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Cleaner Waterways, Improved Habitat and Lots of Effort Have Brought Back Species to Ohio

Posted on: Wednesday, 25 October 2006, 00:00 CDT

By Steve Bennish Staff Writer

PIQUA -- Jared Duquette has chosen the most impossible job in Ohio.

The 24-year-old, who hopes to earn a master's degree at Ohio State University, is tasked with trapping and tagging with a radio collar perhaps the most antisocial, elusive and ornery of Buckeye inhabitants -- the badger.

Ask most residents of Ohio's western counties whether they've ever seen the stocky nocturnal 30-pound member of the weasel family, and you're likely to get a funny look.

The badger, when it has made appearances , typically turns up as striped and sharp-clawed road kill that only experts can identify. Duquette's job is to figure out just how numerous the fur-bearing animal is in an effort to guide wildlife officials on how to classify it for potential hunting purposes.

All anyone really knows is that Ohio is at the eastern end of the badger's range in the United States and the beast has held on in small numbers despite the loss of its native prairie habitat to agriculture. By September, after months of work, Duquette was radio tracking one badger in Williams County and another in Darke County east of Greenville -- snagged by nuisance trappers after it wandered near a retail store.

Unlike the tenacious badger who has held out on the margins in hedgerows, other native wild animals in Ohio have ridden a seesaw of eradication and rebirth. Today, some are coming back in numbers not seen in a century or more.

There's reason to be optimistic as savvy reintroduction efforts, cleaner waterways and more amenable habitat make long-term survival a likely possibility.

For other animals, comebacks are more fragile, even as state officials get a better handle on where the wild things are.

Wildlife coming back, but hurdles remain

Since 1950, Ohio has scored successes, restoring 18 species that were severely reduced in the state. Six have populations large enough to permit hunting or trapping: Canada geese, wood duck, white- tailed deer, wild turkey, beaver and river otter.

The most noteworthy rebounds lately -- the beaver and the river otter -- spread by tracking river corridors and their improving water quality. For the first time in living memory, beavers have turned up in Dayton parks.

A survey by the Dayton Daily News and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies found that Ohio's accomplishments parallel comebacks around the nation.

"Wildlife is in better condition in Ohio than at any time in the last 100 years," said Steve Gray, chief of the Ohio Division of Wildlife. "You can say that without question, and that goes for fish, too."

Urban-suburban sprawl that gobbles up farm or forest jeopardizes progress, Gray noted. A Dayton Daily News examination found:

- Industrial accidents and pollution take a big bite out of wildlife. Since 1997, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has collected $6 million in out-ofcourt settlements from industry for wildlife kills.

- Acidic drainage from Ohio's abandoned coal mines still hampers wildlife recoveries in species such as mussels and fish decades after the mines closed. A 2004 assessment by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources found 21 impaired watersheds in southeastern Ohio. The cost to fix the problems in just nine of the watersheds would be $50 million. The state lists 1,200 stream miles as polluted by acid mine drainage or sediment.

- Uncontrolled agricultural runoff and sediment from newer development that flows into waterways damages fish, mussels and other wildlife. Nutrients flowing from the land during rainstorms degrades fisheries at a cost of millions of dollars a year in Lake Erie alone, according to state officials.

- Antiquated municipal sewage systems that combine sewage with floodwaters during heavy rains send a bacteria-rich stew into waterways. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency counts 87 communities with those systems. In the Cincinnati metro area, 215 system pipes flow into local waterways, said Gary Stuhlfauth, an environmental specialist with OEPA. The city of Columbus expects to spend $2.5 billion over 40 years for upgrades to meet environmental standards. The overflows, which have closed beaches on Lake Erie, also threaten human health. Dayton doesn't have a combined sewage system.

Cleaner streams have beavers on the march

Five Rivers MetroParks wildlife biologist Mike Enright can tell you a thing or two about wildlife comebacks. They're eating his willow trees in Island MetroPark. The trees are a favorite of beavers who showed up in the park this year for the first time in the modern era.

"The beaver was wreaking havoc on newly planted trees," Enright said. MetroParks replanted the willows with trees beavers aren't so thrilled to sink their teeth into.

