Wildlife adaptations to a changing climate

In this episode of the Wildtalk Podcast, we replay one of our popular interviews about the challenges a changing climate poses to wildlife.  

Episode Hosts: Rachel Leightner, Holly Vaughn and Hannah Schauer
Producer/editor: Eric Hilliard

• Managed Waterfowl Areas
• iNaturalist
• eBird
• Michigan.gov/Waterfowl
• Seek app
• Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessment 
• Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science
• National Climate Assessment

Questions or comments about the show? Contact the DNR Wildlife Division at 517-284-9453 (WILD) or email dnr-wildlife@michigan.gov.

Transcript

Announcer:

The Michigan DNR Hunt Fish app is your digital connection to all things hunting and fishing in Michigan. Buy store and display your hunting and fishing licenses. Check your points and chances for elk and bear. Apply for the draw and view drawing results. Access all the hunting and fishing regulations. View your hunt safety certificate and report your harvest all from within the Michigan DNR Hunt Fish app. Just click the app banner at the top of the page for download instructions at michigan.gov/hunting.

You know what that sound means? It's time for the Michigan DNRs Wildtalk Podcast. Welcome to the Wildtalk Podcast, where representatives from the DNR's Wildlife Division chew the fat and shoot the scat about all things habitat, feathers, and fur. With insights, interviews and your questions answered on the air, you'll get a better picture of what's happening in the world of wildlife here in the great state of Michigan.

Rachel:

Hi everyone, and welcome to the July episode of the Wildtalk Podcast. This is your host, Hannah Lightner, and in today's episode we'll return to a riveting conversation with the Wildlife Divisions adaptations specialist Chris Hoving, to talk about our changing climate and how it's impacting Michigan's wildlife. And then later on you'll want to stick around for your chance to win a Wildtalk Podcast camp mug. But first, a word about our forests.

Announcer 2:

Trees provide for the wellbeing of our state. That's why we work so hard to keep our forests healthy and abundant so wildlife has a home and so do people so that there's clean air and water for everyone. So Michigan's economy can be as strong as the trees that support it because every branch of forestry ensures that future generations will always have a tree for life and forests for a lifetime. To learn how sustainable forestry benefits your life, visit michigan.gov/forestsforlifetime.

Hannah:

Welcome back to Wildtalk. Joining Holly and I today to talk about climate change and its impacts to wildlife is Chris Hoving, Wildlife Division's adaptation Specialist. Welcome Chris.

Chris:

Thank you.

Hannah:

So Chris, can you tell us a little bit about your role with the division and how you got interested in climate change?

Chris:

Sure. So my role in the division is adaptation specialist. So I work on do future scanning, looking out at the horizon, what are things that are changing, what are threats to wildlife that we might not be thinking about or things that we're thinking about and we just don't know how to adapt. Climate change is one of the big ones that I deal with. I sit on several committees at the regional and national level on climate change issues surrounding wildlife. And I got into this actually back when I was a field biologist working in southwest Michigan. I had noticed certain impacts to some of the species that we were managing, both grassland birds, we were seeing some birds that we hadn't seen before, and also some of the pollinators like insects and butterflies were having declines because of the weather, but it seemed to be different than what we'd experienced.

I did a little research and sent a memo to my superior, and as you know, when you show interest in something or you point out a problem, often folks will say, "Hey, why don't you go solve that problem?" So over time I got tasked with more and more climate change work. And then about 10 years ago we did a strategic planning exercise and went out and asked all of our partners, we said, "What are the things that we're not doing as an agency and what are we doing right?" And we heard a lot about what we were doing right. The three things that they said you're not doing, one was you don't have a outreach and education team. We didn't have things like these podcasts at that time. We didn't have invasive species program and we didn't have a climate change program. So that's when we started this program. It was really based off of that outreach.

Holly:

For those that may not know, can you give us broad strokes overview a definition of what climate change is?

Chris:

Sure. So we all know what weather is, it's what you're experiencing, the rain, the snow, mostly snow these days, the temperatures, the wind, all of those sorts of things are the weather and climate is really just the long-term average and variability on those things. And often it's measured over 30 year periods. Sometimes it's measured over a decade, over 10 year periods, but it's some long-term measurement of the weather that's really all climate is. And then climate change is when you get look at really long time periods and you start to detect that there are changes. The 30 years from 1950 to 1980 are cooler than from 1990 to now. So that's all that climate change is.

