2012Fwnsummeredition Webv1.Pdf

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Summer 2012 SP OTLIGHT Celebrating the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program 10 Changing Lives 20 Frog Girl 22 Dan Ashe’s First Year 38 what’s inside Departments From the Director / 1 News / 2 Field Journal / 24 Fish Tales / 26 Around the Service / 28 Our People / 35 Features SPOTLIGHT Celebrating the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program / 10 H 75 years of wildlife conservation GER SMIT and partnership success O by KIM BETTON FLICKR / R Restore & Enhance / 18 25th anniversary of the Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program by MATTHEW FILSINGER and JOE MILMOE TT O PHILP KEITH Life Changing / 20 GRAM Career Discovery Intern Program O introduces diverse freshmen and sophomores to nature, the Service VERY INTERN PR O by JENNIFER LAPIS CAREER DISC One Leap / 22 CORRECTION: The photo on page 22 Student makes a difference for her school, of the Winter-Spring edition was community and endangered frogs not a monarch butterfly but a viceroy butterfly. by NICOLE OSBORN AUGH / USFWS B RA RO JIM ON THE COVER: Dinner is served. Forster’s terns at Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge. BILL LYNCH / FLICKR / CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL LICENSE from the director A Conservation Legacy Made to Last ore than ever before, we are faced with The Service, too, is changing. Mconservation challenges that defy traditional ways of doing things. The world is changing too By now you have heard of Strategic Habitat quickly for us to succeed if we do not change with it. Conservation, the framework upon which our conservation efforts will be built. SHC is a field-based These massive changes are illustrated by looking at approach for making management decisions about at Rowan Gould, our Deputy Director, and Taylor where and how to deliver conservation most Hannah, a newly hired SCEP student. efficiently to achieve specific biological outcomes. It requires us to make strategic decisions about our Rowan and Taylor represent two ends of the Fish actions, and constantly reassess and improve our and Wildlife Service’s employment spectrum. approaches. Rowan started his career 36 years ago as a research microbiologist at the Seattle National Research A practical step in the SHC process is to determine Center. Taylor’s first job for the Service is bat what species we need to save. With almost 1,400 conservation work at St. Catherine Creek National threatened and endangered species nationwide, we Wildlife Refuge with the Gulf Coastal Plains and can no longer manage individual recovery. But by Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC). using a process known as surrogate species selection, we can identify a species as an indicator of landscape Rowan and Taylor are about 40 years apart in age and habitat and system conditions and redouble our experience, but that’s not the biggest professional efforts to conserve it. Those efforts should help many difference. When Rowan began his career, 4 billion other species in that habitat if we have chosen the people were on the planet with 200 million in the surrogate species correctly. United States. As Taylor begins her professional journey, 7 billion people inhabit the Earth, more than Taylor’s first job for the Service, working with 300 million in the United States. the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks LCC, is related to SHC. LCCs are the most effective means of working Rowan rode in on an American environmental together with partners to provide landscape-scale movement that was less than a decade old. In the science that informs conservation of sustainable 1960s, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring and a wildlife populations, as well as land, water and massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, led to a cultural resources. new public awareness of human impacts on our fragile ecosystems. The nation created or strengthened If Taylor stays with the Service and works as long as numerous environmental laws in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Rowan has, there will be 9 billion people on the planet including the Endangered Species Act and Clean and nearly 450 million in the United States when she Water Act; and launched the first Earth Day celebrates her 36th year of public service. For us to celebration and the EPA. We carried our activities out give Taylor and her generation of employees the through programs working largely independently. support and the tools they need, we must be willing to embrace a bold conservation approach that takes Taylor begins her career at the dawning of an into account both present and trending pressures environmental awareness of a different kind. She is on America’s fish and wildlife resources. SHC is faced with the 21st-century reality that the threats to that approach. the future of fish, wildlife, habitats and people are now of such magnitude it will take more than laws and I won’t lie: Change is unsettling. Many of you are the cooperative interaction of Service programs and concerned about how your job or program will be conservation organizations to turn the situation affected, and certainly we don’t know all the answers around. With a 50 percent increase in America’s or even all the questions. population and a 75 percent increase in the world’s population, the competition between people and I promise you two things, though: Together, we will wildlife for land, water and food has never been find the answers. And together, we will create a new greater. Add to that a rapidly changing climate and conservation legacy that’s made to last. it is clear that the game has changed. Summer 2012 Fish & Wildlife News / 1 news Wildlife Without Borders Supports Carbon Sequestration in Sumatra Canada-U.S.