The Mammals of Nova Scotia Project

~ Conservation and Research ~

Background:

Britain's Chief Scientist, David King, sounded a dramatic warning when, in 2004, he identified climate change as a greater risk to society than terrorism. At the Kyoto Climate Summit in 1997, dozens of eminent scientists issued a World Scientists' Call for Action. They stated 'Climate change will accelerate the appalling pace at which species are now being extirpated, especially in vulnerable ecosystems. One-fourth of the known species of mammals are threatened, and half of these may be gone within a decade. Possibly one-third of all species may be lost before the end of the next century.'

The recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report agreed that ‘the balance of scientific evidence suggests that there will be a significant harmful net impact on ecosystem services worldwide if global mean surface temperature increases more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels or at rates greater than 0.2ºC per decade.' It concluded that ‘by the end of the century, climate change and its impacts may be the dominant direct drivers of biodiversity loss and the change in ecosystem services globally.'

Why Nova Scotia?

The temperate ecosystems of Nova Scotia present a diverse and relatively complete mammalian fauna, contrasted with comparable areas of the temperate, industrialised world, where the biodiversity of ecosystems has been degraded for hundreds of years (Perrings et al., 1997). From a habitat standpoint, the most impoverished ecosystems are aligned with temperate-zone ecosystems in parts of the US, but particularly with densely populated European countries (Perrings et al., 1997). However, studying a diverse and relatively complete ecosystem is essential to establishing management strategies to conserve the last remnants of ecological communities in depauperate systems and measuring how human activities impact on ecosystems, endangered habitats and threatened species.
This is especially true when looking at the impacts of climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, 2001a/b). The geographical location of Nova Scotia places the province on the edge of the January 0ºC {frigid} isotherm, on the edge of the Gulf Stream current (Rahmstorf, 2005). Fluctuations in this current, over time, as climate conditions respond to changing oceanographic and atmospheric dynamics, will have profound effects in the province, placing NS on the global warming "frontline".

For example, the winter of 2005/6 has seen snow-free conditions during December and January over much of the province for the first time in decades, while spring thaw appears to come increasingly later. This delay in the seasons poses a number of problems to mammals like the snowshoe hare, which increasingly turn white before the first snow, but moult into their brown summer fur before the spring melt, thus being conspicuously obvious to predators in both seasons.

Hurricane season on the East coast of North America now starts earlier, with more storms per year, and extends further North, e.g. with Hurricane Juan hitting NS in Sept. 2003 causing extensive damage to Halifax and the surrounding forests. Similarly, rainfall is becoming spring biased, with the worst floods for over a century in spring 2005, causing millions of dollars of damage. As a consequence, there is evidence for a trend where dryer and hotter summer weather may affect the hydrology of the region in coming years.

Whitetail Deer fawn

Although global warming will have a particular impact on hibernating mammals, leading to changes in their population dynamics, distribution patterns, diet and behaviour (Root et al., 2003; Root, Liverman & Newman, in press), changing climatic conditions are likely to affect most species. For example, milder winter conditions favour the introduced white tailed deer (which have reached almost pestilential levels in parts of NS), over the native and threatened moose.

Whitetail Fawn

As a result, however, the Eastern coyote is re-colonising the province (Parker, 1995), benefiting from a greater availability of spring fauns, which might result in a potential step-change in the predator-prey balance. However, the newly arrived coyotes now compete with the established populations of foxes, bobcats and other smaller predators over their preferred prey species (deer mouse Peromyscus maniculatus , white-footed mouse Peromyscus leucopus , red-backed vole Clethryonomys gapperi , meadow vole Microtus pennsylvanicus and snowshoe hares Lepus americanus ), with a risk of replacing the smaller carnivores (Moehrenschlager & Moehrenschlager, 2001).

There are human dimensions to some of these changes, too, such as the spread of deer ticks ( Ixodes scapularis ) with the risk of tick borne borealiosis (Magnarelli & Anderson, 1988; Barker et al., 1992), in addition to intra-guild predation of coyotes on pet dogs and cats (Saltscapes, 2005). Thus, to assess the changing relations in this food web we will monitor the distribution and abundance of deer and moose, coyotes and competing predators, small mammals, snowshoe hares, and deer ticks. The cyclic patterns in population density of small mammal species will be related to predator abundance (Krebs et al., 2001).

Porcupine

In addition to climatological concerns, there are other anthropogenic impacts on wildlife of concern in the province, too. Hunting and the sustainability of hunting bags for some of the more prized furbearers is of considerable importance (Department of Natural Resources: Furbearers programme), not only for species conservation, but also for sustaining a derived economic and recreational value, underlining the socio-commercial importance of wilderness (Hammitt & Cole, 1998). Habitat management, from development and road building (habitat connectivity: Tischendorf & Fahrig, 2000), through to forestry and plantation sylviculture (e.g. logging, Christmas tree cultivation), all have measurable impacts on the mammal fauna.

For example, the porcupine Erithizon dorsatum is a habitual bark stripper in commercial plantations ( Eglitis & Hennon, 1997 ), and thus often considered as a pest species. In addition, porcupines feed Beaver damage

preferentially along road edges in spring and therefore often get run over. While currently an abundant species, porcupines are prone to population crashes as they produce only one offspring per year.

