Video: Loss of predators in Northern Hemisphere affecting ecosystem health

Monday, April 9, 2012

A survey done on the loss in the Northern Hemisphere of large predators, particularly wolves, concludes that current populations of moose, deer, and other large herbivores far exceed their historic levels and are contributing to disrupted ecosystems.

The research, published today by scientists from Oregon State University, examined 42 studies done over the past 50 years.

It found that the loss of major predators in forest ecosystems has allowed game animal populations to greatly increase, crippling the growth of young trees and reducing biodiversity. This also contributes to deforestation and results in less carbon sequestration, a potential concern with climate change.

"These issues do not just affect the United States and a few national parks," said William Ripple, an OSU professor of forestry and lead author of the study. "The data from Canada, Alaska, the Yukon, Northern Europe and Asia are all showing similar results. There's consistent evidence that large predators help keep populations of large herbivores in check, with positive effects on ecosystem health."

Densities of large mammalian herbivores were six times greater in areas without wolves, compared to those in which wolves were present, the researchers concluded. They also found that combinations of predators, such as wolves and bears, can create an important synergy for moderating the size of large herbivore populations.

"Wolves can provide food that bears scavenge, helping to maintain a healthy bear population," said Robert Beschta, a professor emeritus at OSU and co-author of the study. "The bears then often prey on young moose, deer or elk ? in Yellowstone more young elk calves are killed by bears than by wolves, coyotes and cougars combined."

In Europe, the coexistence of wolves with lynx also resulted in lower deer densities than when wolves existed alone.

In recent years, OSU researchers have helped lead efforts to understand how major predators help to reduce herbivore population levels, improve ecosystem function and even change how herbivores behave when they feel threatened by predation ? an important aspect they call the "ecology of fear."

"In systems where large predators remain, they appear to have a major role in sustaining the diversity and productivity of native plant communities, thus maintaining healthy ecosystems," said Beschta. "When the role of major predators is more fully appreciated, it may allow managers to reconsider some of their assumptions about the management of wildlife."

In Idaho and Montana, hundreds of wolves are now being killed in an attempt to reduce ranching conflicts and increase game herd levels.

The new analysis makes clear that the potential beneficial ecosystem effects of large predators is far more pervasive, over much larger areas, than has often been appreciated.

It points out how large predators can help maintain native plant communities by keeping large herbivore densities in check, allow small trees to survive and grow, reduce stream bank erosion, and contribute to the health of forests, streams, fisheries and other wildlife.

It also concludes that human hunting, due to its limited duration and impact, is not effective in preventing hyper-abundant densities of large herbivores. This is partly "because hunting by humans is often not functionally equivalent to predation by large, wide-ranging carnivores such as wolves," the researchers wrote in their report.

"More studies are necessary to understand how many wolves are needed in managed ecosystems," Ripple said. "It is likely that wolves need to be maintained at sufficient densities before we see their resulting effects on ecosystems."

The research was published online today in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, a professional journal.

"The preservation or recovery of large predators may represent an important conservation need for helping to maintain the resiliency of northern forest ecosystems," the researchers concluded, "especially in the face of a rapidly changing climate."

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Oregon State University: http://www.orst.edu

Thanks to Oregon State University for this article.

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How Bo and other 'first dogs' contribute to White House Easter Egg Roll

Bo dons bunny ears for a White House notice about the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday. But he's not the first presidential pooch to wear special headgear for the occasion. ??

When you?re the first dog, indignity comes with the territory. That was our thought when we saw the Obama family?s Portuguese water dog, Bo, in a video that advertises the 2012 White House Easter Egg Roll.?

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Bo is wearing pink bunny ears in the spot. At one point there?s a squawk and he pretends to, um, produce an Easter egg. ?There will be games,? says the closing tag line.

It?s cute. But here?s our point: Presidential pets are often used as props. Bo is not the first White House dog forced to wear funny headgear for an Easter image.?

No, Barney wasn?t the first, either. Remember Barney, George W. Bush?s Scottish terrier? ?Barney Cam? was the pioneering series of videos that mixed White House pets with real administration officials in scripted entertainment. Barney never had to don fake ears. But he did have to suffer a headdress made from roses in the classic 2007 film ?My Barney Valentine.? The plot had him deliver the flowers to his valentine, consort Miss Beazley.

