Wildlife Health: Reaching a Wider Audience

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“Your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas.” Henry David Thoreau in his Correspondence.

 

Several weeks ago, we had a blog post about an article of ours describing the state of wildlife health in the U.S. using newly-digitized wildlife rehabilitation center data. This past week, two popular articles about this research were published:  

1.    In the BU Brink, an article appeared entitled:

“New Study Identifies Greatest Threat to Wildlife across North America & Canada.”

Photo 1: A new patient at the Northern Colorado Wildlife Center —a snow goose from Timnath, Colorado. These incredible birds are known for one of the longest migrations in the avian world.

 

2.    A second article written by Tara and me was published in the online magazine The Conversation entitled:

     “Digitized records from wildlife centers show the most common ways that humans harm wild animals.”

 

Video 1: A story about how the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota helps save animals.

 

These articles appeared because we pitched story ideas to the publishers, wrote the article for The Conversation, and wrote a press release for the BU Brink.

 

If you want to reach a wider audience with your research, you often have to reach out to the media and do a lot of the writing. But it’s worth the effort!

 

Effects of Climate Change on Bird Migration in Concord

By Amanda Gallinat and Richard B. Primack

 

“I would thus from time to time take advice of the birds.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

 

From 1851 to 2007, dedicated birders in Concord, including Henry David Thoreau, Ludlow Griscom, William Brewster, and Rosita Corey recorded first-bird sightings—when bird species are first spotted returning in the spring. Analyzing this data revealed that while migratory birds arrive earlier in warmer years, their overall response to climate change is much weaker than that of plants and insects.

 

Photo 1: Observers recording birds at Great Meadows Wildlife Sanctuary.

Recently we spoke to the Nuttall Ornithological Society about the statistical challenges of combining the past records made by a handful of individual observers with the Concord eBird data from 2013-2022 contributed by hundreds of local observers.

Do these eBird records reveal that birds are arriving earlier now? Or are birds arriving at the same time as in the past, but having more observers allows them to be detected sooner? This is what our team is currently investigating. We hope to discover an answer.

 

Photo 2: Richard and Amanda at the Nuttall meeting.

 

Thanks to the Nuttall Club for hosting us and asking lots of thoughtful questions! And thanks to team members Abe Miller-Rushing, Libby Ellwood, Trevor Lloyd-Evans, and Corey Callaghan. 

Autumn River Trip

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“The deep places in the river are not so obvious as the shallow ones and can only be found by carefully probing. So perhaps it is with human nature.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

 

The changing of leaf color was delayed this autumn due to warmer and more rainy than usual weather. Many leaves simply changed to brown and fell from the trees without first showing off their brilliant coloring. 

On the last Saturday in October, the weather was in the 70s. My son Dan and I went on a long kayaking trip on the Charles River to enjoy the autumn scenery. 

Video 1.  As we launched our kayaks, the leaves were tumbling out of the trees. 

Photo 1.  Many river trees still had their green leaves. 

Photo 2. Oak leaves had either fallen off or were persisting as dead brown leaves.

Photo 3. Shadows on the reeds cast a dark band across the river edge.

Photo 4.  Dead branches of rose mallow topped with capsules emerged from the river margin.

Photo 5.  Beavers left this tree still standing; perhaps they will return the next day to finish their job. 

Open Access Publishing Expands the Reach of Knowledge in Africa

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”  Henry David Thoreau in Walden.

Open Access publishing is the best way to make books available to a wide audience across Africa. Students can download our Open Access book, Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa, for free on a wide variety of devices. Over the last 4 years, this book has been downloaded over 45,000 times and is being widely used for teaching across the region. 

At the August 2023 International Conference on Conservation Biology (ICCB) in Rwanda, Eric Nana, John Wilson (also known as Johnny Birder) and I told hundreds of people about the upcoming second edition and a new French edition. People were enthusiastic about gaining access to such a valuable book without having to pay. 

Photo: Richard Primack, Eric Nana, and John Wilson (Johnny Birder) at the ICCB conference.

We published our Open Access book with Open Book Publishers. Here is link to an interview that we recently did discussing the advantages of Open Access publishing to reach a wider audience: LINK

And here is a link to an article that we wrote about these advantages: LINK