Celebrating a milestone in conservation – and the law that made it possible

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (left) stands with Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, landowner Rick Abend, Director Dan Ashe and Senator Ben Cardin at the announcement to take the Delmarva fox squirrel off the endangered species list. Photo from DOI.

On Friday, we celebrated the recovery of one of the critters protected on our country’s first endangered species list. Today we’re sharing a post about this milestone written by the director of our agency, Dan Ashe, for the Council on Environmental Quality blog.

Just a few weeks ago, I was at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History remembering an unfortunately dark moment in conservation history – exactly a century before, on September 1, 1914, the last known passenger pigeon died in a Cincinnati zoo. You can see “Martha,” as they called her, on display at the museum – stuffed, mounted and behind glass.

And now today, we mark an historic milestone of a far different sort on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. At Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and I were privileged to announce that thanks to concerted conservation efforts by area landowners and other partners, the Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel has recovered from the brink of extinction.

Dr. Carol Bocetti of the California University of Pennsylvania holds a Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel. The squirrel is in a fabric cone that is used to handle the captured animals during a fox squirrel population survey. Credit: USFWS/Ryan Hagerty

So why did the passenger pigeon become extinct, while the equally common fox squirrel now thrives across much of its historic range?

The answer is simple. Unlike the passenger pigeon, the Delmarva fox squirrel was protected and aided in its recovery by the Endangered Species Act.

In fact, the fox squirrel was one of 67 species listed under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1967 and later extended protection by the federal law that succeeded it, the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

The successful recovery of the Delmarva fox squirrel is a testament to the dramatic benefits provided by the ESA. Prior to its protection, the species experienced a dramatic decline as the forests it depended on in the Delmarva Peninsula were cleared for agriculture and development. Its range was reduced by more than 90 percent, and in the mid-1960s there was a very real possibility that it would vanish entirely.

Secretary Sally Jewell, Senator Ben Cardin and Director Dan Ashe review photos of Delmarva fox squirrels captured by a trail camera on Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Trail cameras are one of the methods that has been used to monitor the species over the years. Photo from DOI.

Yet here we are, less than 50 years later, with the Delmarva fox squirrel thriving again. And it wouldn’t have happened without the tools and protections provided by the ESA.  Delistings like this one also remind how the Endangered Species Act can catalyze improvmements to natural habitats that promote ecosystem and community resilience in the face of a changing climate, and how it can be an incentive for community investment by improving regulatory predictability and providing certainty for people and businesses.

The ESA has been an unheralded gift to the nation — an expression of our deep desire to conserve biodiversity, the health of the habitat that sustains wildlife and humans alike, and our willingness to work for it.  For more than 40 years, the law has been remarkably successful, preventing the extinction of more than 99 percent of the species listed as threatened or endangered since 1973. Its protections have helped the Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners reverse the death spiral of hundreds of species, while recovering dozens more. We can take enormous pride in the recovery of species such as the bald eagle, American alligator, Steller sea lion and other species against astounding odds – just like the Delmarva Fox Squirrel today.

If we want a world with polar bears, condors, and salmon, then we have to make deliberate choices to find a place for them. But as the Delmarva fox squirrel shows, it can be done.

Did you miss our infographic on the squirrel’s recovery? By Alexa Marcigliano/USFWS

If you could step back in time and prevent the extinction of the passenger pigeon, would you?  If you answered yes, you have a historic chance to prevent many other equally senseless tragedies; to change the course of history by taking a stand, here and now in favor of species conservation.

The challenges we face today are daunting, but no more so than those faced by our ancestors a century ago. Like them, we need to have the courage to envision something better and grander than the status quo. Thankfully, we have the Endangered Species Act to help us bring people together across the landscape to make our shared vision of healthy, sustainable ecosystems for both wildlife and people a reality.

Click here for a universally accessible version of this awesome graphic.

 

 

Not your average squirrel

We are excited to announce the recovery of the Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel, placed on the first endangered species list in 1967!

More than 80 percent of this squirrel’s home is on private land and Delmarva landowners and residents played a major role in the recovery of this species. The species has thrived and continues to expand across the working landscapes of the Peninsula as private landowners continue with routine timber harvest and farming with sufficient mature forest nearby to support the squirrels.

Check out this awesome infographic that tells the story of the Delmarva fox squirrel’s recovery

Infographic created by Alexa Marcigliano/USFWS

The Endangered Species Act has been enormously successful in conserving imperiled wildlife, preventing the extinction of more than 99 percent of the species listed as threatened or endangered since 1973. The Delmarva fox squirrel will follow 27 species that have been delisted due to recovery, including the bald eagle, American alligator, and peregrine falcon. Meanwhile, 30 species have been down-listed from endangered to threatened.

The recovery of the Delmarva fox squirrel demonstrates how the Endangered Species Act can be an effective tool to protect and recover imperiled wildlife from the brink of extinction, especially when we work in partnership with states, tribes, conservation groups, private landowners, and other stakeholders.