Then there was King Timahoe, Richard Nixon?s Irish setter. ?Christmas at the White House,? a 1971 CBS News special, showcased Timahoe ?romping on the sitting room floor? with his owner, according to a program review. Nixon?s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, had a different view of this relationship. In his diary he wrote that Timahoe was so nervous around Nixon he wouldn?t go near him even when tempted by dog treats.?

But to identify the first canines to serve as administration Easter overlords, we?ll have to?set the way-back machine?to the early 1900s. Calvin Coolidge had lots of pets, including a raccoon he walked on a leash, and at one point his collie Prudence Prim wore a bonnet for the Easter Egg Roll. A photo of this event is at Washington?s Newseum. The collie looks unembarrassed. Coolidge looks dour.

And in 1923, Warren Harding?s Laddie Boy served as Easter Egg Roll host in the Harding family?s absence. A handsome Airedale terrier, Laddie Boy was the first presidential pet to receive extensive news coverage. After Harding?s death in office, newsboys around the country donated 19,000 pennies for a?memorial. These coins were melted down and cast into a life-size Laddie Boy sculpture, today owned by the Smithsonian.

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Rays beat Yankees despite overturned HR call

By FRED GOODALL

AP Baseball Writer

Associated Press Sports

updated 10:49 p.m. ET April 7, 2012

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - Tampa Bay's offseason effort to bolster an inconsistent offense is already producing results.

Luke Scott and Carlos Pena were the Rays' two biggest acquisitions this winter, and the duo has driven in nine runs to help the Rays open the season with a pair of victories over the New York Yankees.

"That's what we talked about. We needed or wanted to see some significant power adjustment," manager Joe Maddon said Saturday night after Scott had three hits and drove in three runs in his debut as Tampa Bay's designated hitter, pacing an 8-6 win before a sellout crowd of 34,078 at Tropicana Field.

"Power is also driving in runs," Maddon added. "It's not just hitting home runs. These guys have done a nice job."

The Yankees trimmed a six-run deficit to two in the ninth, even getting Alex Rodriguez to plate as the potential tying run. But Fernando Rodney came out of the bullpen to retire A-Rod on a first-pitch grounder to a perfectly positioned second baseman playing on the left of second base.

Left-hander David Price (1-0) allowed two runs and five hits over 6 1-3 innings to win for the first time since Aug. 28. The two-time All-Star walked four and struck out five.

The Rays will go for a three-game sweep of the defending AL East champions Sunday, sending 2011 AL rookie of the year Jeremy Hellickson to the mound against right-hander Phil Hughes.

The Yankees aren't concerned by their slow start.

"We're two games in right now. It hasn't really gone the way we would have liked for it to. But, hey, that's the name of the game," New York's Nick Swisher said. "We just got to keep battling, keep fighting, stick together as a team because we're going to do a lot of special things."

Matt Joyce hit a solo homer off Hiroki Kuroda (0-1) for the Rays, and added a two-run single against Clay Rapada in the seventh after umpires used instant replay to overturn what initially was ruled a two-run homer for Evan Longoria.

Pena had a RBI single for Tampa Bay, building on his three-hit, five-RBI performance from Friday's 7-6 season-opening victory.

The slugger, signed this winter along with Scott to add punch to the lineup, hit a grand slam off CC Sabathia and a game-winning RBI single in the ninth off Mariano Rivera in the opener.

"We added some big guys," Joyce said of Scott and Pena. "It really makes everybody around them better."

Longoria's fly to the wall in right field was changed to a ground-rule double. Replays showed a fan wearing a Yankees jersey reached over the railing and caught the ball, which would not have carried into the stands, with a glove. The reversal left runners on second and third, and Joyce followed with his two-run single to make it 8-2.

New York scored on RBI singles by Andruw Jones and Eduardo Nunez in the fourth. Raul Ibanez's ninth-inning sacrifice fly and Swisher's three-run homer off Joel Peralta trimmed a six-run Yankees deficit to 8-6. Robinson Cano drew a walk from Jake McGee, but Rodriguez grounded out.

A 19-game winner two years ago when he finished second in Cy Young Award balloting, Price drooped to a 12-13 with a 3.49 ERA last season. He went 0-2 over his last six starts of 2011 - the longest winless streak of his career - and before Saturday night had gone eight consecutive starts at home since beating Boston on July 15.