It won't be the last time beavers show up in downtown area parks, Enright predicts.

There are three mating pairs in Possum Creek MetroPark, plus an unknown number of progeny.

Beavers and their fellow water-loving fur-bearers, river otters, are making strong comebacks. Beavers now number 26,000 and are subject to a regulated trapping season -- not bad for a creature trapped out of existence in Ohio by 1830.

Chris Dwyer, a wildlife biologist with the Ohio Division of Wildlife, said Ohio's beaver recovery has been a long, slow climb that began in 1936 when beaver reappeared in northeastern Ohio on the western shore of the Pymatuning Reservoir. In the following decades, conservationists helped trap and transport beaver throughout the state to re-establish them.

River otters are a more recent success. Restoration began between 1986 and 1993 when Louisiana otters were released in eastern Ohio, Dwyer said. Today, they number about 6,000. The first regulated trapping season in Ohio was this year, netting 225 otters. Dwyer said the otter might find its way to Dayton in the next few years.

The comebacks are a sweet story for T.J. Miller, chief of endangered species for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Midwestern regional office in Minneapolis. Having worked in the field for 32 years, he witnessed a bottom in wildlife decades ago.

"There is a low point in the 1960s when we farmed the heck out of things and didn't do a good job on pollution control," Miller said. "I was in Ohio in 1972 on Lake Erie doing fisheries research. It looked like pea soup. The walleye were decimated."

Federal conservation programs that took farmland out of cultivation created wildlife harbors by re-establishing forest in rural areas. The Clean Water Act passed Congress in 1972, marking the way for comebacks along key river and stream corridors.

Ohio hit a low point in forest cover in 1940, when only 12 percent of the state -- 3.7 million acres -- was wooded. With the loss of forest, so went white-tailed deer, elk, wolf, cougar, black bear, bobcat and wild turkey from Ohio, according to ODNR. Since 1940, marginal farmland has reverted back to forest, especially in Eastern Ohio's hill country, laying the groundwork for the reappearances. As of 2001, 33 percent of the state had forest cover, a 2.5-fold increase in 61 years. Modern regulated deer hunting in Ohio began in 1943, and Ohio's deer herd now exceeds 600,000.

Industrial accidents, mine runoff take toll

As impressive as the progress has been, long-standing threats continue. Dave DeVault is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's natural resource damage assessment case manager for Ohio. In short, he tries to total the value of wildlife harmed by hazardous substances.

"In Ohio, it's good business if you are in this business because there are a lot of industrial sites," he said. "We've been gradually, over the years, bringing claims in Ohio."

Those claims, all settled out of court, have resulted in $6 million in settlements since 1997. The money has been spent to restore wildlife. The biggest:

- Southern Ohio Coal in Meigs County. A mine flooded, and the water was pumped out to Leading Creek, a tributary to the Ohio River. The acidic drainage killed everything in the creek, DeVault said. Settlements totaled $3 million.

- Eramet Marietta Inc. in Washington County spilled a chemical into the Ohio River in 1999, the Fish and Wildlife Service said. Some 12,000 fish were killed, virtually wiping out the river bottom ecology, including 1 million freshwater mussels, for a 10-mile stretch, DeVault said. The company contends stressful drought conditions caused the kills. Settlement was $2 million.

- The Fields Brook Superfund site in Ashtabula County. The Fields Brook was used as a discharge site by 12 industrial firms. It discharges into the Ashtabula River, which flows into Lake Erie two miles away. Settlement was $860,000.

A bright spot in pollution abatement began this month with the Lake Erie Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, launched in 27 northwestern counties, to reduce runoff from farm sediment and fertilizer into the Western Basin of Lake Erie.

The program pays farmers to establish wetlands or buffer strips where farm fields meet waterways, usually for a 10-year period.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7407 or sbennish@DaytonDailyNews.com.

Badger watch

Anyone with information about badger locations can assist a state project to track the animals by contacting Jared Duquette at (989) 798-6619 or fax (614) 292-7432.

Source: Dayton Daily News

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