Emerging Threats to Wildlife

Funding and the capacity to address the emerging threats to wild species are inexorably connected. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Action Plan (WAP) states, “Decades of inadequate funding have prevented the states from implementing the proven, cost effective strategies needed to keep fish and wildlife healthy.”

 In fact, the health of fish and wildlife is in serious jeopardy:

1. It’s happening globally. Called the “sixth mass extinction,” the population of wild animals has halved since 1970. The last time so many species disappeared was when the dinosaurs got wiped out.

2. It’s happening in the U.S. “As many as one-third of America’s wildlife species are at increased risk of extinction, according to a report by the National Wildlife Federation, the American Fisheries Society and the Wildlife Society. Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation says "America’s wildlife are in crisis … “Fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and invertebrates are all losing ground. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to prevent these species from vanishing from the earth.” The president of the Wildlife Society agrees, "Wildlife in America need help. Species are increasingly at risk in all regions of the country and across all categories of wildlife."

3. It’s happening in Vermont. Vermont’s WAP reports that 976 Vermont species qualified as “Species of Greatest Conservation Need” (SGCN) as of 2015. This classification also includes species that are classified as threatened or endangered. Several years ago, the WAP concluded, ”A significant number of wildlife species need help because of threats such as habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation; invasive exotic species; diseases; and climate change.”

 One part of the dilemma is that historically a lot of conservation money has bypassed non-game species. The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies report states, “Yet what is hidden from most Americans is another impending fish and wildlife crisis. For every game species that is thriving, hundreds of nongame species are in decline….” 

Non-game species vastly outnumber game species: “Today, over 12,000 species of fish and wildlife have been designated as species of greatest conservation need. ….In the coming years, thousands of species could be added to the list of federal threatened and endangered species. 

What Challenges Do Wildlife Face?

The following is a whirlwind summary of major challenges to Vermont wildlife going forward. We are quoting at some length from the WAP and the FWD.

Strategic Plan in order to give some scope and depth to the under-recognized plight of wildlife.

Climate change

What makes the issue of climate change particularly intractable is the breadth of interconnections between these climate-driven impacts and numerous non-climate stressors such as habitat fragmentation, habitat degradation, and pollution – which have been the focus of conservation efforts for some time. Given the magnitude of climate impacts, rates of increasing variability, and the synergy between climate and non-climate stressors on wildlife and the habitats upon which they depend, there is an urgent need to prepare for and respond to these impacts (Stein, B. et al. 2014).  

Habitat loss and fragmentation

The integrity of various natural communities and habitats (e.g., floodplain forests, sandplains, clayplains and large forest blocks) are at risk because of fragmentation, isolation, and degradation due to continuing land use changes (e.g. roads, subdivisions, invasion of non-native species and climate change). 

Impacts of roads and transportation systems

The number of vehicle miles traveled by Vermont residents is growing at seven times the rate of population growth, according to information from the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) (1999). Transportation systems can cause numerous problems for SGCN including: vehicle-wildlife collisions; reducing animal and fish passage, thus limiting habitat availability and isolating populations; vehicle emissions of pollutants such as ozone and greenhouse gases; and facilitating the spread of an exotic, invasive species into otherwise healthy areas.

Pollution

The introduction of exotic materials from point and non-point sources can significantly impact SGCN, particularly aquatic species. Pollutants and sediments include sands and silts, chemicals and toxins; excess nutrients from farm and municipal sewage plants; garbage and other solid waste; radioactive materials; road salt; excessive noise; excessive heat; and light pollution that disturbs animals and disrupts migration patterns. Sediments can be a problem for SGCN through their physical presence alone. For example, soils can wash into a stream from a construction site and smother fish eggs and other aquatic species living in the spaces between rocks and gravel streambed. The history of polluted runoff—rainwater and snowmelt draining from parking lots, roads and streets, logging roads, farm fields and croplands, and lawns—carrying sediments and nutrients, including phosphorus, into streams and rivers and directly into Lake Champlain is stimulating excessive growth of algae which is bad for lake species and people.

Invasive species

The introduction and spread of nuisance exotic and native species (plants and animals) may lead to the elimination of native wildlife populations, threaten long-term stability of habitats and even lead to extirpation by out-competing a native species, displacing its food source or altering a key process or function of a habitat. Invasive exotic species in Vermont include Eurasian watermilfoil, purple loosestrife, common buckthorn, Japanese knotweed, Morrow’s honeysuckle, goutweed, black swallow-wort, hemlock wooly adelgid and zebra mussels.

Disease

Shortly after the first Wildlife Action Plans were submitted, White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) was discovered in New York and then Vermont in 2008 followed quickly by several other states. In a few short years WNS nearly wiped-out several bat populations in the Northeast.

Subsequently, Snake Fungal Disease was discovered killing Rattlesnakes in Vermont and elsewhere, and Heterosporis appeared in Yellow Perch in Lake Champlain. Additionally, diseases not yet found in Vermont are potential threats. They include: Chronic Wasting Disease (deer), Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia (fishes), Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (salamanders) and Avian Influenza (birds). The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department has steadily increased surveillance and is devoting additional resources to the threats posed by these and other diseases.

It should be noted that the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department unquestionably takes these threats seriously. Its latest WAP gives particular and in depth attention to climate change. And the agency for some time has been a leader in underscoring and addressing the problem of habitat loss. Wildlife disease and pollution have only recently been getting the full attention of the larger scientific community.

These are all complex issues and their unpredictability makes it hard to know the directions they will take and the responses that will be appropriate. One thing that’s clear is that DFW needs the funding to tackle this job if we want our wildlife around in the years ahead.