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The new golden age of wildlife in New England
- Finnucane 5y agoThis is us: https://xkcd.com/1871/ https://xkcd.com/1871/
- oneoff786 5y agoBoston does have a lot of good buns Randall also lives in MA I believe so yeah it’s also him
- nerdponx 5y agoThe Boston North Shore suburbs seem to have so many more bunnies than other similar areas in the northeast. Different climate? Lack of predators? Better food?
- 1970-01-01 5y agoThey're not supposed to be there. They were introduced a hundred years ago and are competing with the native cotton tail. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_cottontail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_cottontail
- nerdponx 5y agoInteresting, I assumed they were the native cottontail! Is there a reliable way to tell them apart? Edit: Wikipedia says that they are morphologically almost identical. Is the species distinction just a matter of genetics at this point? Normally I am bothered by invasive species, but somehow this doesn't seem to be such a problem, if you literally can't tell them apart without molecular analysis or looking at minor differences in their skulls. I am aware that similar situations have happened with house sparrows and starlings, where they have so successfully outcompeted the natives that you would think they were the native dominant species. At least starlings are easy to identify and can't be confused with anything native, but I don't think I could tell apart the different sparrows.
- sdenton4 5y agoSparrows are easier to differentiate by their vocalizations (mostly). Many have a species-distinct opening to their song. Different species of sparrow also occupy different habitat, and fill somewhat different ecological niches. I'm less familiar with rabbit vocalizations. :)
- lovich 5y agoRat extermination efforts have also removed a predator. When rats are abundant they will wipe out rabbits as they will enter their warrens and prey on the rabbit kits. I was in Somerville when they broke ground on the green line expansion which drove the rats that had been nesting in untouched government land for years into the neighborhood. Over the course of ~2 months we went from rabbits everywhere to them becoming locally extinct and having been replaced by rats
- jmclnx 5y agoWhere I am, there were lots of buns, plus song birds. But 3 neighbors got cats and they let them out all the time, after 6 months the bunnies and song birds are now all gone. I wish NE would do what I heard New Zealand is now doing, forcing people to keep their cats indoors. But nice cartoon, I do not know how I missed it, I read xkcd daily.
- rory 5y agoConversely, my neighborhood on Cape Cod is absolutely overrun by bunnies, to the point where we could probably use a few cats to keep things in balance. Things used to be more reasonable, but as more people started living here full time, it seems the foxes were pushed back out of the immediate neighborhood. Disturbingly, our dogs have a knack for finding nests and tossing around the baby bunnies, apparently without any intention to kill and eat them. They sound EXACTLY like squeak toys.
- pridkett 5y agoIt’s nice to see articles that help confirm some of my anecdotes. I live in Connecticut, and in the last year I’ve seen both a bear and a moose in my yard. And, it’s not like I live somewhere crazy rural - I live on a 0.3 acre lot near UCONN. My neighbors, many of whom have been here for 50 years, comment about how many more eagles, ospreys, fishers, fox, and deer there are today. However, there hasn’t been data to back up these anecdotes. For the most part, people enjoy it, but there’s a growing cluster of outdoor house cat owners who are dismayed when nature does its thing and Sir Fluffsalot meets his end after an encounter with a fox or eagle.
- is_true 5y agoCats shouldn't be allowed outside. My neighbor has a cat and it always shit on my lawn and if it find something soft it scratches
- uptime 5y agoNew Haven, CT has seen a bear in a public park, lots of foxes and turkeys and deer. I’ve heard of wildcats a little further out. Also agree that housecats need to stay indoors to stop killing birds. We built an enclosure for ours to be outside but not freeranging.
- foobarian 5y agoWe're right outside Boston, and this spring was the first time we've had an owl hooting pretty much every night since March.
- y-c-o-m-b 5y ago> there’s a growing cluster of outdoor house cat owners who are dismayed when nature does its thing and Sir Fluffsalot meets his end after an encounter with a fox or eagle. Here in Oregon - known for its thriving wildlife - the number 1 complaint on Nextdoor is "coyote sighting, bring in your pets!".