Kuroda, signed as a free agent after spending the past four seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, allowed six runs and eight hits over 5 2-3 innings in his Yankees debut.

"Overall I wasn't really sharp. I didn't exactly command my pitches," Kuroda said through a translator. "I didn't have one pitch I could rely on today. It was really disappointing."

Improving an offense that suffered from a lack of power was Tampa Bay's biggest priority this offseason.

Although Scott is coming a year in which he batted .220 with nine homers and 22 RBIs before undergoing season-ending surgery in July to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder, he hit .269 and averaged 25 home runs per year from 2008-10 with the Orioles. Pena is the Rays' all-time home run leader and is back with the team after being away a year with the Chicago Cubs.

Scott, who drew an intentional walk as a pinch hitter in his Tampa Bay debut on opening day, lined a bases-loaded single to center in his first official at-bat for his new team. Pena's opening-day grand slam came in his first at-bat since rejoining the Rays, and his second-inning RBI single off Kuroda made it 3-0 Saturday.

Joyce, moved by Maddon into the cleanup spot after going 0 for 4 with four strikeouts as the No. 9 hitter on Friday, hit his solo homer for 4-0 lead in the third.

"I was a little surprised to be hitting there after what happened yesterday," Joyce said, smiling. "But Joe has a way of picking right guy for the right spots."

NOTES: Rays CF B.J. Upton, who's on the 15-day disabled list because of lower back soreness, is expected to begin a minor league rehab stint on Monday. ... Yankees SS Derek Jeter was the DH, and manager Joe Girardi said A-Rod might DH or get a day off Sunday. Girardi's desire to keep his veteran players fresh during the season and the artificial turf at Tropicana Field were factors in the manager's thinking. ... New York second-place hitter Curtis Granderson and No. 6 Swisher switched spots against Price. Girardi said the change might be used on a regular basis when the opposition starts a left-hander.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Russian notebooks with Stalin on cover cause stir

(AP) ? School notebooks with a portrait of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin on the cover have been causing a controversy in Russia since they went on sale this week.

While human rights activists and historians have warned that the notebooks wrongly instill a positive image of Stalin in children's minds, eager customers have been snapping them up in Moscow bookstores.

In response to numerous pleas to take action, Education Minister Andrei Fursenko said that he disapproves of the notebooks, but has no legal way to stop their publication or sale.

Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1953, is a controversial figure in Russia today. Although he was responsible for the deaths of millions of his own citizens, Stalin is still highly regarded for having led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II and overseeing its rise as an industrial and military superpower.

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"When children see this magnificent cover with handsome mustachioed Stalin, they perceive him as a hero," Nikolai Svanidze, a television journalist and historian, said in a statement posted on the website of the government's Public Chamber.

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"If we do a series of great Russians, should we strike the 20th century from the list altogether?" Belan asked.

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Russian textbooks also have taken a more positive view of Stalin since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. Putin, who has been prime minister for four years and returns to the presidency in May, has worked to restore Russians' pride in their country and its history as a great power.

A large Moscow bookstore that specializes in textbooks ran out of the Stalin notebooks by Wednesday afternoon and was awaiting a new shipment.

The Stalin notebooks "sell extremely well," said Yelena Shurukova, an employee at Pedagogical Books. Most are bought by adults, she said.

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Richard (RJ) Eskow: Texas Tornadoes: Climate Change - and Climate Deniers - in the Lone Star State

Here's a headline we're tempted to write - or rather, one that we would be tempted to write if we weren't so nice, or so dedicated to avoiding oversimplification:

"Climate-Change Deniers Struck by Climate Change in Texas Tornado Outbreak."

This week two seemingly unrelated but very connected events took place: In the first, freak tornadoes struck the Dallas area today with unexpected ferocity, causing many experts to revisit the issue of whether tornadoes should be included in the list of extreme weather caused by climate change.

In the second, the hard-hit area's Member of Congress bragged about cutting funds for - predicting storms and reducing their impact.

If you think that's bad - and it is - last year Mitt Romney did the Representative one better: He said it would be "immoral" to spend Federal money to help victims of national disasters like the one that just struck Texas.

Immoral.

