Back to the Pleistocene

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What should be the goal of conservation of
mammals? The view from central Illinois...
Terms we toss around Conservation?
(Preservation?) Restoration Rehabilitation Reconci
liation
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Back to the Pleistocene!
If restoration is your goal, then what is your
benchmark? Nature before it was affected by
humans?
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If you were in Illinois, say, 11,000 years ago

• Giant ground sloth
• American mastodon, 2 species of Mammoths
• Giant beaver (8X larger than modern)
• Wild horse
• Large species of peccary
• Stag-moose
• Large species of caribou
• Extinct species of musk ox
• Large species of bison

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Overkill hypothesis

• Wave of extinctions in N Am after the last ice
  age, mostly of the largest species
• At least 33 genera of mammals extinct
• Possibly some influence of climate change, but
  much correlative evidence suggests extinctions
  were caused by over-hunting by the human
  population

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What have we lost since 1800?
Maybe our benchmark should be pre-European
settlement?

• Wolf
• Mountain lion
• Black bear
• Bison
• Elk

• Porcupine?
• Marten?
• Fisher?
• White-tailed jack rabbit

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Whats here now?

• Opossums (1)
• Shrews (6)
• Mole (1)
• Bats (12)
• Rodents (26)
• Rabbits (2)

• Carnivores (11)
• Deer (1)
• Armadillo (1)

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• Pre-settlement land cover

about 2/3 wet and dry prairie, dendritic riparian
areas about 1/3 forested (also several large
wetlands, a few small areas of savanna in the NW)
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Trends in habitat loss
From Mankin and Warner 1997
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Some species histories
From Mankin and Warner 1997
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Changes in Land Cover
data compiled by Jeff Walk, Mike Ward, and Steve
Bailey 2007
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Changes in Illinois farms

• 253,000 farms in 1910 (no data on size)
• 172,000 farms on 31.1 million acres in 1957,
  average 181 acres/farm
• 73,000 farms on 27.5 million acres in 2004,
  average 377 acres/farm

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• Illinois now

about 81 farmland of some sort (about 50 of
land cover is row crops) lt10 forested lt0.01
prairie remainder urban, roads, etc.
Is restoration even a remote possibility?
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Wildlife habitat?
In agricultural regions, whats left to conserve?
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Forest islands
When habitat is lost, remaining areas are often
fragmented or shredded...
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Size of forest patches in east-central Illinois
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Survey for mammals
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Larger sites have more species
10 forest islands from 2 - 600 ha in area, 16
species of mammals
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What did we find?

• Almost half the species detected were ubiquitous
  (deer, white-footed mice, short-tailed shrews,
  raccoons, opossums)
• Large mammals use forest fragments as habitat
  patches within their home range and individuals
  move readily between them (deer, opossum,
  carnivores)
• For some species of small mammals, forest
  fragments are more like islands and movements
  between them are typically dispersal events
• Some smaller forest specialists most likely
  affected by fragmentation and isolation
• (chipmunks, flying squirrels, tree
  squirrels, woodland voles)

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Gray and fox squirrels (and Dan)
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Should I stay or should I go?
Translocated, radiocollared gray and fox
squirrels differed in how long it took to decide
to leave an unsuitable patch, and in how far they
moved around before settling down.
Gray squirrels also were able to survive and
reproduce in forest patches where they were
moved, whether fox squirrels were present or
removed.
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Squirrel conclusions
Both species still here, but their ecological
relationships have changed after human alteration
of the landscape.

• Fox squirrels are better dispersers across open
  habitats like agricultural regions
• Gray squirrels could survive and reproduce in
  many forest remnants if they could get to them
• Fox squirrels dont seem to exclude gray
  squirrels, and their colonization success is
  similar
• Dispersal dynamics seems like the most likely
  factor affecting the distribution of these species

also explains why flying squirrels and chipmunks
are now missing from many suitable places where
they occurred historically
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Open-country mammals badgers
Not your typical cornfield critter
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Badgers in Illinois

• Expanded their range, observed in all but a few
  southern counties
• Low population density
• Huge home ranges (males 45 km2, females 20
  km2) (3-8 and 2-3 km2 for badgers from Idaho,
  Utah, Wyoming)
• Large daily movements in spring and summer (1-2
  km for males)
• Need undisturbed habitat patches for prey and dens

Another species that is still here, but with
highly modified ecology and behavior
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Come-back stories
Almost 400 otters re-introduced in 1994-96, now
thriving
Bobcats recovered on their own after protection
under the ESA
Both species de-listed in Illinois in 2004. Thus,
habitat loss alone was not the factor affecting
these species.
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White-tailed deer have increased tremendously in
recent decades
Good for deer, bad for some plants!
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Similarly, raccoons have doubled in abundance
over the past few decades
Red squares in graph show sightings in annual
spotlight surveys
How could anyone not love these cute guys?
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Abundant raccoons, like abundant deer, often
cause conservation problems for other plants and
animals.

