Kohala Waterfalls Adventure & Hawaii Wildlife Center Friday, November 11, 2011

Kohala Waterfalls Adventure & Hawaii Wildlife Center  Friday, November 11, 2011

 

As part of the conference field trip activities, we set out for a field trip to the north side of the Big Island passing through the quaint plantation towns of Hawi and Kapaau, site of the life-size statue of King Kamehameha I. At the end of the road we passed through a locked gate onto private property, onto a bumpy, but short 6K off-road drive in their 6WD Pinzgauer on an old cane road.

Out of the Pinzgauer, we saw the now defunct plantation and its 23 mile construction of the Kohala Ditch Trail with an aqueduct on two bridges that used to bring much needed water to the sugar cane fields. We walked along the 1.5 mile loop trail with our fabulous naturalist, Eugene, who showed us the guava and strawberry guava groves and the native and invasive species in the area.  He showed us a former taro farming site just off the path.

 

Taro Farm and floating fern

It was such an interesting walk and the views in the area were fabulous.  The piece de resistance was swimming under one of the seven falling waters of a waterfall. The water temperature was a cool 70 degrees, but the experience was exhilarating!

 

swimming in one of seven falls

After an amazing lunch catered by a deli in Hawi, we went onto the Hawaii Wildlife Centre which is scheduled to open on Saturday, November 19, 2011 after a huge effort by Linda Elliot the Founder, President and Center Director of the HAWAI‘I WILDLIFE CENTER.  The Hawaii Wildlife Centre is an animal rehabilitation center located in Kapaau created for the rehabilitation of sick, injured and contaminated native wildlife.   This center is dedicated to the conservation and recovery of Hawaii’s native wildlife through hands-on treatment, research, training, science education and cultural programs.   The center was so impressive with its state-of-the-art structure and building concept, with not only the physical features, but also the dedication of many volunteers and donations played a key in getting this centre off the ground.

 

Linda Elliot, Founder of the Wildlife Center

For BCIT students, the Instructor, Tom Saare will share a link to the site: http://www.hawaiiwildlifecenter.org and feature it as a “website of the week” in a future email particularly around the time when BCIT Instructor, Doug Ransome gives the students a session on species and habitats at risk. This website offers a good example of what the Hawaii Wildlife Centre is doing for endangered species such as bringing attention to birds at risk in Hawaii through their top 10 endangered bird list. There might also be some great interpretive/environmental education ideas found on the site as well.

Wednesday, November 9 last day of the conference

Still writing on my iPhone so some writing features will not be as beautiful as they could be.

The first presentation was on telemetry implants in Sturgeon. The outcomes were 36% of the fish lost the transmitter. This may have been related to the stitching material called Vicryl. The recommendations are to find out why there is such a high expulsion rate.

The next session I attended was on ethnic and gender diversity, working group. The TWS goal is to diversify and broaden participation in this profession. Another goal is to make people comfortable taking on leadership positions. Many of the attendees at the meeting had come because of a professional development travel grant. Other scholarships are available. I’m email survey will be coming out called “what’s out there” to get more ideas about how women and minorities got involved in the wildlife field. It was agreed that starting people early like getting kids and their families to understand the field’s importance and its credibility as a reputable field of employment.

The next session I went to was about how the American Forest Service uses Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFRs) as ecological sentinel sites for environmental change. I wondered if EFRs are the same thing as Woodlots in our province. It was interesting to learn that these dedicated facilities have up to 100 years of data that help to observe trends. There are a number of future questions we can get from the presenter, Peter Stein (pstein@fs.fed.us). They are planning a new strategic business plan to find out what the requirements to make it happen will be. IAwebsite on the topic will be coming.

The next session was also from the US forest service. It was about using landscape-based population models to inform bird conservation. Presenter Thomas Bonott showed a lot of math equations on how they got to their recommendations and conclusions. They will use the models for conservation planning in the following four categories
1 Afforestation
2 habitat restoration
3 protected and public lands
4 private lands.
The conclusion was that habitat conservation could have both good and bad consequences, but no single approach is effective for all species.

I also enjoyed the two evening networking events: Women and wildlife and Canadians and friends. I meant students who were once B CIT students and also are UBC student and other networking people for future contacts.

I learned a lot at this conference and I made a lot of contacts. The thing I am going to learn more about next time is biometrics. Next year’s conference will be in Portland Oregon so I hope I can inspire our students to apply for grants to attend this worthwhile conference. It was announced in the Canadians and friends reception sponsored by Lotek Monitoring that every 10 years the conference will be held in a Canadian city. In 2015 the conference will be in Winnipeg during grouse hunting season.

I thank BCIT for sponsoring me because of the Wildlife Society’s professional and personal benefits.