Holly:

All right. So looking at those long-term trends, how is the climate changing in Michigan and what differences might people notice or not notice? Everything's changing.

Chris:

We tend to notice the weather. It's a lot harder to notice how a 30 year average is changing. I'm old, but I'm not that old to really grasp those changes. And when people think about climate change, they often think about the globe, the whole planet warming, but none of us really experience that. What we're experiencing is where we live. And here in Michigan we've had about one degree warming centigrade, about two degrees warming Fahrenheit. So we're warming at about twice the rate of the rest of the world. And that's just due to where we are latitude. Most of the warming is happening further north. The other thing, probably the bigger deal here in Michigan is changes in precipitation. We're seeing less snow unless you live in the lake, lake effect areas. The lake effect areas are getting just as much snow as they always have.

And it's an interesting thing because what's happening is the lakes are warming up, so there's less ice, and because there's less ice, there's more evaporation, and so you get more lake effect snow. So even though everybody's getting less snow, the folks in the lake effect area are getting more snow and it averages out. So they're still getting a lot of snow. And then we're getting a lot more heavy rainfalls, really, the gully washers, the ones that end up flooding highways in Detroit or flooding my basement. Every time there's a two or three inch rain event, I know that it was that much because I start getting water in my basement. I have to get out the pump and clean it out. And those are definitely happening. We have really good evidence. Those are happening about 60% more often than they were just a couple of decades ago.

Holly:

Absolutely. I can attest to that. I live here in southeast Michigan and we've had several storms in the last six to eight years with just like you said, closing down highways and man, just crazy flooded basements. So yeah, that's definitely happening. And also we don't really see snow down here like we used to.

Chris:

Not we used to. Definitely not.

Hannah:

So how do these changes more precipitation per se? How do those impact wildlife?

Chris:

I talked about some of the impacts earlier with seeing new birds that we haven't seen before. We're also seeing some turtles that weren't originally in Michigan. Red aired sliders are now found in southern Michigan. They weren't found here before. So we're seeing some species move north. An interesting one that many people don't realize is that the possum is really sensitive to cold and it was only found in far southern Michigan historically. And now we've got them because it's warmed up and they can survive in the winter. We have them all the way up into the UP now. So that's something that species has expanded its range.

Another thing we're starting to see is waterfowl migrating later. They're triggered to migrate by how much ice and snow they're seeing up in Canada where they're spending the summer and when it gets to be too much, that's when they come south and they're getting that trigger later. So they're coming south later and they're often not going as far south. They don't get as many waterfall all the way down to the Gulf Coast. It's probably not a bad thing for us. As long as we adjust our seasons a little bit, we'll see more waterfall would stink for the people down in Mississippi though.

I had mentioned how less lake ice means more lake effect. And in the UP, that's good news for tho things like snowshoe hair and moose. Not so good news for things like deer that have trouble moving around when you get too much snow. And then one of the biggest issues we're seeing here in southern Michigan is we have big wetlands on a lot of our state lands, our waterfowl managed areas, and they're kept wetlands with berms and pumps, and there's all this infrastructure that keeps it wet and allows us to manage the water tables in ways that don't screw up the crops on the surrounding farmer's lands. But as we get these bigger rain events, we're seeing more and more flooding, more and more damage to those, and then we have to repair them. And that gets to be a cost to us just to maintain that wildlife habitat. So that's something that we're seeing a lot of and we're having to engineer those things and rethink how and where we've managed for water on the landscape.

Holly:

Is there any concern about asynchrony of insect hatches and bird migration? Are we seeing any of those things occurring in Michigan?

Chris:

Yes, we're definitely seeing... The technical term for that is phenological mismatch. But as you mentioned, it's really just the timing is different. So what triggers insects to hatch is really how warm it is right now, where they're at. So if we get some warm days in the spring, certain insects are going to hatch. What triggers birds to migrate, especially the long distance migrants that is more about day length and what season it is. So they come back to the same spot at the same time year after year. And if it's warming, they might miss a key hatch of insects. And we have seen some of that here in Michigan. It's definitely a concern. We're also seeing that play out not just with birds, but with other insects and other things that rely on insects. So bats for instance, the timing of hatches, how many insects are available. One thing we are seeing as a global thing is that there are just fewer insects on the landscape, and climate change is one of those drivers also land use change and the use of pesticides and so on and so forth.