A Spell of Bad Weather

Even as presumptive GOP nominee Romney was talking like that last year, fourteen weather disasters caused a billion dollars or more in damage. And yet House Republicans insisted on cutting funds for studying the climate, predicting violent storms, early storm warnings, and assistance in helping communities minimize damage and loss of life. They cut $140 billion from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Commission, the agency which monitors the climate and helps minimize damage and loss of life during storms, after trying to cut much more than that.

Last year's GOP budget also slashed more than $500 million from the budget for weather prediction satellites. And they tried to cut funding for FEMA, the agency that helps people get through disasters like these, by more than half the previous year's amount (which would have left FEMA with less than one-third of its 2010 budget).

This year's House budget includes more of the same. In fact, economists who analyzed it have concluded that it in a few years there will be virtually no funds for any government activity except a growing military budget and spending that's mandated by law.

Good Folks, Not-So-Good Politics

That's what the citizens of Lexington, Texas, voted for when they elected Republican Michael McCaul to represent them in Congress. Now, we don't mean to be harsh toward the area's citizens, especially those in Lexington, which was one of Dallas' hardest-hit suburbs this week. They're undoubtedly extremely nice folks down in Lexington, and we're grateful that neither they nor anybody else in the Dallas area got hurt by these storms.

In fact, I've read a little about the town and I'd like to go there. I'd like to see the Saturday cattle auction and grab a bite at Snow's Bar-B-Q (which is top-rated by Texas Monthly and was called "the best barbecue in the world" by no less picky a bunch of strangers than the writers at The New Yorker.)

The problem isn't the good people of Lexington. The problem is that they haven't been given the information they need to make better political decisions. They may have seen the statement by Rep. McCaul, for example:

"The House Republican budget tackles the financial challenges that we face as a country head on. This budget consolidates, reforms, and lowers corporate and individual tax rates to just two brackets, reduces spending, and reforms entitlements.??By exercising discipline in the ways that we spend and taking every opportunity to give job creators the freedom that they need to grow and be competitive in the global market, we can save future generations from bankruptcy and preserve vital programs ..."

Rep. McCaul added without apparent irony that "The budget crisis was a foreseen national disaster."

But the citizens of Lexington probably haven't been told what that budget would do to them: to their retirement security, their ability to get health care in their senior years - or their safety during times of extreme weather.

Truth or Consequences

As for climate change, we know that it has already caused extreme changes, and there's compelling evidence that it has helped drive tens of millions of people into hunger and poverty.

Can climate change cause tornadoes like the ones that struck Texas this week? Until last year many experts were cautious. But the drastic increase in tornado activity last year and this year has many of them prepare to make bolder statements than they've done in the past. A leading scientist commented that "what we can say with confidence is that heavy and extreme precipitation events often associated with thunderstorms and convection are increasing and have been linked to human-induced changes in atmospheric composition."

The topic clearly needs more research - research that there will be less money to conduct because of Republicans like Romney and McCaul.

Money Talks

And that's exactly the point. Corporate-funded front groups like ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) support politicians like Romney and McCaul precisely so that Americans can't learn about climate change caused by their products. ALEC-backed forces are fighting the Environmental Protection Agency (created by that well-known lefty Richard Nixon) and pushing to overturn carbon-emission protocols.

In its latest move, ALEC is sponsoring bills that force schools to teach children false science about climate change by requiring teachers to use phony textbooks to teach "both sides" of the issue - the one backed by scientific evidence, and the one which serves the financial interests of ALEC member corporations.

ALEC's contributors , and the politicians that serve them, are literally willing to stop us from saving the planet - and to let people die - in order to protect their own corporate bottom line. (ALEC also backs "stand your ground" laws like the one that resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin. We discussed ALEC, Trayvon, and "stand your ground" on The Breakdown this weekend with Rashad Robinson, Executive Director for Color of Change.)

A Damn Shame

Were the citizens of the greater Dallas area struck by climate change this week? The most reasonable answer at this point is "We don't know for sure" - although the evidence seems to be mounting. But here's what we do know: We know that it will be a lot harder to discover the truth if Republicans like Mitt Romney and Mark McCaul have their way.

And we know that people like the good citizens of Lexington will be left more defenseless than ever against the possible loss of property - or worse - caused by violent storms of every kind, whatever their cause.

That would be a real shame. I love meeting good people like the folks in Lexington, Texas - and I love good barbecue, too.

Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and the host of The Breakdown, broadcast Saturdays nights from 7-9 pm on WeAct Radio, AM 1480 in Washington DC.

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