Posts Tagged: Roger Baldwin

UC Cooperative Extension to track wild pig damage

UC Cooperative Extension is asking California farmers and landowners to help track the the state's wild pig population, reported Julia Mitric on Capitol Public Radio News. Signs of the pig's presence are hard to miss, UCCE advisor John Harper told the reporter.

"It looks like you came in with a rototiller and just uprooted everything," he says. "It's like ground squirrel mounds or gopher mounds on steroids because the pigs can go over such a large area."

California's wild pigs have a variety of origins. Harper says many are descended from domestic pigs who were released into the wild by humans or escaped on their own and bred with game hogs such as the Russian boar hog. Wild pigs root around  in the soil for truffles and small plant roots with their sharp tusks tear, destroying plants and grasses that sheep and cattle like to graze on. They also open up the land for erosion and invasive species.

"So you might get something like 'medusahead,' an invasive grass that tends to crowd out other more desirable forage species," Harper said.

A team of UC Cooperative Extension scientists have created a GIS-based mobile app that works on Android and Apple devices to make it easy for landowners to participate in the study. 

“Rangeland managers and farmers can enter data into the app from the field so that we can estimate the land area and economic impacts of feral pig damage over a longer time period,” said Roger Baldwin, UC Cooperative Extension wildlife specialist in the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology at UC Davis.

Learn more and sign up to participate in the study on the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources news website.

Bad bear behavior can't be pinned on California drought

The drought is a wake-up call to water users all over California, except perhaps its bears. The San Francisco Chronicle suggested in a front page article recently that the winter is too warm for bears to sleep. However, wildlife experts quoted by Mother Jones said the weather isn't to blame.

What motivates some bears to stay awake while others hibernate is still a mystery to scientists, according to Roger Baldwin, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology at UC Davis. He has conducted extensive research on bear behavior.

When small mammals hibernate, their heart rate and body temperature drop and stay low for several months, the article said. Black bears, on the other hand, are much less extreme: They crank down their metabolism, heart rate, and body temperature just enough to get seriously lazy, but are still with it enough to be "perfectly capable of taking a swipe at you if you crawl into the den with them," Baldwin said. Waking them up is not uncommon or difficult.

Generally, temperature has a smaller influence on hibernation behavior than the availability of food. But bears are such proficient omnivores, said California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Jason Holley, that even a drought probably isn't enough to disrupt their hibernation habits, unless it continues for several more years.

Bears are adaptive and mobile. They can find food and water even in a drought, say wildlife experts.

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