- terran57 5y ago> For the most part, people enjoy it, but there’s a growing cluster of outdoor house cat owners who are dismayed when nature does its thing and Sir Fluffsalot meets his end after an encounter with a fox or eagle. Outdoor cats do far more damage to wildlife populations than they receive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoFor animals, sure, things are pretty good. For plants things kinda suck. Lots of invasive species have taken root over the last 200yr and are holding down native species.
- jmclnx 5y agoI do not know why you were down-voted, but this is true. I those invasive vines I would see everywhere in the deep south are starting to appear here. Probably due to climate change. Never mind about the various water plants coking out native water plants.
- formerkrogemp 5y agoHydrilla verticellata, Lemna minor, and phragmites are coming for your cattails and Elodea :(. All of the poor fish will not survive.
- gwbas1c 5y agoAbout half of the trees in a New England forest are "invasive." They've been here so long someone like me doesn't even know what's natural and what isn't. Earthworms are also invasive in New England. They're everywhere, ubiquitous, and apparently the natural forest doesn't have them.
- kibwen 5y agoEarthworms would have once been native to New England, they were just killed by the advancing glaciers of the pleistocene epoch, which ended 12,000 years ago. They've been advancing northward slowly ever since (though other species were brought by colonists).
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y agoA cultural shift towards eating invasive species or both flora and fauna would really help. Use that human tendency to cause extirpation for good.
- BostonEnginerd 5y agoI hope that the insect and bird populations also start to recover. We don’t see that many bugs in the Boston area, and the cities spray mosquito fog every summer because of EEE. Our birds of prey in Eastern MA are being impacted by rat poison - they eat rats which have been poisoned. Certainly there are improvements, and we should celebrate those. But we should also recognize that there’s a way to go.
- kibwen 5y agoIn Boston I do see a fair number of birds of prey. Most memorably I was biking along the Charles in Cambridgeport and stopped to observe one (a falcon, maybe?) feasting on a squirrel not five feet from the path, unperturbed by the passers-by.
- fatnoah 5y agoI've seen red-tailed hawks, bald eagles, and peregrine falcons in downtown Boston. One of the coolest things I've seen was a hawk gliding down the bike path about 6 inches from the ground near a large playground, as it tried to sneak up on some squirrels. It did the nap of the earth flight for a couple hundred feet and then pounced on a squirrel. It was utterly unperturbed by the foot traffic around it. I also lived in a high-rise, and a peregrine falcon used a ledge outside of my son's bedroom window as a perch to launch attacks on pigeons and seagulls. And then there was that time a coyote was spotted in the North End: https://patch.com/massachusetts/charlestown/coyote-spotted-in-the-north-end-yesterday-b66cd1c7 https://patch.com/massachusetts/charlestown/coyote-spotted-i...
- thehappypm 5y agoAs someone who lives just outside of 95, I assure you, the bugs are doing just fine.
- mcdonje 5y agoHabitat is the major factor for wildlife populations. In 1900, Vermont was 30% forested after settlers cut down the forests for wood, farmland, and mining. Now, Vermont is over 70% forested. Tax structure is a large factor, but certainly not the only one. Unfortunately, the trend is reversing. Sprawl is a factor. Dense cities matter. https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/report-vermont-losing-1500-acres-forest-every-year https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/report-vermont-losing-1500-ac...
- helen___keller 5y agoIn a perfect world, we would have dense cities, we would have wild land that belongs to nature, and we would have farmland; and most land would fall into one of these classifications. While we might see "market share" fluctuate between these, a relatively stable population guarantees that we would not see a huge loss of wild land. In reality, every state, every city, and every town are in a de facto competition for tax dollars, and there is no central planning. So instead of adding dense housing to desirable Burlington, we clearcut forests or replace farmland to add low density housing 10 miles away in a subdivision near Shelburne. That family that was charmed to move to Vermont by the shops on Bank st will end up driving to the nearby big box store in Shelburne instead. The traffic will get worse, local farmland starts disappearing because suburban land is more valuable on a square foot basis, and once all the farms are gone the process begins again another 5-10 miles out. It's a vicious cycle, and it creates an ecosystem where most people can't even enjoy the city they came to love in the first place because they live miles and miles away (and good luck with traffic and parking)
- mcdonje 5y agoYes. Cities should build up instead of out. That means changing building codes and zoning laws to reduce restrictions on building heights. It also means investing in transportation that can move people around with less space, like light rail. Refusing to build up will lead to sprawl. Car-centric transportation infrastructure will lead to sprawl and traffic jams. Sprawl a bad scenario for everyone, including car lovers.
