Conservation

Muskrats are agile swimmers – Dickinson County Conservation Board

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Muskrats are agile swimmers – Dickinson County Conservation Board

Muskrats are active mid-afternoon into the night, and they spend much of their time in the water where they look for green vegetation to eat. In the summer, they will dive to eat the roots of aquatic plants — they’re able to stay underwater for up to 15 minutes — and in the winter, they will swim under ice to look for vegetation. Muskrats can swim in frigid water due to something called regional heterothermia, which regulates blood flow to their non-furry feet and tails, allowing these body parts to be cooler than the main part of the body, so their main body stays nice and warm in cold water.

muskrat in the water

The water is a safe space for muskrats, because they can escape predators such as raccoons, coyotes and owls by diving deep or by swimming into their burrows and nests. They paddle with their large, webbed back feet and use their flat tail to help them change direction. They can even swim backward.

Researchers Develop Poison Bait to Control Feral Pigs | Field & Stream

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Researchers Develop Poison Bait to Control Feral Pigs | Field & Stream

This is pretty cool science, building a safe pesticide for controlling feral pigs using sodium nitrates, the same thing used to cure bacon. Basically pigs are slightly more sensitive to sodium nitrate than humans, so they can be poisoned by it. But the sodium nitrates don't bioaccumulate. I do wonder though about the production of Nitroso compounds and if they could cause problems downstream. 

What works and what doesn’t

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Artificial Reefs: What works and what doesn’t

Artificial reefs are one of the many tools used by marine conservationists to restore coral reefs around the globe, they are made from a variety of natural or synthetic materials, and come in an infinite number of shapes and styles. The goal of these artificial reefs is generally to provide a stable growing area for corals, and habitat for fishes and all the other organisms that you would find on a natural reef. Over the years, artificial reefs have a lot of praise from those who have worked with them, but a lot of criticisms from scientists who see it as working on the symptoms and not the problems that face coral reefs. At the New Heaven Reef Conservation Program, we have been working with artificial reefs for over a decade, and in this article, we are going to explore the history of artificial reefs, and then look at some of the methods we have found to be the most or least successful.