in order to provide an experience for the hunter, and the trophy represented this experience. The reason the hunter wanted this experience, and this trophy, was because at least some of his values (the photo showed only men) were different than those of the people who were later repulsed by the picture. People value bears, and nature in general, for different reasons, and those non-scientific values are important to consider for conservation of nature, and of culture.

Bromeliads in cloud forest near the village of Capiri, Peru

So, why do we pay more attention to bears than bromeliads? Well, I think the big teeth and claws are part of it. When I was a little kid growing up in rural Minnesota, for me one of the best parts of going to pick wild blackberries was the chance that I might see a bear also going to pick wild blackberries. I was a little scared of black bears, but I respected and admired them, too. In an odd way, I guess my attitude toward black bears was a little bit like my attitude toward my older brothers. I wasn’t unique in thinking of bears as being a little like people.

Because some of their behaviors and some aspects of their physical appearance appear like those of humans, many human societies have considered bears to be unusual animals, not quite like other wildlife, but not quite like humans, either. As I mentioned in my last post, Andean bears don’t hurt people, yet these bears are important in traditional culture where they live. One thing that has puzzled some biologists interested in Andean bears is that although the art of some pre-Hispanic cultures depicts many species in great detail, there are no depictions of Andean bears. Bears leave so much evidence of their existence, as tracks, leftover food, and feces, that it seems impossible that these earlier people didn’t know about bears.

Dr. S. Paisley, who’s worked on Andean bears in Bolivia and Peru, has hypothesized that these people did know about bears, but the people didn’t think of bears as animals, so they didn’t portray them as animals. Those of us descended from the European cultures do think of them as animals, so we simply don’t recognize Andean bears when they’re portrayed as something else.

In a post I wrote last June, I referred to the festival of Qoyllor Rit’I (see Andean Bears: Field Research Continues). This is a major spiritual and cultural event for the Andean people living east of the city of Cusco, Peru. During Qoyllor Rit’i, hundreds of people make an incredibly difficult pilgrimage to a sacred site in the high mountains. Along with the pilgrims go people costumed as ukukus, a term that sometimes refers to tricksters serving a spiritual function, that sometimes refers to mythical hybrids between Andean bears and humans, and that sometimes refers to Andean bears. The bear may not have often been depicted in historical art, but it clearly has cultural value.

Different species of animals and plants have great cultural significance around the world. The Kuhl’s lory (a small parrot) has great meaning in the traditional culture of the Cook Islands, yet it has been driven extinct on several islands on which it used to live. When it was recently reintroduced to one of those islands, the local people celebrated the return of an icon and restoration of a lost part of their culture (see post Return of the Lory). If the Andean bear disappears, what will be lost from the culture of the Andes?

Every society that has ever existed interacted with plants and animals, and they have value to us. By conserving species, we conserve part of what makes us human.

Russ Van Horn is a senior researcher with the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

One of my first wild polar bears here at Churchill. Thin at this time of year, waiting for the ice to re-freeze so they can hunt, they are still large and powerful predators.

I’m in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, known as the polar bear capital of the world. I’m here as a guest of my friends and collaborators (and supporters!) at Polar Bears International. This is a terrific organization, and they have given me a terrific opportunity. More on that later. The bears are beautiful! I can’t wait to share more about the bears in my next posts.

Nothing to do, a polar bear might as well sleep. Occasionally, they may eat some berries or even some kelp, but the best strategy is just to conserve energy until the ice returns.

I won’t explain the science, I think most of us know this by now. The sea-ice is shrinking, shrinking faster than even the most pessimistic models of five years ago. In 2007, we all were shocked when we lost a million square miles of sea-ice: that’s Alaska, Texas, and Washington combined. This year is fortunate—the Arctic is getting a little break from the warmer temperatures. But the trend is unmistakable: the Arctic is getting warmer, and it is losing its ice.

View from the Tundra Buggy. At Churchill at this time of year, this may be the highest density of polar bears anywhere. This is where they come to wait for the ice… and check out the tourists and researchers!