Click here for a universally accessible version of the graphic

 

Introducing our 2013 Recovery Champs!

Where farmland meets the forest on the Delmarva Peninsula, the fox squirrel that calls this habitat home might be heading for delisting. In Delaware, Virginia and Maryland, the Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel’s status as endangered is up for review.

The species has made an unprecedented recovery in recent years, with no small thanks to the Delmarva fox squirrel recovery team. That’s why our agency has chosen them as one of our Recovery Champions of 2013! This award recognizes the important work of the Service’s staff and its partners that are advancing the conservation efforts of endangered or threatened fish, wildlife and plants.

Dr. Cherry Keller and her 12-person recovery team have worked on the Delmarva fox squirrel’s recovery since the ’90s.

“The neat thing about the team is that it’s a diverse group with many different talents and perspectives,” says Cherry. “There are people with management skills, people with research skills, people in tune with the public — diversity was the key to our success.”

Now, after years of monitoring and eleven successful translocations of fox squirrels, the efforts of the team have resulted in 20,000 fox squirrels covering 28 percent of its historic range — up from 10 percent when it was first listed in 1964. The collaborative effort improved monitoring techniques, developed habitat suitability models and assessed population connectivity.

A translocation involves moving individuals from a part of their range where the species occurs abundantly to restart a population in a part of their historic range that’s now unoccupied. How many individual squirrels does it take? “24,” says Keller, “this species does well with translocations. Eleven out of the 16 were successful, which is a great rate.”

Fun fact: “Delmarva” is a portmanteau of the states that make up the peninsula — Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia (abbreviated as VA).

Translocations wouldn’t work if the newly reoccupied areas couldn’t provide decent habitat. Associate professor at California University of Pennsylvania and researcher on the recovery team, Carol Bocetti, Ph. D., began investigating the timber industry’s effect on Delmarva Peninsula in 1998, researching whether alterative practices — such as leaving islands of forest behind after a clear-cut harvest — could benefit the fox squirrel.

“There had been some work done by a masters student that shows, intuitively, that when you remove the forest, the squirrels go away,” Carol says. A study was conducted for several years on the timber industry’s effect on the habitat, but Carol had concerns that it wasn’t a long enough time to properly survey the fox squirrel’s habitat. Her research showed that a decade after the harvest, the growth of a dense understory heavily favors the common gray squirrel.

And that’s exactly what happened. “About ten years post-harvest, the Delmarva fox squirrel’s population dropped precipitously,” says Carol.

Carol put her students to work, assisting her in collecting data and telemetry in following up after the study — much of which was used later by the recovery team.

“[The recovery effort] continues to be a collaboration — probably one reason I am so excited to win the award is because it’s for a group that’s been committed to the recovery and sustainability of the species for so many years,” says Carol. “There’s a tremendous fulfillment on being a part of that effort. It’s not only the science, but the people that kept me coming back.”

In 2012, a review led by Cherry found that the species is now sufficiently abundant and able to withstand future threats – aka, it no longer faces extinction and is ready to be removed from the endangered species list. Looking forward, the team is supporting the Service to develop a proposal to remove the species from the list, and is also working with the agency on a post-delisting monitoring plan.

So let’s hear it for some of our 2013 recovery champs, the Delmarva fox squirrel recovery team: Cherry Keller, Carol Bocetti, Ruth Boettcher, Dan Rider, Ray Dueser, Bill Giese, Kevin Holcomb, Glenn Therres, Holly Niederriter, Matt Whitbeck, Michael A. Steele and Karen Terwilliger. Thanks for all your important work!

Biologists Susi von Oettingen and Anne Hecht presented the Recovery Champion award to Dr. Scott Melvin on May 30. Credit: USFWS

We’re also honoring another recovery champion from the Northeast—Dr. Scott Melvin, a founding member of the threatened piping plover recovery team. Scott has led research and management that has increased the number of the birds nesting in Massachusetts from 160 pairs to 660 pairs—more than a four-fold growth in 23 years!

Check out this rundown of some of the incredible work he’s accomplished in honor of the plover: conducted population viability and modeling studies, monitored the status of the species, coordinated with landowners and stakeholders to protect the plover from predators and the adverse effects of recreation on nesting beaches, and the overseen graduate studies investigating the life history and population biology of the plover.

In response to the award, Scott stated, “Throughout much of its range, progress towards recovery of Atlantic coast piping plovers has occurred when research findings and field observations made over the past 30 years are effectively applied to state and federal regulatory tools. In Massachusetts, the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife has benefitted from strong administrative support from our fish and wildlife board, our director, and our Nongame Advisory Committee. Repeatedly, they have supported staff biologists and their recommendations.

State and federal agencies have benefitted from strong communication and coordination by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Finally, progress to date could not have occurred without the efforts of literally hundreds of biologists and beach managers following well established protocols and policies, and applying these to management in the field.”

Congrats and thank you, Scott!