-Mexico Trilateral Committee he forests of Berbak National The Zoological Society of London Berbak. Money raised from Fifty agencies gather TPark in Sumatra are in trouble. (ZSL) is working to conserve carbon credits will be used to to address shared wildlife Covering more than 600,000 acres this critical habitat, with support address the root causes of conservation challenges in Indonesia, these forests and from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife deforestation, making this the peat swamps are home to the Service’s Wildlife Without first self-sustaining national park critically endangered Sumatran Borders-Rhinoceros and Tiger in Indonesia. Termed the Berbak limate change topped the tiger. Along with their fellow Conservation Fund. The Carbon Value ™ Initiative, this Cagenda when the United forest inhabitants, these Zoological Society has chosen project aims to integrate States played host to this year’s carnivores face severe threats to create financial incentives biodiversity conservation and gathering of the Trilateral from deforestation. From 1990 to that link healthy forests to the poverty reduction with generation Committee for Wildlife and 2000, an average of almost 10,000 emerging carbon market. of CO2e emission reductions. Ecosystem Conservation and acres of their forest home were Management in Santa Fe, cut down each year. The carbon market offers a way So far, the initiative has New Mexico, May 14–18. for countries or companies to established an emissions These tropical forest ecosystems meet emission targets. A country baseline, modeled future The 17th annual gathering capture and store, or sequester, or company with excess carbon deforestation and assessed the brought together experts from huge amounts of carbon from the emissions can buy credits to future climate benefits of the the United States, Mexico and atmosphere. The vegetation and cover the extra from a country or project. Although much work Canada to share data and ideas soil in Berbak National Park alone company that is below its target. remains before annual returns and deepen partnerships. sequester up to 70 million tons of from carbon credits are CO2 equivalent (CO2e) every “What other mechanism can, generated, this approach to “Building a strong level of trust year—about the annual carbon at present, make forests full of conservation will improve the between our nations is the most footprint of 7 million people in the tigers worth more to governments futures of the wildlife, people important aspect of the forum,” developed world. standing up than they are and ecosystems of Berbak said Herb Raffaele, the chief of chopped down?” asks Sarah National Park. the International Conservation Christie, a Rhinoceros and Tiger Division of the U.S. Fish and A Sumatran tiger made an appearance Conservation Fund grantee “Indonesia has the world’s third Wildlife Service. “It is only with at the Save Vanishing Species event in and manager of the Zoological highest carbon emissions. Most such trust that meaningful September at the Smithsonian National Society of London project in of this is due to deforestation, and cooperation can ever be Zoological Park. most of that is due to the burning achieved.” or draining of peat swamps. USFWS Enabling Indonesia to conserve, This year, representatives from E / O rather than destroy, this carbon U.S. federal and state agencies, ILM M E without compromising economic non-governmental organizations O J development is a vital step in academics, and for the first time, combating climate change,” tribal nations, met with senior says Christie. Wildlife Without Mexican officials and managers Borders supports innovative from five Mexican natural efforts like this that build the will resource agencies and a group for conservation from the ground, of Canadian experts—altogether or peat swamp, up. about 100 people representing 50 agencies and organizations. KIMMY KRAEER, Division of International Conservation, Law enforcement officials used Headquarters the gathering to share training techniques for covert computer investigations and e-commerce. 2 / Fish & Wildlife News Summer 2012 news DOB Date Name with the Service to try to move Don EdwardsAddress National Wildlife Refuge Reels some into their former ranges in the southwest.

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