It seems clear to me: we must do something about climate change. Not just for the polar bears. Giant pandas, too, may lose habitat to climate change. I recently visited another spectacular site for Andean bears, in the dry forest. If climate change brings even drier climates, the water holes will dry up and the bears will be gone. And, in Southern California, kangaroo rats (see post Roo Rats Released), the desert bighorn, and the desert tortoises (see post Tortoises on TV) of the Mojave desert are all predicted to suffer from the hotter, drier climate forecast for our region. All these species and their ecosystems, and many more, are being altered by climate change, and the effects will not be good.

That’s why I’m here, working with Polar Bears International. We are here to see these bears and bring this message into your homes and schools around the world. Climate change is real, we are the primary cause, and we can and must do something about it. If we don’t, we will live in a very different world, and it may be a world without polar bears. Is that what we want?

Ron Swaisgood is director of Applied Animal Ecology for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

Watch the Zoo’s polar bears daily on Polar Cam.

Collette Wieland from KVBC with Mojave Max

We also introduced a family of 18 tortoises, ranging from hatchlings to adults, that all came to us through our Desert Tortoise Hotline from the same home and were not in very good health; it gave us the perfect opportunity to encourage people to surrender their pet desert tortoises to the Clark County Desert Tortoise Hotline here in southern Nevada so we can rehabilitate the tortoises and eventually release the healthy ones into the desert to help recover the species. We are confident that all 18 tortoises will be successfully rehabilitated by this time next year, and maybe even sooner.

We also reminded viewers that it is against the law to take a tortoise from the desert, or to even touch one because the interaction with the tortoise may cause it to void (pee or poop) and can result in dehydration and eventually even death. Collette Wieland interviewed both me and Roy Averill-Murray from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and she was very enthusiastic about helping us to reach out to the public to address issues regarding desert tortoises and to share our mission here at the DTCC, which is to play a critical role in conserving and restoring wild Mojave desert tortoise populations and their native habitat. Thank you KVBC for helping to support our efforts in saving the desert tortoise species!

Paula Kahn is a conservation program manager for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. Read a previous post, Desert Tortoises: Unexpected Nests.

Note: The Clark County Desert Tortoise Hotline number is 702-593-9027.

Clouds over the forest near the village of Capiri, Peru.

An e-mail was posted recently on the Andean bear e-mail network that got me thinking about the question “Why do we care about Andean bears?” I realized that I was not only thinking about this question, but also pondering “Why do we care about the conservation of nature?” I’m not sure I can clearly answer these questions, and I’m sure I won’t say anything that hasn’t been said before by someone else, but here goes. In this post I’ll focus on the reasons for (bear) conservation presented from a scientific viewpoint, but there are other reasons for caring about conservation. I’ll write about those in my next post.

There are a few different terms that conservation biologists use when they’re trying to describe why to focus on one species instead of another. The term “flagship species” refers to a charismatic species that represents its ecosystem. Because it’s charismatic, the species draws attention to the conservation needs of the whole ecosystem. A flagship species acts as an ambassador for its ecosystem, in the same way that individual animals in zoos act as ambassadors for their species.

Flagship species are usually big, or colorful, or cute (think giant panda as the flagship species for China’s bamboo forests). Many of them have big teeth and claws. We humans often pay more attention to large animals that we think could eat us than we do to small plants we can’t eat. A flagship species, like the Andean bear, motivates people to care more about the cloud forest than a bromeliad could. (Although Andean bears have biggish teeth and claws, they don’t eat people. And although you could eat a bromeliad, I don’t recommend it. Some bromeliads have nasty spines, and all of them are chewy.) I’ll talk more about how bears motivate people in my next post.

A second term that conservationists use to describe why we care about Andean bears is “umbrella species.” An umbrella species is a species that has certain ecological needs that mean that in order to conserve that species, you take actions that end up conserving the whole ecosystem. So, we do what we can to conserve species that we think act as good indicators of the health of the ecosystem, and hope that this results in conservation of the whole system. Andean bears seem to require a lot of forested habitat that contains a wide variety of plants, so they’re thought to be good umbrella species for South American forests.