- 5y ago
- 1970-01-01 5y agoI don't like how they declare a golden age while native species are still endangered. It's like saying we're in a golden age of peace because we're fighting in less wars.
- frankbreetz 5y agoThis metaphor doesn't make sense to me. Isn't less war good for peace?
- 1970-01-01 5y agoIf you have much less credit card debt than before and still have student loans to pay, would you declare yourself financially golden? Probably not.
- ejb999 5y agobetter is still better.
- marstall 5y agoNB: the photographer, John Tlumacki, won a Pulitzer Prize for the images he captured in the moments after the Marathon bombings!
- gwbas1c 5y agoI live a little south of Boston. In the spring I often get large rafters (herds) of turkeys on my lawn. Sometimes there are 30 or more going through my neighborhood. My 1-year-old loves staring at the window and pointing at the toms (males) with their giant plumes. They look like peacocks when they spread their tail feathers out to attract a hen. I have to sit my daughter at the window while we eat breakfast because she just has to stare at them. Apparently turkeys prefer to mate in fields, so they like doing their thing on lawns. Good to know that at least something wile benefits from mine.
- Tr3nton 5y agoAny time a website greets me with a giant page-filling banner that I can't close, or they cut off the article after a few words in order to get me to sign up, I close the tab.
- mywacaday 5y agoYou can add to that the allow notifications dialog, has anybody ever clicked yes on one of those?
- simonsarris 5y agofyi in Chrome you can turn those off for all sites in the settings: chrome://settings/content/notifications
- jakedata 5y agoI live northwest of Boston, bordering a wildlife refuge. I refuse to have cameras inside my house but the woods around it are well instrumented. I have many video clips documenting everything from 'buns' to bobcats, coyotes, foxes, and of course deer. With regard to outdoor cats, they wouldn't last a fortnight around here. Too many predators now and I am thankful for that. As a result, the bird population borders on riotous in the spring. I expect that we will see a bear before too long. -edit- oh, but those ticks... I have a jumpsuit treated with permethrin for working out back.
- pcmaffey 5y agoNow time to reintroduce wolves. (Will also help with the tick epidemic.)
- shippintoboston 5y agoI also live in Boston and my poor dog got hounded by those ticks. I assume it wolves eating deers is what would help with that?
- forgotmypw17 5y agoFor peopled areas, chickens do an amazing job clearing the ticks. They mainly need somewhere to sleep safely at night and can take care of themselves in groups during the day.
- flint 5y agoUntill the hawk population recovers
- vibrio 5y agoOooh, the hawks are pretty well inside the 128. I routinely pick up squirrel and rabbit ‘chunks’ from on my yard. In the winter, I’ve see occasional red stains in the snow.
- harpersealtako 5y ago
- fryz 5y agoIt's cool to see some commentary regarding how hunters and federal policy helped (and hurt). The National Wild Turkey Foundation is solely responsible for the reintroduction of the turkey across most of the entire US. The entire purpose of the mission was to bring wild turkey populations up for hunting, and that hunters would be the best way to conserve and manage the population. An excellent podcast done by Steve Rinella (another hunter/conservationist, famous for his Meat Eater TV Show) about the topic: https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-104-turks https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-104-turks. From the episode: the way the NWTF and DOW people captured Wild Turkeys was to design a gun that could shoot webs, capture the turkeys, throw them into a van, and drive them out and drop them off in the woods in another state.