On Friday I’m attending a sponsored event that is field trip to a waterfall. This will be a wonderful ending to a very productive week. I hope to post a beautiful picture of the event.
Thank you for reading.

Hawaiian wildlife & Conservation in the 21st century

My computer short circuited so am typing on my phone. Needless to say this report will be short.

William Alta gave us an overview of topics pertinent to the Hawaiian Islands: biographical history, biodiversity, human civilization, cultural significance and management, habitat changes.
He made a couple of interesting statements: that wettest spot on earth is on Kauai, there are fish found here that are nowhere else on earth, and we must weave aboriginals into our management plans.
The conservation threats are 1. habitats 2. Habitat degradation 3. climate change 4. Marine debris (the Japanese tsunami will bring its debris here as soon as 2013 harming the environment here) 5. increased resources demand (the population is increasing by 12%) 6. Extinction. This is the extinction capital of the world at 386 species.
SOLUTIONS
His idea is to partner with agencies, local governments, universities and the community.

In the meantime he said there must be control on fencing for ungulates, invasive species, fire, degraded habitat, sediment loads, marine debris, and invasive fish and algae.

Aila wisely stated, “Now that we know, we have to prepare.” the challenges lie with funding, zoning, private lands and connecting kids to the land. Organizations like the Nature Conservancy, and Land Trust can be potential helpers; there must be public support to be part of the solution.

After that George Wallace spoke of Hawaii’s unique birds there importance. Some of the issues are that ungulates cause habitat degradation, the guava Plant prevents nesting, mosquitoes spread diseases and fencing is needed for ungulate Control even though they are being managed for long-term hunting.

Threat reduction can be predator-proof fences to stop dogs, feral cats and mice, trapping, poison ( of rats). Management costs will be annually and one-time costs over the next 10 years.

Parts of the solutions can be applied to other locations.

Tuesday, November, 7, 2011

Turtle Lagoon available for lunch-hour swims

Today I saw a variety of topics, publishers displays, photo contest and an upcoming Women in Wildlife Networking session. Here are some summaries:

Working Group Topic: Human Dimension, Conservation Education, and Conservation Policy

When International Agendas Collide with Local Realities: Diffusing Multi-scalar Conflict in Wildlife Conservation.

The speaker, Michael J. Liles spoke about sea turtle conservation in El Salvador. The dilemma was the protection of eggs as it creates an economy for families, in poverty, who collect the eggs from found nests (for $12-15), and the conservationists who collect them and donate them to hatcheries to protect them and ensure their reintroduction into nature. It is illegal to take the eggs, but enforcement is not happening. The call to engage local communities into the decision making will have conservation outcomes that are sustainable long term. The call, also, for an internationally-framed management strategy is necessary.

Forests, Wildlife, and carbon sequestration: policy review and modeling of tradeoffs among land use change scenarios. Chadwick D. Rittenhouse.

The researcher did a document analysis of key words “Forest-Relevant Strategies” AND Wildlife Impacts to find out what mitigation strategies states are using to provide, improve, increase or protect wildlife habitat. Studies showed results under “Forest-loss prevention, Afforestation, and Sustainable Management”. Rittenhouse described three land cover change scenarios:

1. A Static Forest with no change,
2. a Dynamic Forest with some changes to the land class (like private land, forest land, grassland, urband lands and water)
3. All Forest or Forest Utopia where all lands are changed to woodlands.

In the state of Wisconsin, there could be Land Cover Change by 2051 in the Afforestation category (where the there is an abandonment of pasture lands), and naturally, the urban sections and water areas are not capable of change, but change could be made to the other Land Cover areas. There were statistics on Carbon Sequestration (at 100 Teragrams TgC), but I need to find out more about this area.

Another presentation I saw was about the Scandinavian Model of Wildlife Management ( Scott Brainerd) where they have rescued many animals from near extinction (like the American Model of Wildlife Management). In Norway, they set laws regulated to protect species and set limits to the hunt of them (1825-1899). An interesting different in the moose hunt in the Scandinavian model was that landowners own all their own harvested game, and the sale of meat is allowed. Landowners can rent out hunting opportunities to non-community members. Amazing numbers that are working in Norway are as follows:
number of hunters 260,000
number of moose 335,000
number of shot moose 117,000.

The moose management set from the modern Hunting Act of the 50s and late 60s is working in this country. There is a supplemental income for landowners and a long history of public participation in hunting. Approximately 5% of the population are hunters who police themselves and do not participate in trophy hunting. Moosemeat goes for $10 per pound and can be sold to restaurants. In 2005 there was a legislation banning lead ammunition because of the impacts on human consumption. The U.S., it was discussed needs to look into this regulation as some of their meat is donated to “food pantries”, but the high levels of lead is poisoning the population to which it is given.

