Midseason Recap - Reflecting on Rare Species

In this episode of 'Rarefied,' host Meredith Meeker revisits the past 14 episodes to reflect on the conservation efforts for some endangered and imperiled species across North America. Starting with the central theme of habitat loss and delving into issues like diseases, pests, recreation, and climate change, the episode intertwines powerful success stories and actionable steps for conservation. Guests such as Andrea Gielens, Nina Hunt, and William Halliday provide insights on species like the Oregon Spotted Frog, Black Ash, and beluga whales. Community science and individual actions are highlighted as vital tools in making conservation a tangible effort. The episode wraps up with fascinating fun facts, from the unique adaptations of the Spotted Gar to the lifecycle of the rusty patch bumblebee, to stir interest and hope for the future.

00:00 Introduction: A Legacy in Every Stream and Tree

00:23 Welcome to Rarefied: Exploring Imperiled Species

00:46 Revisiting Past Episodes: Fascinating Species and Common Threats

01:25 Understanding Species Extinction and Habitat Loss

03:25 Impact of Diseases and Pests on Wildlife

04:51 Recreation and Its Effects on Wildlife

06:35 Climate Change: Uncertain Future for Many Species

07:49 Repairing Our Relationship with Nature

8:27 Sustainable Recreation

09:41 Community Science: Making a Difference Together

15:13 Reducing your Footprint

18:06 Success Stories: Conservation Efforts Paying Off

24:02 Fun Facts and Final Thoughts

29:35 Conclusion: Every Species Has a Story

Transcript

Theme Song 0:00

In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy. Let's listen close, let's take a stand, to keep the wild across the land. In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy.

Meredith 0:23

Welcome you found us. Let the adventure begin. This is rarefied the podcast where we're going to learn to love some of our rarest and most imperiled species. I'm your host Meredith Meer, and on this week's episode, we are spanning the continent from the Arctic Ocean to the wetlands of the West Coast, all the way east to the Appalachian Mountains. We are revisiting the past 14 episodes. We have featured some fascinating species with some absolutely brilliant guests, and I want to take the opportunity to look back on the rooted flying Furred and Finn friends we've already met. Plus, let's zoom out a little, because a lot of these rare and imperiled species have a lot of threats and solutions in common. We'll also take a moment to celebrate some of the successes these species have already seen to help refill our cup. And remember, there is still a lot of hope. And because I know you're all proud nerds, we'll wrap this up with some fun facts. So let's start off with why do we even have species disappearing? There has always been some natural background extinction levels, but we are way past that. We are living in what a lot of people call the sixth mass extinction. The last major, and perhaps most famous mass extinction was the dinosaurs, which wiped out almost 75% of all species. According to the American Museum of Natural History. As far as I know, no giant comet has hit the earth. So what is causing species to disappear? A major common theme across almost every episode has been habitat loss. It's not hard to understand why losing habitat can cause species to disappear, but when I spoke to Andrea Gillens about the Oregon Spotted Frog, she really showed how these aren't just small scale instances, and this loss of habitat is a direct response to how we modify and use our landscape.

Andrea 2:26

So it was a huge lake that if you know the geography of the area, kind of stretches from Abbotsford to Chilliwack, which is about 30, 000 acres, and this would have been a massive lake. And it was drained in the 1920s because it was very shallow and very relatively easy to drain it was drained for farmland as a lot of really shallow water, wetlands and marshes were so that pushed the animals into like a fringe or marginal habitat. So now in that area, they reside in a few sloughs and some actual agricultural drainage ditches. So we don't actually have. Any Oregon spotted frog habitat left in Canada. Everything is modified. They live there, but it's not kind of what we would expected to have seen them in historically. All of the species I have featured have experienced habitat loss to varying extents, but that leaves them vulnerable to pests, infections, and diseases. One of the most famous instances is the little brown bat and white nose syndrome

Christina 3:29

the students. Invasive infectious disease showed up in North America that had not been previously described. by a fungus that infects the bats while they're hibernating. And it causes a disease called White Nose Syndrome, because the fungus forms this fuzzy white growth on the bats noses. And within only a few years, little brown bats, which were one of the most common mammal species in North America, had suddenly crashed, and in some places in Eastern North America, 95 percent of their populations had been wiped out.

