Reptiles, Amphibians in Need of ‘Urgent Conservation’ in Rhode Island – via Herp Digest

May 30, 2019, ECO Rhode Island

Northern leopard frog about to disappear from Rhode Island

By Todd McLeish,  ecoRI News contributor

When Scott Buchanan was hired as a wildlife biologist at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management last year, he became the first full-time herpetologist on the state payroll. It’s a sign, he said, that reptiles and amphibians are in need of management and conservation in the state.

“To be in herpetology is to be on the front lines of the global biodiversity crisis,” he said. “We’re at risk of losing, globally, roughly half of the reptile and amphibian species on Earth in the next 100 years. Turtles and frogs are in a neck-and-neck competition for the unfortunate title of being the most endangered wildlife taxa.”

While Rhode Island’s reptiles and amphibians haven’t experienced the level of habitat loss and disease that occurs in Southeast Asia or the tropics, Buchanan said “the crisis is very real in New England. The mission is very urgent, and we need to do everything we can here in Rhode Island.”

About 40 species of turtles, snakes, frogs, toads, and salamanders call the Ocean State home. All face issues of habitat loss, road mortality, and disease, but turtles are also faced with high demand from collectors for the pet trade.

While monitoring a rare population of wood turtles this spring, herpetologist Lou Perrotti, director of conservation at the Roger Williams Park Zoo, observed a small specimen he estimated to be 5 or 6 years old.

“I love to see the little ones,” he said, “but I worry that someone would put this one in their pocket and take it home.”

It’s such a concern that Buchanan is co-chair of a collaborative group of biologists, law enforcement officials, and legal experts from up and down the East Coast working to combat the illegal trade in native turtles. The objective, he said, is to raise the profile of the issue and encourage the law-enforcement community to be aware that a black market in native turtles exists in the region.

The illegal trade in wildlife is valued at about $19 billion annually, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s TRAFFIC program, a network of organization that monitors the trade.

“It’s something I worry a lot about,” said Buchanan, who conducted research on spotted turtles for his doctorate at the University of Rhode Island. “If you know where they are, turtles are pretty easy to pick up, take home, keep alive, and get them into the black market. 

All of our native species are vulnerable, though some are more prized than others.”

A Pennsylvania man was arrested last year for smuggling 3,500 rare diamondback terrapins from marshes in New Jersey and selling them online. Although no cases have been adjudicated in Rhode Island, Buchanan said there is evidence of the illegal turtle trade in the state.

Buchanan is also involved in region-wide efforts to study spotted turtles and box turtles, two species that are considered to be of significant conservation concern. He is conducting surveys of both species in Rhode Island this spring to gather as much data as possible about their distribution, abundance, demography, and population genetics.

In collaboration with Roger Williams Park Zoo and Brown University, he is also investigating the presence of disease in local populations of reptiles and amphibians.

“We need to improve our understanding of where the diseases are and what species are harboring them to get a sense of their susceptibility,” Buchanan said. “There’s chytrid [a common amphibian disease in the tropics] in our environment, though our frogs don’t seem to be susceptible, but there hasn’t been a lot of testing. And there’s a similar disease for salamanders that has had bad outbreaks in Europe, and we’re worried about it coming overseas.”

Two species of amphibian — the eastern spadefoot toad and northern leopard frog — are on the verge of disappearing from Rhode Island. Both have only one known population. The toad is only found at one site in Richmond, though efforts are under way to create habitat to establish additional populations.

The northern leopard frog is found only on the border of Bristol and Warren, and Buchanan said there is little that can be done to help it recover.

“The northern leopard frog might be the best example of a species that’s about to disappear from the state,” he said, noting that the species faces multiple threats from habitat loss, pollution, and invasive species. “It could happen this year, next year, or in five years, but all indications are it’s going to happen soon. And there’s not a tool in my toolbox at the moment that I can use to confront the situation.”