Throughout the day, there are hallways of a poster sessions and the photography work of students. This was a wonderful networking opportunity, and an amazing way to beautiful the hallways.

sample 8X10 photo contest category

Working Group Topic Wind Energy and Wildlife.

Presentation topic: The current state of wind and wildlife policy – developing clean energy while protecting wildlife by Georg E. Wallace.

The trend is to make the wind industry practices legal, but multi-state plans are needed. (NEPA). There will be guidelines printed by the end of this year. Pressure is being put on Fish and Wildlife to offer permits quickly and should be made to 30 years (the life of a wind energy facility) instead of 5 years because of so many wind facilities starting up.

Terrestrial wildlife conservation and renewable energy development in the desert southwest United States. (Jeff Lovich)

This presenter was the only one who is speaking of solar power amongst the wind energy presenters in this working group. He did an analysis of peer-mediated journals and found that the literature is extremely deficient for wind energy and non-volant wildlife, all but absent for solar energy and any wildlife. Here are the questions:

1. Is renewable energy, in fact, in line with wildlife conservation?
2. What is the cumulative effect of the building of such facilities? Need there be a green strip, for example?
3. How can we design impact studies?

Debate: We need to get energy from somewhere, so when will the carbon neutral footprint be reached should be considered when building renewable energy facilities.

A presentation I attended spoke of telemetry devices. I spoke with one of the display people who told me of the three different kinds: VHF (at 200$ each), GPS (at $1000 each) and Sattelite (at $3000 each not including the satellite monitoring fees). Here is a picture from his display:

Telemetry Display: bracelets for frogs!

The presenter reported that telemetry devices show eagle travel pattern, and before wind turbines are placed, the patterns need to be studied so that the eagles are not running into them. Wind energy development considerations are crucial under the following acts:
-Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA
-Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA)
-Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The final presentation I attended involved Implications for Millennial in the Wildlife Workplace and fell under the working group of Engaging, Educating, and equipping Future Biologists and Voters. I learned from Kelly Millenbah that when working with Millenials, it will be important to

1. Give constant feedback (to help make decisions)
2. Give very specific mentoring
3. Watch out for “helicopter” and “bulldozer” parents.
4. Clearly articulate expectations in the workplace.
5. Allow for immediate and constant feedback (millennial have an inflated sense of self)
6. Prepare for more stressed out students who come from high pressure lives.
7. Soft cheating can be seen, so set expectations as to what that is.
8. Allow for team work as the generation is very involve faced in social networks, but not face to face contexts. The group expects to work in teams and not give up their technology.
9. Expect them to work well in interdisciplinary work and work for consensus.
10. Give jobs that are pertinent and relevant right now.
11. Keep the institute’s goals clear so that your Millennial will continue to respect the organization.

Millenbah offered her upcoming published paper:

Millenbah, Kelly. Education in the era of Millennials and implications for future fishers professionals and conservations. millenba@msu.edu

Question: What kind of feedback works? Give feedback consistently. Give specifics and guidance.

——-

Finally, the exhibit I thought was really interesting was the “paintball-like tagging product that helps identify particular animals, determ them, or use scent to keep them away. Water soluble colours, yet effective.

Here’s the display picture:

Nelson Paint Company, Kingsford, MI

Today’s Plenary Panel

 

medicine for a wounded world

Again, an original technique (or one I’ve never seen any conference do was the 2.5 hour panel format. The plenary was introduced by Dr. Douglas Johnson, last year’s Aldo Leopold Award Winner (The Aldo Leopold Foundation builds on the legacy of Aldo Leopold, the father of wildlife management, furthering discussion of conservation ethics, land health, ecosystem management and restoration. Quoting Aldo Leopold, he advised to never lose your connection with nature.  Then he introduced a selected list of notable individuals in the field.

Four speakers were invited to speak to the topic of past, present, and future in conservation of wildlife and their habitats.   

1. Simon Roosevelt, great, great grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt (an original conservationist during the 1800s and created the concept of a national park).
2. Catherine Semcer, Representative of the Sierra Club (a public charity that provides financial support for environmental projects
3. Michael Hutchins, CEO of The Wildlife Society
4. David Johns (a Canadian from the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB)).

Each person spoke on how their organizations were founded with very interesting facts on the strengths of people to make changes for wildlife.  The early efforts  gave rise to a sophisticated model of science-based stewardship model called the Model of Wildlife Conservation.

The current issues covered things like climate change and increasing populations and all agreed on the recommendations to

            1. Educate key decision makers regarding funding for wildlife management and conservation.

            2. Help to create the next generation (70% of people are slated to retire in the next 10 years) of wildlife professionals.

            3. Educate the public and key decision makers about wildlife management in a world dominated by human influences (eg. invasive species (plants and animals including feral cats and pigs and spotted owls), and the human-species conflict.  The perceptions of the public are changing.  A no-kill, hands-off perspective doesn’t work.  Natural balance needs to be taught.