Meredith 3:58

It's not just animals that are susceptible to diseases and pests either. Nina Hunt talks about the losses black ash has experienced because of emerald Ash. Boer

Nina Hunt 4:07

So it's actually quite commonly found in the swamps within Ontario, and it is still provincially tracked as S4, so apparently secure, but it is being wiped out, for lack of a better word, by the invasive emerald ash borer. So this is an insect that tunnels in and eats the inner bark of the tree, which cuts off its ability to transport water and nutrients and eventually leads to its death, so. are projected declines of up to 70 percent of the species, and the predicted mortality is actually expected to exceed 90 percent across much of the range impacted by emerald ash borer.

Meredith 4:51

Perhaps one of the more surprising common threats across the episodes has been recreation. My guess is that every one of you listening love to spend time outdoors in some fashion, whether it's going to the beach, hiking, skiing, or traveling and I could go on The list of activities is endless. And I know many of us try our best to do so responsibly, but here's a reminder from William Halladay and the beluga episode that not all recreation and tourism is created equal. A little bit of research can go a long way,

William Halliday 5:24

That are called eco tourism, though, and that would be specifically big cruise ships that are

Meredith 5:28

ahead and

William Halliday 5:30

calling themselves equal ecologically friendly and that sort of thing,

Meredith 5:34

us

William Halliday 5:35

are not very,

Meredith 5:36

I

William Halliday 5:36

Positive or neutral. They are very much so on the negative. They're one of the big contributors to underwater noise. They go areas where no other ships are going and cause disturbance in areas that are otherwise untouched. They send out, you know, zodiacs at all times to go out and look at the at the animals and everything. So different scale, different areas. But yeah, not all ecotourism is. Neutral or even positive. Some are definitely negative.

Meredith 6:04

And sometimes it's not necessarily the activity itself, but the timing.

Matthew 6:10

Add, you know, recreation to that know, and you have,

Meredith 6:13

for being

Matthew 6:14

Going out and you know, getting into these high elevation basins, for example, to, to back country ski or, or going down seismic lines and winter roads on their snowmobiles. All these things add up

Meredith 6:27

That was a clip from Matthew Rafford and the Wolverine episode, and of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention climate change. Some species are already feeling the impact like the beluga who's already experiencing changes in sea ice or the little brown bat, who can lose their young to extreme heat events. But for many of the species, the effect is still unclear. Dominique Rumble talks about how water temperatures might affect spotted Gar.

Dominique Rumball 6:52

And then the last major threat to spotted gar is climate change. It's a bit of an unknown though, because they do seem pretty tolerant of warmer waters and they do seem to like warmer, shallow water, we're not sure how well they'll do in climate change.

Meredith 7:08

Hazel Wheeler talks even more about the uncertainty of climate change. In our conversation on the Loggerhead strike,

Hazel Wheeler 7:14

they actually identified Loggerhead shrike as a climate stable species. I'm curious how they defined that. I mean, I kind of need to dig more, but, because tri sort grassland species, there could potentially be some range expansion northward if, you know, things do get a little bit drier and there's more opportunities for, for grassland and pasture land. there might not have been before.

Meredith 7:41

So in the face of all these threats, which can seem so big, how can we find our footing and make a difference? I actually think that Dominique identified the number one thing we can all do and encourage others to do as well.

Dominique Rumball 7:58

But I think the first is that we really need to just repair our relationship with nature and just become reconnected with nature. I think a lot of us have become disconnected and, you know, maybe we don't want to help, we don't care. And so there's just not enough reason for it. So I really think before we do consider, you know, other types of action, we should all just take a moment Take some time and just visit with nature and reconnect with it.