URI researcher: Spotted turtles in trouble in Rhode Island – via Herp Digest

University of Rhode Island Press Release-Posted on December 11, 2017

KINGSTON, R.I. – December 11, 2017 – A University of Rhode Island doctoral student who surveyed the state for freshwater turtles and studied their habitat preferences found that the once-common spotted turtle is in trouble, due largely to habitat disturbance.

Scott Buchanan, a New Jersey native working in collaboration with URI Associate Professor Nancy Karraker, repeatedly visited 88 different wetlands in the state over three years and captured nearly 2,000 turtles of four different species. Just 50 were spotted turtles, a species considered by the state to be of high conservation concern and a candidate for the U.S. endangered species list.

“Throughout they’re range, populations of spotted turtles have declined extensively, and we can certainly say with a good deal of confidence that’s also the case in Rhode Island,” said Buchanan, who graduates from URI later this month. “I found that they are associated with wetlands in forested landscapes, which means they are susceptible to development, forest fragmentation, wetland alteration and other human disturbances.”

Buchanan said that the largest populations of spotted turtles he found were in locations where human disturbance has been minimal. “So now it’s a matter of managing those landscapes in an appropriate way,” he added.

Habitat alteration is not the only conservation concern the species faces, however. The illegal collection of wild turtles for the pet trade is also a problem.

“Spotted turtles will command a formidable sum in the pet trade, which is unfortunate,” Buchanan said, noting that he encountered people during his research who had captured spotted turtles they intended to bring home to keep as pets but released them at his insistence. “It’s really easy for someone to deplete an entire population of them very quickly.”

During his turtle surveys, Buchanan also found a non-native turtle called a red-eared slider in more wetlands than he found spotted turtles. The slider is a species commonly purchased at pet stores and frequently released into the wild after their owners no longer wish to care for them. He said that wetlands close to human populations, especially those with easy access from roads, are the most likely place to find red-eared sliders in Rhode Island.

“They’re an especially detrimental invasive species,” he said. “It’s a good bet that all the sliders we found are turtles that were bought at pet stores. We don’t know if they’re reproducing in the wild.”

Eastern painted turtles and common snapping turtles, the two most common species of freshwater turtles in Rhode Island, were found in abundance during Buchanan’s turtle surveys.

“They were everywhere, with no strong pattern as to where we might find them across different landscape types,” he said.

What can be done to protect the region’s declining spotted turtle populations?

“It would mean protecting and preserving wetlands, especially forested wetlands, including small wetlands like vernal pools where they sometimes overwinter,” Buchanan said. “It would also mean minimizing fragmentation of the landscape surrounding those wetlands. And it’s also really important that we protect the turtles themselves from illegal collection. That’s an increasing concern among conservation biologists.”

As Buchanan prepares to graduate from URI, he will share his data with a region-wide team of biologists collecting information about the three turtle species being considered for inclusion on the U.S. endangered species list – spotted, wood and Blanding’s turtle.

“The habitat information we collected could help determine where populations of spotted turtles occur and help protect and appropriately manage those populations into the future,” he said.

CAN THIS CAT PREDICT DEATH?

If you're a patient at Rhode Island's Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, there's one visitor you don't want stopping by your bed: a white and tortoiseshell cat named Oscar.

Not because Oscar isn't friendly -- by all accounts he is -- but because according to a doctor who works there, David Dosa, Oscar has the mysterious power to predict who's going to die.

He is said to wander the building, stopping to see patients who only have a short time to live -- in some cases surprising the staff with the predictions. The cat is credited with correctly predicting at least 50 deaths at the nursing home over the past five years.

Oscar first rose to prominence in 2007 when Dosa wrote a piece in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine about the cat, and later in a popular 2010 book titled "Making the Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat."

What might explain Oscar's strange powers?

Continued:  http://news.discovery.com/animals/can-a-rhode-island-cat-predict-death-120920.html