FWS Removes New England Cottontail as Candidate for Endangered Species List On Friday, September 11, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced that the New England cottontail does not need to be placed on the federal endangered species list because its numbers are rising and its habitat is increasing thanks to "epic collaboration" among conservation partners. Those partners include states, the federal government, scientists, private landowners, companies, land trusts, municipalities, tribal members and NGOs. The Wildlife Management Institute helped coordinate conservation efforts and administered grants for young forest restoration in the region.... Read The Article
WMI Landscapes Great Plains LCC Focuses on Playa Conservation A team led by Dr. Zhenghong Tang with the University of Nebraska ? Lincoln recently completed a 2-year project for the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GP LCC) designed to improve understanding of the status and function of playas in the Rainwater Basin of south central Nebraska. The project compared predicted location of playas based on hydric soil maps, the National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) and LiDAR-derived digital elevation models with actual inundated areas in the spring from 2004 to 2012. Although each method has limitations, all three confirm that landscape scale... Read The Article
USDA Announces State Public Access and Habitat Incentive Grants The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced that it will invest $20 million to partner with 15 state fish and wildlife agencies under the Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program (VPA-HIP), according to the Wildlife Management Institute. The grants, funded through the Farm Bill, support state agency efforts to improve and increase wildlife habitat and public access for hunting, fishing and other recreational opportunities on privately-owned lands. "Our partnerships with state governments will help them work with interested landowners to enhance... Read The Article
USGS Cooperative Research Unit Corner Horseshoe Crab Harvest and Red Knot Conservation Since 2010, the US Geological Survey (USGS) Alabama Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, with expertise in shorebird ecology and structured decision making/adaptive management, has been supporting state and federal efforts to manage horseshoe crab harvest in a sustainable manner. The unit has developed predictive models that link red knot populations to horseshoe crabs, formalizing and quantifying the hypothesized relationship. Every spring, on the beaches of Delaware Bay, one of nature's great marvels occurs as shorebirds from across the Western Hemisphere converge on... Read The Article