Meredith 8:27

And if that isn't concrete enough for you, or now you're worried about your impact on the environment while you're trying to reconnect, do your research first and find ways to sustainably recreate.

William Halliday 8:39

actually you can kayak and you can paddleboard out to look for belugas. And I have some colleagues who have been studying the impact of that industry on belugas, and it seems as if it's fairly neutral. So the belugas don't seem to be showing any sort of huge negative response. In fact, they seek out the boats often. They go and they, they play in the wake behind the, the motors.

Matthew 9:05

as far as like recreation, you know, if you're skiing up into a drainage and, and you see a concentration of wolverine tracks somewhere while there's, and it's, and it's during the denning seasons, say mid February to mid May. It's, it would be best if you just turned around and left that drainage and left that to the wolverine to have her kit and you know, you can return in the summer. So it's, it's an idea of like a timing restriction and, and applying that to heli heliskiing companies, that to other backcountry recreationalists.

Meredith 9:35

If you want to not only limit your impact, but make a positive impact while you're out on the landscape. Community science initiatives use data collected by the public to help inform actions to better protect species. This can be in the form of an organized volunteer survey like the Bumblebee Atlas that Elaine Evans helped start for the Rusty Patch Bumblebee.

Elaine 9:55

So, yeah, I started you know, back in 2007, I started engaging people to help me look for, for bumblebees you know, after having done this for the Surge City Society, where I was, as part of my status review, I was just trying to get all of the information that I could on anybody who had done surveys for bumblebees. And a lot of, it was a lot of piecemeal stuff. So there are, you know, a few years of surveys here, a few years of surveys there, no long term surveys anywhere. And at that point, I was like, well, You know, the only way to start having long term survey data is to just start doing long term surveys. So I started just going out to places around the Twin Cities where we had historic records. And I was just going out on my own and surveying bumblebees and you know, fitting it in as I could. then I, I was mentioned to, to a friend that I was doing this and she was like, Hey, you know, other people might want to do this too. You know, that sounds fun. I would like to do that. So I started reaching out to some, some different people that I knew at this point, it was kind of before. Social media was really much of a thing. So it was kind of email lists that I had. And I started, and as soon as I started telling people, people started showing up. So I started just having more help at my individual surveys. You know, eventually, you know, social media came in and I was able to do more advertising, coordinate with different parks that wanted to have these surveys done. This was still just around the Twin Cities. But then, You know, I could see that this could be done. We were getting important data. We started getting more places where we're finding rusty patch bumblebees, being able to kind of track them year after year. And then I was able to expand that statewide and started a Minnesota bumblebee Atlas. in 2013, where we were able to just train volunteers to go out and look for bumblebees. So the nice thing about bumblebees is in general, they're not too hard to tell apart from each other for most of the species, if you are able to take those good photos. There's a few species that are, that are hard to tell apart. Fortunately, rusty patch is not too hard to tell apart. So we were able to train volunteers how to take photos. How to go out and do these surveys and we're able to get people doing these kind of consistent effort surveys across the state. So by having volunteers that go out and consistently survey the same amount over the same area, we can know more about their populations. this same model that I was using has been adopted broadly. Bumblebee atlases that are now present in a lot of different states across the U. S. So they're in the Pacific Northwest, down in the Southeast, through the Great Plains. So if you go to bumblebeeatlas. org, there's a lot of, of places where people can take training and join us to to get this kind of information. And so this is helping us know, you know, where some of these rare bees are, how they're doing. It also helps us learn a lot more about those habitat questions as we look at where bumblebees are, where are they doing well. We can make a lot better recommendations for for their conservation.

Meredith 13:24

Or you can do something more informally by using community science apps like eBird, iNaturalist, and Tree Snap.