A third term that sometimes gets applied to species in the conservation spotlight is “keystone species.” This means that a species is critically important to the conservation of an ecosystem – a species that we think has big effects on a lot of other species. If that species is lost, then there will be major consequences for the remaining species. Some people think Andean bears are keystone species because of their role in seed dispersal. Because Andean bears eat a lot of fruits, and because we think they move long distances, they move the seeds of plants around from one place to another. This allows the seeds that germinate from the bear dung to grow in new locations, far from their parent plants. If there were no Andean bears in the forest, the distribution of the plants they eat might change dramatically.

When I think about these three terms, to me they illustrate that we’re trying to keep ecosystems working. In spite of all the research that has been done and that we ever will be able to do, we’ll never be able to fully understand how ecosystems work. We don’t have enough time, or enough people, or enough money. And we may not be smart enough, either. The pioneering conservationist, Aldo Leopold, compared conservation to a mechanic who was working on a machine that he didn’t quite understand, and said “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” In other words, if you want the thing to keep working, but you don’t fully understand how it works, make sure you don’t lose any parts.

I’m a lousy mechanic. I hope I’m a better conservation scientist.

Russ Van Horn is a senior researcher with the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

A Stephen's kangaroo rat sporting a tiny transmitter.

Graduate student Liv Baker pulls one of the top cages off and frees the roo rat inside.

Debra Shier is a Brown Endowed Scientist at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. Here’s more information about her project.

Javier going to great lengths, as usual, to get his job done.

We awake in the predawn twilight, rouse ourselves out of our sleeping bags, down some coffee, and head for the viewpoint, hoping to spot last night’s bear making the ascent back up from the waterhole. José begins to gesticulate wildly, pointing to a dark form moving slowly up the face of the cliff.

Through the binoculars I can make out the white spectacles surrounding the eyes and see his powerful forelimbs reaching out to gain purchase in some crevice or ledge. He stops at a large boulder and uses his huge claws to pry out a few snails, precious morsels of protein in this resource-limited landscape. Then, he is on the move again and, before I know it, he is at the top of the cliff, some 1,500 feet above the waterhole, and he disappears over the ridge.

The rough trails take their toll…on my boots. José does makeshift repairs on my boot after the sole was ripped off by the treacherous terrain. Boots last less than 6 months here—just one of the difficulties endured by this dedicated field team.

Robyn points out the paths traversed by bears, and the way we will return.

We spend a couple more days exploring the habitats of these remarkable bears before descending back down the mountain and back to civilization, and the welcome comfort of a shower and a bed. The end of an adventure, but the beginning of a collaboration we hope to continue for years to come. Understanding these bears, and finding ways to protect them, will require a long-term commitment.

Ron Swaisgood is director of Applied Animal Ecology for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

José scans the cliffs, hoping for bears.

It’s early morning, and the cool night air quickly burns away as the sun appears above the ridge of the mountain to the east of the camp. The light that accompanies the heat, however, reveals a spectacular scene. Still in my sleeping bag, I sit up and admire the view. Across a narrow valley, sheer cliffs drop down from the ridge and disappear below. A few somewhat gentler slopes support some vegetation. Javier points out an orange-ish post among the small trees: a posayo tree, reduced to a shattered stump by a foraging Andean (spectacled) bear.

A posayo tree is reduced to splinters by a hungry bear.

Sapote fruit is a staple food for bears in the wet season.

After seeing my first wild spectacled bear, the clouds roll in, creating a surreal moment.

Then, just before dusk, Javier spots a dark object moving quickly down a steep rocky slope. Through my binoculars, finally, I see the bear—a large male descending headfirst, with the apparent ease of a Sunday stroll. Moments later he disappears into the bowels of the canyon where the life-giving water can be found. Tomorrow morning, we hope, we will see him ascend back up the cliffs and find a posayo tree on which to dine.

Ron Swaisgood is the director of Applied Animal Ecology for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.