Flora & Fauna

Researchers at Great Smoky Mountains National Park are inviting people to volunteer as Citizen Scientists from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday to map locations of ash trees in the park.

Moose eat plants; wolves kill moose. What difference does this classic predator-prey interaction make to biodiversity? A large and unexpected one, say wildlife biologists from Michigan Technological University. Joseph Bump, Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich report in the November 2009 issue of the journal Ecology that the carcasses of moose killed by wolves at Isle Royale National Park enrich the soil in “hot spots” of forest fertility around the kills, causing rapid microbial and fungal growth that provide increased nutrients for plants in the area.

A study says increasing nitrogen pollution is turning algae in Rocky Mountain National Park's alpine lakes into junk food for fish. Arizona State University professor James Elser, the study's lead author, says the effect of airborne nitrogen on once-pristine lakes in the park is greater than previously believed. The nitrogen comes from vehicle exhaust, fertilizer used on farms and livestock feed lots.

Scientists from around the country found more than 1,200 species of plants and animals in Yellowstone National Park in a 24-hour research marathon in late August. The park's first BioBlitz has documented the species with taxonomic and DNA experts still analyzing lab results, which "will surely increase our numbers,'' said organizer Kayhan Ostovar, an assistant professor of environmental science at Rocky Mountain College. Some of the finds included new species, such as the tiger beetle, previously undocumented in the park, Ostovar said.

Thousands of endangered Rio Grande silvery minnows reared at a national hatchery in New Mexico were being prepared Wednesday to be trucked to Texas, where the tiny fish will be released into the Rio Grande near Big Bend National Park. The release is part of a five-year experiment by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to establish a population of minnows in the river's southern reaches. More than 400,000 silvery minnows were released at Big Bend last year and surveys have shown that there are still minnows in the area.

National Park Service managers are mending livestock fencing at a volcanic monument in southcentral Idaho to help a herd of pronghorn antelope along its 160-mile roundtrip migration across the northern Snake River plain and into Rocky Mountains valleys.

A long-gone species returned home Friday, not with a thunder of hooves, but with muffled snorts and a short gallop from muddy pen to grassy range.A baker’s dozen of bison had been plucked from a herd of 500 in South Dakota and trucked to east-central Kansas 10 days before.Once here, they were crowded in a snug pen on the pasture that would be their new home. The time in tight quarters was intended to bond them as a new mini-herd and get them accustomed to the sights, sounds and smells of the grassland around them.

Opponents of a plan to kill hundreds of deer at Valley Forge National Historical Park are asking members of Congress to halt the effort before the shooting starts.Officials at the park, the site of the Continental Army's 1777-78 encampment, want to reduce a deer population now estimated at 1,277 to between 165 and 185 over four years. They say the herd is eating so many plants, shrubs and saplings that the forest cannot regenerate.