Heather 13:31

We're looking for ash, black ash that are showing signs of resistance to EAB. And also generally looking to obtain seeds or scion material to preserve the genetic diversity. So even if you have ones that you don't think are, you know, there's, there's a number of them and you can't necessarily identify them as lingering ash, they still might be of interest, especially if they're, they're producing seed just to maintain that genetic diversity of the species. We have partners that we're working with at the National Tree Seed Center. and the Ontario Forest Research Institute, and they have they have seed storage facilities. So we're working working closely with them to be able to to be able to store some of this for longer term recovery and conservation use. And also there are a couple of, of apps iNaturalist and TreeSnap, where you can report healthy individuals and seed crops. So if you don't want to, or don't remember our contact information or whatever just iNaturalist or TreeSnap, you can definitely report healthy individuals and any seed crops that you come across of the black ash.

Peter Soroye (he/him) 14:43

So the power of community science, specifically in terms of this species, is that, you know, if enough people are out looking for Looking for things with iNaturalist and and photographing them and submitting them. And if enough of them are kind of aware of, like, what a bug being buckmoth is it's distinctive enough that I think the iNaturalist algorithm would catch it pretty immediately as well. Then there's a good chance, you know, that we might find it in a place where we didn't expect to before.

Meredith 15:06

And those clips were from Heather Berg on Black Ash and Peter Sorrier on the Bogbean buck moth. If you're looking for even more actions, reduce your consumption, shop secondhand, repair what you already have, instead of buying new. Sadly, there is no one sexy action we can take in our lives to eliminate all the threats. But reduction in production also means a reduction in waste that ends up on our landscape which Cat Lucas explains is so important to the red side days

Kat Lucas 15:37

So it's a lot of water and that does create some pressure on the infrastructure when we think about how many people are in the GTA. Something that is very easy we all can do is take a shorter shower. Something like seven minutes is more than enough time to get what we need done. And if we all do that and do what we can, that is going to help reduce some of that Pressure that we have on our local public infrastructure and like you did say to people are just not thinking about how important water is for us when we're living in these urban areas where water availability is not necessarily an issue. Sometimes we take that for granted. So it's a good reminder to think about ways that we can use less water. We also want to reduce litter and pollution. So. Don't litter, please. And something that we we can all start doing and try to do when it's safe to collect litter. If we're out for a walk in our neighborhood or out for a hike, just bring a bag and collect some litter as we go. And just try and improve that habitat and water quality almost instantly, right? As soon as we collect that bag of litter it's out of there. And it's now leading to, to cleaner cleaner habitats.

Meredith 16:48

and because spring is around the corner, I'd like to leave you with one more action. Whether you have a balcony or you live on a farm or somewhere in between, try to plant native. It has so many benefits that Ryan Norris explained in our conversation about Model Dusky Wing.

Ryan 17:05

Well, I mean, your backyard is always important. You know, if you do have a backyard now, like, like I said, you're not necessarily going to get an endangered species there, but, but planting any kind of native plants will help butterflies. And. Here's where doing a little research to comes in handy because you can get some pretty spectacular butterflies in your backyard. If you know what their host plants are, you know, if, and some of these host plants, you, you would never, you know, you might have a, just a wonderful looking butterfly and its host plant is like dill or something like that. So, all it does is take, take, you know, a little bit of research and you could have a spectacular. Butterfly garden and eat it, eat the host plant to afterwards

Meredith 17:54

So now you have tools to get out there and make a difference. And the thing is, these tools are not new. So let's turn this back over to our guests to hear about some of the success stories we've already seen. We'll start with Christina, Davey, and the little brown bat. Who saw some of the most drastic declines? Okay. Okay. very much.

Christina 18:56

work that's been done, that it's present across Europe, across Asia, it does live on vibrating birds in those places, but those bats have co

Meredith 19:06

Yeah.

Christina 19:17

were able to repopulate and recover, and what we've seen with the little brown bats here is that they've actually gone through that same process that we think the European and Asian species went through at some point in the distant past. And we had those 95 percent crashes, the 5 percent that's left still here, and in some places is slowly showing signs of recovery.

Meredith 19:39

If we can see a species recover from a 95% loss, it's a strong reminder that it's never too late. Cat Lucas shares another success story of Red side days returning to a site after nearly 20 years because of restoration efforts.

