Tag Archive for: corporate conservation

Connecting to Enhance WHC Certification

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In early February, the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) convened an impressive group of stakeholders to kick-start the design phase of an enhanced certification program that, when launched, will incorporate contemporary conservation and education initiatives to ensure and incentivize the best conservation projects and education programs across WHC’s membership.

This meeting was attended by representatives from federal agencies including Interior, Agriculture, State, Education, Defense and EPA. Non-profit partners Pollinator Partnership, Defenders of Wildlife, The Conservation Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and Monarch Watch also participated. Representing the WHC corporate membership were employees from ExxonMobil, Waste Management, Bridgestone, BP, and others.

A number of themes emerged from this meeting but every breakout group circled back to the theme of “connections” and the challenges and opportunities for making them happen. It seems that the unique nature of the conservation and education projects developed and delivered by the members of WHC offers many chances to connect. Here are some of the unique opportunities discussed at the meeting:

Connecting across boundaries: The desire to transcend boundaries—to work “across the fence”—surfaced throughout the day. In the US, that means connecting conservation work being conducted on private land with that being done on public lands, whether held by the state or federal government. On the global level, many WHC members have operations outside the borders of a single country and can use their global operations to impact wildlife and environmental health across these borders. WHC member PPG Industries’ work connecting monarch habitat on two of its properties in Mexico and Pennsylvania is a prime example of using projects in different countries to benefit a single species and connect education efforts in support of a species that is in serious decline across its range.

Connecting to Corporate STEM goals: Many of WHC’s members invest in STEM education to create the scientifically literate workforce necessary for their future operations. These investments support the work of large efforts advancing STEM on the national stage. Through their work with WHC, members can use their lands to promote STEM education by providing hands-on, relevant STEM opportunities to learners of all ages. For example, Waste Management’s El Sobrante Landfill and Wildlife Preserve in California provides an opportunity for children to learn the science of landfill operations and management of wildlife including rare and recovering species.

The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) convened an impressive group of stakeholders to kick-start the design phase of an enhanced certification program.

The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) convened an impressive group of stakeholders to kick-start the design phase of an enhanced certification program.

Connecting within industry sectors: When the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA) wanted to connect its members with a common approach to biodiversity projects, it partnered with WHC to develop a biodiversity toolkit. This toolkit provides operators of ready mixed concrete production facilities with examples of projects that enhance biodiversity with little or no impact on operations. The toolkit gives the operator guidance on starting a project and working towards certification. By creating a common starting point for facilities across the country, and beyond, WHC creates connections within this industry sector.

Through these connections, and many more, WHC believes that its members’ efforts amount to an outcome that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Building on this stakeholder meeting, we will continue, over the next 12 months, to explore these connections further. We plan to take the conversation across the country and beyond and, with our government and NGO partners define, formalize and internalize these connections, translate them into actions and projects that any corporate member can implement on their property for high quality conservation and education outcomes.

For information, contact Margaret.

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Wildlife in Winter: Now You See Me…

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It just snowed (again) out here on the East Coast, so it seems only fitting that I wrap up our “Wildlife in Winter” blog series by talking about how some animals camouflage themselves in the winter to blend in with snow.

In the warm months, species like the snowshoe hare sport a brown fur coat that helps them to easily blend in with the bare ground, making it harder for predators to spot them from far away. In the winter, however, their brown fur would be highly visible against the white snow, making them vulnerable to predation or more visible to their potential prey.

The solution? Change the color of their fur!

Obviously, animals can’t go to a hair salon for a dye job like you or I can. So a number of mammals shed their brown summer coat and replace it with a thick coat of white or mostly-white fur that blends in well with snow. This is most common in more northern latitudes where snow is on the ground throughout the winter.

The ermine – which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago – is a great example of a mammal that goes white in the winter to both avoid detection by its prey under the snow, as well as avoid detection by larger predators like hawks. Other mammals that grow white fur for the winter include the arctic fox, arctic hare, and snowshoe hare.

Similarly, some birds such as the ptarmigan also molt their darker summer plumage in favor of white feathers each winter.

Do you have any animals on your land that change their fur or plumage to blend in with the snow each winter? We’d love to hear your stories or see links to photos you took in the comments below!

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Wildlife in Winter: Catching Prey Under the Snow

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Last week I wrote about how some animals like voles, mice, and shrews utilize subnivean habitats as a way to stay warm and avoid being seen by predators while they forage.

Of course, predators need to eat too. And while the snow allows the rodents to stay out of sight, there are several predators such that have developed other ways of finding their prey. For example, weasels (especially ermines) will dig down through the snow to look for rodents and their subnivean tunnels.  Sometimes they will even take over the tunnels and make them their own after they’ve preyed upon its original inhabitants.

There are also several predators such as owls, foxes, and coyotes with such excellent hearing that they actually listen carefully for squeaks and sounds of movement under the snow before ambushing their prey. Red foxes, for example, can hear very low-frequency sounds, enabling them to hear rodents scampering beneath several feet of snow. Scientists also believe that foxes tune in to the Earth’s magnetic field to hunt: as a fox follows the sound of its prey beneath the snow, it’s searching for the “sweet spot” where the angle of the sound matches the planet’s magnetic field.

Foxes can be especially fun to watch as they jump high and then dive headfirst into the snow to catch rodents. The clip below, from The Discovery Channel’s North America series, is an entertaining example of this behavior.

Have you ever seen predators hunting for prey under the snow?  We’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

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Wildlife in Winter: Finding Cover Under the Snow

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Here in the Mid-Atlantic region, we’ve been experiencing snowfall on almost a weekly basis for the last month or so.  And while all this snow causes school shutdowns and traffic headaches for us, some of the local small mammals, like voles, mice, and shrews, do very well by staying beneath the snow.

This type of habitat is called subnivean habitat, a word derived from the Latin words sub (beneath) and nives (snow).

Voles, mice, and shrews dig tunnels under the snow, which allow them to travel safely between burrows and food sources without being seen by predators. Snow also provides excellent insulation against below-freezing ambient air temperatures, creating a microclimate near the ground with a temperature closer to 32°F (0°C). The subnivean tunnels only become visible once the snow melts and the tunnels collapse.

There are some great educational activities out there that you can use to teach students about how small mammals and other wildlife use snow. A great one I found is a game called Subnivean Critter Tag, which requires little more than freshly-fallen snow and some imagination.

Have you found any great conservation education activities for the snow?  Please share them in the comments below!

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Designing & Building Barn Owl Nest Boxes

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The IBM Almaden Research Center, located in San Jose, California, is pioneering the design of artificial nest boxes by partnering with a dedicated volunteer.

Steve Simmons of Merced, California, developed a Barn Owl box plan that has been in extensive use throughout the Central Valley after years of experimenting with and documenting the siting, mounting, and design of artificial nest boxes for Barn Owls. As a shop teacher, he organized the student production of over 10,000 Barn Owl boxes, which were sold to local ranchers for pest control. The sales from the boxes provided over $168,000 in scholarship money for his students over a nine-year period. His personal monitoring of Barn Owl boxes (currently 200 annually at 8 sites) has led to an enormous amount of data on year-round behavior, reproductive habits, diet, predators, habitat requirements, and nest box preferences. Mr. Simmons and other volunteers have placed seven Barn Owl nest boxes at the Almaden Research Center, all of which are monitored on a regular basis.

Download a copy of the Simmons Barn Owl Nest Box Design and start your own project!

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