• Habitat generalists
• Like edges, heterogeneity
• Thrive in many disturbed habitats
• Omnivorous

Raccoons are a major predator onnests of ground
and shrub-nesting birds
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Coyotes and foxes dont get along
Thus, some species have actually increased in
highly modified landscapes, and the cause
problems due to over-abundance. Again, the
ecology of these systems have changed! Another
species that has increased greatly in the last
30 years is the coyote, and, like many
carnivores...
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Coyotes have increased, but red foxes have
declined in Illinois
1200
Coyotes r2 0.57, F2, 19 12.47, P lt 0.001
1000
800
Trapper harvest /pelt prices
600
Foxes r2 0.57, F1, 20 26.81, P lt 0.001
400
200
0
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
Year
Trend in Fox and Coyote Populations in Illinois
Data provided by Todd Gosselink and Tim Van Deelen
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Mortality factors for red foxes near Champaign,
Illinois
Foxes now live closer to humans, less common in
open country
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Big changes fast
Not only has the type of land cover changed, but
temporal changes in cover also are not natural!
How do mammals deal with this?
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Crop harvest and coyote survival
Especially younger ones move around a lot, and
have high mortality at this time.
Adults
Juveniles
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Coyote Mortality Causes
Harvest
Planting
Growing
Fallow
Survival of coyotes is related to harvest of
row-crops
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Illinois TE species

• Myotis grisescens (FE)
• Myotis sodalis (FE)
• Corynorhinus rafinesquii (SE)
• Myotis austroriparius (SE)
• Neotoma floridana (SE)
• Ochrotomys nutallii (ST) Oryzomys palustris (ST)

• Removed
• Lontra canadensis
• Lynx rufus
• Added in 2004
• Spermophilus franklinii (ST)
• Canis lupus (FE)!!!

So, if your goal is preservation of species
richness, or prevention of further
extinctions, your targets are TE species
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Indiana bat
eastern woodrat
golden mouse
Franklins ground squirrel
marsh rice rat
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But, as weve seen, even if species are still
present, their ecology and behavior is often
different than in some pristine condition

• Loss of critical habitat and direct conflicts
  with humans are the major causes of loss of
  mammalian species in Illinois so far
• Habitat fragmentation is not as critical for the
  preservation of most mammal species as habitat
  loss and direct conflicts with humans, but it
  still matters
• Fragmentation may affect the distribution,
  behavior, and abundance of some habitat
  specialists
• Changing ecological roles of mammals in highly
  disturbed landscapes can produce important
  cascading effects (e.g., problems caused by
  overabundance)

So again, what are you trying to restore or
conserve?
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What can we do?

• Science status, trends, causes, what can be done
• Politics economics, human impacts, what will be
  allowed or tried
• Aesthetics what we want our world to be like
• Ethics moral obligations, what is right

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The future of Illinois

• What should our goals be?
• Prevent further loss and decline?
• Restoration? Of what? To what?
• Ratcheting down expectations
• Overabundance
• Ecology and ecosystem services

How about developing a vision of the new world we
would like to inhabit? Look forward instead of
backward!
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What to restore?
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(No Transcript)
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All these were here back around 1800...
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Above Population estimates and trends for wolves
in Minnesota (left), Wisconsin (right, ovals),
Michigan (right, triangles) and the Wisconsin and
Michigan combined population (right, boxes).
Ready or not, wolves are returning on their own!
wolf survey data from Wisconsin
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Increase in number of packs in Wisconsin, and
their spread in distribution from 1979 to 2006.
At lease 3 young males known to have dispersed to
or through Illinois.
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about 40 of the entire net primary productivity
of the earth goes to support a single species,
which happens to be a mammal...
So, keystone mammal species, with whom will you
share your world? And what kind of world will you
have to share?

• control human population growth
• appreciate our neighbors
• learn to share, even when it means work or
  sacrifice

humans not longer just respond to the rest of
nature, we are at a point where we will direct
its fate, and our own in the process
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Ill show you dispersal!!!