Kat Lucas 19:53

So I did want to share one success story. We've been working at a tributary of the East Humber River since 1996, where we know red site days have been and have slowly been declining. And. We do a lot of work at this site whether it's in stream work to try and help the river flow a little bit more naturally as well as installing cattle exclusion fencing to try and help cows cross the river in more strategic spots so that they're not just stomping in the river and stirring up all of that sediment, that sand and soil at the bottom of the river, which, again, is So we've been doing that. And then even this past year, we've had planting lots of shrubs along the stretch of river about 500 when in this year, and we've over 1500 in the past 5 years of planting these native shrubs and site here, it's been a lot of work and just this past year we did observe a red site dace during our monitoring. I was not there but it is a good news story that the site here in Vaughan, it's, again, we've been working very hard to, to really restore and rehabilitate this little stretch of river and now as an exciting success we are able to find red site dace here again.

Meredith 21:17

And of course, our tools in conservation are always advancing. Ryan Norris tells us about the model DCU Wing and the first butterfly reintroduction completed in Ontario.

Ryan 21:27

They're they're fighters. They're quite amazing that they're still around. And yeah, I'm, I'm proud. Our group work together and, and successfully reintroduced them to places that they deserve to be in, right. Places that it looks like. They're thriving in. So they just, you know, in this case, they just needed a little assistance. The, the, the current populations are ways away. There's 700 kilometers away. So they're, they're never going to reach the binary on their own. I mean, maybe, but it would, the probability would be very low. So in this case, they needed. To be walked over there and seems like they're fine. It is the first reintroduction of a butterfly in Ontario ever.

Meredith 22:16

and reintroductions. Don't just work for butterflies. Jenny McCune tells us how it's worked for the wood poppy

jenny 22:23

Yeah, I mean, we're delighted because the, the ones that we've planted are doing really well. So seeds, not so much. So, like I said, the seeds, if you take. If we take some seeds and we plant them somewhere else, we might get 10 or 11 percent of them germinate, and then maybe only 30 percent of those survive to the next year. But if you grow a little baby plant in the greenhouse and then outplant it, we're getting, you know, 70, 80, sometimes 90 percent survival. And last year, so, well, this summer, so I guess this is the 21, 22, the third year since we planted them. We're seeing little baby seedlings that have been produced there by plants that flowered their second year. So that was really exciting to see. We think we had a hunch that it could work because back in 2000, so more than 20 years ago Jane Bowles, the researcher I mentioned before, who was kind of the pioneer of wood poppy research, planted some plants In this ravine at the Royal Botanical Gardens, which is not one of the original places. We know they grew, but those plants are still there. So more than 20 years later, they're still there. So we were pretty optimistic that this might be a strategy that could really work for the wood poppy

Meredith 23:53

now that we're all jacked up on hope, here are a couple of my favorite fun facts from the past 14 episodes for you to share at your next dinner party to get your Gen Z cousin excited about conservation or to remind your aunt why she needs to vote at the next election. Here's Andrea talking about the organ spotted frog and their really cool egg laying adaptations.