- larrik 5y agoHunters were the bulk of the original conversation/nature pushes historically, since they want lots of outdoor space and large animal populations. They bumped heads a bit with preservationists, but at the time most people felt nature was something to be conquered or done away with in the pursuit of progress (up until shockingly recently, frankly).
- nerdponx 5y agoJudging by the flat green lawns and lack of trees in most suburbs in New England, I get the impression that a lot of people still feel that way.
- AbrahamParangi 5y agoFlat lawns and few trees doesn't sound like any New England I'm familiar with.
- nerdponx 5y agoCertainly not in rural Maine or Vermont, but huge tracts of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut are like this.
- flyingfences 5y ago> funding the recovery of the game species through the sale of licenses, tags, and stamps, as well as a 1937 federal law that placed an 11 percent excise tax on hunting weapons, including guns, ammunition, and archery equipment. The Pittman-Robertson tax raises nearly a billion dollars a year for conservation and wildlife management.
- dhairya 5y agoCambridge and Boston are fantastic for spring migration birding and fall migration birding, especially Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. There's a resident barred owl and red tail that swoops in quite close when walking about. https://ebird.org/hotspot/L207391 https://ebird.org/hotspot/L207391 If you are taking a day hike in the Blue Hills, take main road before the hill summit to right for about a mile to the trailside museum. I discovered by accident and it's super cool as it has a public wildlife sanctuary attached with foxes, otters, eagles, snowy owls and other cool animals.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoYeah I wouldn't be proud of having all those deer given how large of a vector they are for ticks...
- kibwen 5y agoReducing deer populations doesn't actually reduce the spread of Lyme disease, unless you completely eradicate all deer. Ticks get Lyme from feeding on mice, the deer is just one part of their life cycle.
- francisofascii 5y agoI was visiting Boston this past weekend for the marathon. Saw two turkeys on separate days in the Lexington area near Minute Man park. I was really cool for a tourist like me and added to the Thanksgiving/colonial vibe.
- abakker 5y agoYes...but, the deer population is out of control and demand greater reintroduction of predators. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378112721006241 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03781... The issue is that deer effect forest regeneration, and there needs to be an increase in seedlings to keep the habitat healthy. Deer definitely effect oak trees, and so the forest makeup in places like CT is shifting to more maple and less oak. As a result it makes it harder for other species that depend on mast trees for food. The solution isn't for us to just exterminate deer, but we need to be careful about that population growing out of control.
- mcdonje 5y agoDeer like the edges of forests. Lots of wildlife departments purposely shape forests to have more edge areas in order to increase the deer population so they can sell more hunting licenses.
- ilamont 5y agoI grew up outside of Boston in the 70s and 80s. Never saw a turkey, coyote, or bald eagle. I thought the latter were extinct east of the Mississippi. The Charles River was still a polluted mess from years of neglect and old industrial use. There was a derelict watch factory in Waltham next to the river, former vehicle assembly works in Watertown and Cambridge, and all kinds of old industrial sites further upriver. There's one section of Waltham Mass still called "the bleachery" which was the site of a dye factory, which, of course, emptied right into the Charles up until the 1950s. I live a few miles from my childhood home now. The factories are gone, and the riverside has mostly been cleaned up. I see all of these animals plus many more including foxes and waterfowl. At night we hear great horned owls and the yipping of a local coyote pack. There are news stories about bears making it to within route 128 (the innermost ring road) and even the outer reaches of Cape Cod, which requires crossing a major bridge. https://www.wbur.org/news/2012/05/31/cape-cod-bear-twitter https://www.wbur.org/news/2012/05/31/cape-cod-bear-twitter
- jmalicki 5y ago"which requires crossing a major bridge." - The biologist quoted in your linked article believes the bear likely swam across the canal.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.ph/vR1G6 https://archive.ph/vR1G6
- dugmartin 5y agoIt is nice but I could do without the bear that demolished our compost bin in the backyard twice last week (I live in town in a small village in Western Massachusetts). Seeing bald eagles fly right over your head with a fish they just caught in the Deerfield River is pretty cool though.