Beavers Castor canadensis often block culverts flooding adjacent land and roads prompting governmental removal operations. Forestry and road management strategies need to be established to minimise the human-wildlife conflict.

Objectives:

'Friendly' Raccoon

Many of these conservation and environmental goals directly represent Agenda 21 criteria under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 1993; e.g. Section 2.9: Atmosphere; 2.10: Management of resources; 2.11: Combating deforestation; 2.15: Conserving biological diversity). These criteria are of significant importance to this project and will underwrite our approach to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Citizen Science (CS).

In the UK, the integration of volunteers to work alongside professional scientists to undertake statistically robust surveys has been identified as a priority (Macdonald, Mace & Rushton, 1998), a view endorsed in Toms et al . (1999) and Macdonald & Tattersall (2001). In our UK mammal monitoring project we developed protocols for working with volunteers as ecological monitors that have now been adopted by the UK Government's Tracking Mammal Partnership (www.trackingmammals.org), on which we serve.
Tracking small mammals

Canada, however, does not currently have a national environmental monitoring system to provide a comprehensive picture of the state of natural resources, and conditions affecting environmental or human health for the whole country. This has brought about the need for an Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network (EMAN), under the umbrella of Environment Canada to better co-ordinate the individual monitoring projects throughout the country.

Racoon caught on camera

Yet, to-date, EMAN does not have Ecological Monitoring Protocols (EMP) for terrestrial mammals. Therefore, one objective of this Project is to establish EMPs for terrestrial mammals suitable for the use by amateur volunteers in Canada as a partner participating in the EMAN program. In collaboration with local Nova Scotian agencies, the project is producing EMP guidelines, which can respond to the pressures placed upon the environment by anthropogenic factors (hunting, logging, farming, urban expansion ~ resulting in habitat fragmentation) and climate change, which can guide conservation policy and environmental resource management (Root & Schneider, 1993). Particularly, the project is gathering survey information for initiatives on Biodiversity, Furbearers and Upland Game, Large Mammals, and Terrestrial Habitats, and contributing data to the DNR's Significant Wildlife Habitat and Species Database.

Volunteer participation is an essential part of this project.

References

Barker, I.K., Surgeoner, G.A., Artsob, H., McEwan, S.A., Elliot, S.A., Campbell, G.D. & Robinson, J.T. (1992). Distribution of the Lyme disease vector, Ixodes dammini (Acari: Ixodidae) and isolation of Borrelia burgdorferi in Ontario, Canada. In: Wildland Recreation. William E. Hammitt, David N. Cole eds. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN: 0471194611

Eglitis, A. & Hennon, P.E. (1997). Porcupine feeding damage in precommercially thinned conifer stands of central southeast Alaska. Western Journal of Applied Forestry, 12, 115-121.

Hammit, W.E & Cole, D.N (1998). Wildlife recreation: ecology and management. John Wiley & Sons. New York.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2001a). Climate Change 2001: the Science of Climate Change . Cambridge University Press, New York.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2001b). Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptations and Vulnerabilities. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Krebs, C. J., S. Boutin, & R. Boonstra. (2001). Vertebrate community dynamics in the Kluane boreal forest. Oxford University Press, New York.

Macdonald, D.W., Mace, G. & Rushton, S (1998). Proposals for future monitoring of British mammals. DETR & JNCC Pub, UK. ISBN 1~85112~073~4.

Macdonald, D.W. & Tattersall, F.H. (2001). Britain's mammals: The challenge for conservation . People's Trust for Endangered Species, London.

Magnarelli, L.A. & Anderson, J.F. (1988). Ticks and biting insects infected with the etiologic agent of Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi. Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 26: 1482–1486.

Moehrenschlager, A. & Moehrenschlager, C. (2001). Census of swift fox (Vulpes velox) in Canada and Northern Montana: 200-2001. Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, Fish & Wildlife Division, Alberta Species at Risk Report, Edmonton, AB, 24:21pp.

Parker, G. R. (1995).Eastern Coyote: The Story of its success. Nimbus Publishing Ltd. 254pp.

Perrings,C., Maler, K-G., Folke, C., Holling, C.S. & Jansson, B-O. (1997). Biodiversity Loss. Cambridge University Press, UK. ISBN 0521588669

Rahmstorf, S. (1995). Bifurcations of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation in response to changes in the hydrological cycle. Nature 378: 145–9.

Root, T.L.., Liverman, D. & Newman, C. (in press). Managing biodiversity in the light of climate change: current biological effects and future impacts. In: Hot Topics in Conservation. D.W. Macdonald, ed. Blackwells Scientific Publishing, Oxford, UK.

Root, T.L., Price, J.T., Hall, K.R., Schneider, S.H., Rosenzweig, C. & Pounds, J.A. (2003). Fingerprints of global warming on animals and plants. Nature 421: 57–60.

Root, T.L. & Schneider, S.H. (1993). Can large-scale climatic models be linked with multi-scaled ecological studies? Conservation Biology 7: 256–70.

Tischendorf, L. & Fahrig, L. (2000). How should we measure landscape connectivity? Landscape Ecology, 15: 633-641.

Toms, M.P., Siriwardena, G.M. & Greenwood, J.J.D. (1999). Developing a mammal monitoring programme for the UK. BTO Research Report No. 223. BTO, Thetford.

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