Andrea 24:18

Yeah, kind of the thing that I love most about them, and I touched on it briefly, is like how they lay their eggs. So, the fact that all the females come together and cluster their egg masses, like, so they're physically touching. And, and it can be hard to tell which egg mass is which, especially a few days after, up to a few days after they've been laid, they really start to merge together. And, like, why that is. Like, they don't have that draw them together as a group, they don't have a herd, they don't have any sort of way in which they rely on each other normally, but it's really neat how they create these mats of eggs that float on the surface, so they're not attached to anything else. that's one of the reasons why we are concerned about flooding for this species because it could very easily wash away an entire year's worth of productivity. But they create these big floating masses of eggs and what that actually does, it forms like an, a wild incubator for the tadpoles. So it creates a really shallow layer of water on the surface of the eggs. And as the tadpoles hatch, they hatch. From the top to the bottom so that the tables hatch and they sit on top of the egg masses. So they're still in the water, but they're in this really warm layer of water on top of the egg masses. So any sort of sun that we get, like today is cloudy, it's probably going to be cloudy week, but any sort of sun that we get would warm that water up really quickly and really nice. So it helps those tadpoles develop faster in this protected, like little Greenhouse that's created by the clear jelly of the eggs beneath them. So the tadpoles will just mass in there really tightly and they'll eat the jelly from the eggs and the algae that grows on the jelly. And as they're doing that, they're growing, they're getting stronger. So a tiny little tadpole as soon as it hatches, it really can't even maintain itself in the water column. It just falls, it would fall to the bottom of the wetland on its side where it's cold and it wouldn't develop very fast. So having this egg mass support them, keeps them up near the surface, it gives them food, it gives them warmth and as they develop, they eat through the egg mass, and by the time they get to the bottom, they're able to maintain themselves in the water column, they're really good at swimming, and they self release out into the wetland. So it's like, it's, it's kind of externalized maternal care. It really, they create an environment that helps to care for their tadpoles. So that is just really neat to see

Meredith 26:56

I knew Queen Bees were cool, but I didn't know how important they were before Mary Pley broke down the lifecycle of the rescue patch Bumblebee for me.

Mary Powley 27:05

So we've kind of talked about the cycle, but you know, you have your single spring queen who will start in the spring, she'll go out, she'll start gathering resources, she'll find her nest, she'll start provisioning that first brood of workers, and then those workers will take over the foraging duties, allowing her to continue to lay more workers. And then towards the end of the summer, you know, early fall, something signals to this queen to switch from producing workers to producing males and to producing the next generation of queens. And, you know, I'm not super keen on all of those details, but there is something that causes them to switch, right? And then those new queens will go out, they'll fly around, they'll mate with the males of that season, but then the colony will perish. And only those newly mated queens from the fall who have mated will survive through the winter. What they'll do is they'll find a little hibernation spot. We call it a hibernacula. So they might dig down into soil or hang out in some leaf litter. So, you know, you hear leave your leaves. That's in part because bumblebees might be using those to help insulate themselves from those winter temperatures. And then those queens will emerge next spring and start the cycle over again.

Meredith 28:23

And of course we all know evolution is pretty darn cool.

William Halliday 28:26

Belugas are also also a toothed whale and they're called so because they have a row of teeth. Different than a baleen whale that has these big long baleen plates like a blue whale, for example. So Beluga whales are pretty much pure white or a creamy color. Their their calves are more of a gray or mottled color. They do not have a proper dorsal fin. So dorsal fin is the big fin that sticks out the back. Think of a killer whale with a big triangular shaped fin that sticks out. Belugas don't really have that. They just have a little ridge going along their back. And this is an adaptation to living in the ice.

Dominique Rumball 29:00

And one of the very cool things about Gars is that all of their scales are made of bone. So they actually have their own built in armor. They're called Ganoid Scales and they're made of bone and they kind of interlock with one another to give them this really cool body armor.

Meredith 29:18

And with a final note from Peter Sorrier, that's a wrap on the first half of season one.

Peter Soroye (he/him) 29:25

we don't have a lot to lose, you know, to be going out of our way a little bit to protect these species and avoiding their loss. And we potentially have a lot to gain by, by keeping them around.

Meredith 29:35

And if you left this episode, make sure you go back and listen to the full episodes. And of course, please subscribe and leave us a review. It helps rarefied reach more people who care about the planet's rarest creatures. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at rarefied pod and sign up for our newsletter on our website for updates and behind the scenes content. To kick off Season one part two, we'll be bringing a guest and an animal with so many fun facts. It was always going to be a two part episode. So if you're not afraid of a little slime and don't mind getting wet, make sure you tune in. You won't wanna miss it. So until next time, get out there and explore the wild, because every species has a story and every one of us can make a difference. I'm your host Meredith Meeker. Thank you for listening. Happy Trails.