            4. Expand strategic partnerships (create coalitions with groups like sporting, environmentalist, and scientists) to counter the powerful forces that are against wildlife conservation.  Organizations must cooperate more than ever. 

Organizations must find common ground.  In order to do this they must

1. Identify the organizations and invite the principles for further dialogue. – build trust.
2. Commit to shared use of public lands. 
3. Dedicate to seeking common ground.  Acceptance of the concept of cooperation.
4. Listen to scientists who are from where change happens.  They are just reminded to keep the language at a level that everyone can understand.
5. Protect animals with clean energy technologies.  Use carbon sequestration. 

Leopold was quoted as saying:  The privilege of possessing the earth is to be able to pass it on; the unknown future, the nature of which is not given to us.

How can we make these changes?   By

-stopping and listening to each other
-engaging each other with open eyes
-opening our hands and offering how can we help

Traditionally the steps we have taken to heal the earth have often been fiercely opposed.  However, people now agree.  Johns says people have changed the world and we still can, too. (Think of what happened recently in Egypt). Roosevelt challenged us that if what he’d said makes sense to us, we must take this message back to our organizations.

 

Newcomers Welcome – Sat. Nov. 5

Networking event

The first event I attended was the Networking event.  It was a very appreciated part to start the conference the first evening.  It is an interesting conference organization (in a good way)for me and much different than AACE the conference I have been attending over the last few years.  What’s similar is that they had the newcomers event, but a difference was that there wasn’t a welcome speaker who described how the conference is set up, instead, there are networking tables set up in a conference room.  I had to do a little bit of sleuthing to find out how the event worked.

This conference of over 1300 attendees, is organized into “working groups”.  And it makes sense.  People with things in common in their field meet in sessions and symposia to network and exchange ideas and research.  For the newcomers event, Working Group tables were set up with a mentor greeting people who came to their table.  I followed my guiding principle for being here and visited a few groups. 

I first spoke with the group that puts tags on animals to watch their movement patterns; it’s called “telemetry”.  One grad student described his job of tagging bats in Texas and following their paths.  Next I moved over to the Invasive Species working group and learned that not only plants are invasive, but introduced animals could be as well.  I’ve heard this at home like when people bring non-native fish and dump them into lakes.  The people I met here were talking about the whole ecosystem of this Hawaiian island and how many to most of the plants and animals are introduced.  The group is hosting a special working group meeting and discussion on Wednesday.

The last group I visited with was the “Human Dimensions” working group, which seems to be a lot about social sciences.  The woman there also told me about the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) which is another big international organization in the field.  I am very interested to hearing more on this group and will attend two of their sessions at 1pm and 3:50 during their all-day symposia on Tuesday.

By the time I got there, two tables that were unstaffed were the Renewable Energy working group and the Forestry in Wildlife working group.  I will search them out in the conference booklet and try to attend some of their key sessions this week.  I also picked up a flyer for the Ethnic and Gender Diversity working group, and I am curious to know more about this group as well.

Networking

The other significant difference that I notice at this conference is that there is a huge support for students and “young people” in the field.  It was explained to me that there are many professionals in the field who are retiring and, at the same time, many people who are entering the field.  As a result there is almost a big “hole” in the middle ages category.  The support for students coming into the field by mentoring them, helping with resume workshops etc. is very practical and something I appreciate about this conference.

It’s very clever how this conference tries to help people network so many ways, and since I haven’t run into very many Canadians, I will attend the Canadian Members and Friends networking session and perhaps the Women in Wildlife one as well.

I look forward to the plenary on Sunday and learning more!

Welcome Fish and Wildlife Students

This blog is designed to help students network, research, and access information in the Fish and Wildlife field.  As a Communication Instructor, my goal is to help gather material that will be useful for students to use in their practice activities in their Communication Course and their studies in their content courses as well.  I hope to make book titles and other links available to students as well.  When I attend conferences in the field, I will post things that I learn as they relate to your studies.  Read on!

 

Conference Categories

I’ve begun selecting categories in which I will attend sessions.  Categories in which I am interested are as follows:

Adapting Wildlife and Habitat Management to Climate Change
The Conservation of Wildlife and their Habitats
Wildlife and Roads in Urban Ecosystems
Wind Energy and Wildlife
Conservation of Communities, Ecosystems, and Landscapes
Hawaiian Wildlife and Conservation in the 21st Century
A Voyage of Wildlife Diseases around the Pacific Ocean
TWS Invasive Species
Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology  

And I felt that I should stretch myself and learn something about birds.  The category is

Population Dynamics of Birds

I will report back as I know more!  Aloha.

Photo source: http://www.tonynicol.com/waf/index.shtml