Hannah:

So what is the DNR doing or how are we responding to the issue of climate change?

Chris:

Well, part of what we're doing is tracking where different animals are and keeping track of what's going on in these areas. So we'll use things like eBird or iNaturalist in the data that's collected through citizen science, and we'll use that to see how is migration changing? Are we seeing new birds, new turtles, for example? And that helps us know what wildlife it is that we're managing. We're also adapting what we do for wildlife. I had mentioned waterfowl migrating at different times, and we don't get to set the dates for waterfowl just ourselves. It's actually a cooperative thing with other states and the Fish and Wildlife Service, but they look at climate change and change the dates slightly so that the timing of the waterfowl migration isn't completely out of sync with the hunting seasons.

And right now we're doing a systematic check of all of our water control infrastructure, all those dams and gates and pumps, especially in the northern part of the state. We have a surprisingly large amount of that infrastructure up there. And we're going through and systematically looking to see, are things damaged? Do they need to be repaired? Are they still providing the wildlife benefit that they used to be, or can we maybe remove them and rely on beavers, which weren't on the landscape when we were building a lot of these things? So we're doing a strategic analysis to try to size our wetland management given this big change that we're seeing in flooding regimes.

Holly:

Have there been any models done or any predictive work that we've done to look at what species might be impacted the most or which ones might be able to adapt? Has any of that work been done too?

Chris:

Yeah, that one, that work was done. I mean, it's ongoing. We're tracking what research is being done in the scientific community. But we did our own analysis internally in partnership with the Michigan Natural Features Inventory and looked at all of the game species that we manage and all of the non-game species that we manage. All the wildlife action plant species. Ended up being about 500 species. And we used a tool developed by NatureServe to look at each species and rank it on 27 different criteria of ways that might be sensitive to climate. And then that gave us a sense of which species are going to be most vulnerable, which species are going to be least vulnerable.

And then because we had those 27 factors, we could also turn it around and say, what kinds of climate threats are affecting the most species? So what we found was about 40% of our game species have some vulnerability to climate change and think species like snowshoe hair, deer, waterfowl, and then about 60% of our species of greatest conservation need are our action plan species. About 60% of those were also vulnerable to climate change. The big drivers for that were changes in hydrology. So it really is that increasing precipitation. Temperature was more of a minor threat to our species. It was really all about water and wetlands here in Michigan.

Holly:

So thinking about climate change, is there anything listeners can do to maybe either to help wildlife adapt to climate change or to help, I don't know, if we can prevent it at this point, but is there anything we can do to lessen the impact of climate change?

Chris:

Yeah. It's a difficult one because people often feel like what can I do? There's 7 billion people on the planet that share responsibility for this issue, and you're only going to have one 7000000000th of a effect in that sense. There are some things you can do for wildlife though that would be effective. And I recommend two things that most people can do. One of them is helping us and just helping what is in your area. A lot of people can only name five to 10 wildlife species that live around them in their neighborhood in nearby parks, but there are probably hundreds of species out there. So using something, I got into using an app this summer called Seek, S-E-E-K. It's developed with iNaturalist and it's a great little thing. You just point the phone camera at something with the Seek app open and it tells you, not always, but usually tells you what species it is, and that's a good way.

And then you can send those to iNaturalist and that helps us know which species are where on the landscape. And that's going to be useful for managing wildlife in a changing climate because it's going to be dynamic, it's going to be changing. The other thing that I often recommend to people is to either let a corner of their property, go wild, just stop mowing, stop doing anything to it, not the whole property because then you get citations for weed ordinance and things like that. You don't want to do that, but a little part of it, especially if you plant a little garden around the front of it, that's a good way to provide some wildlife habitat. And it creates stepping stones through the urban landscape for a surprising number of species. Migratory birds, small mammals, all of your insects and pollinators planting.

The other thing you can do if you don't want or can't leave something wild is just planting a small or large native plant garden, that's going to have that same effect. So those are two things that as species... Possums can move across the landscape really easily. But it's harder if you're a butterfly or something. You need to have those stopping points where there's nectar available. So that's something that's really helpful.

Hannah:

So are there any additional resources or where could people go to learn more or find more information on climate change and wildlife?

Chris:

So there are a couple different places to go for that information. If you're looking for information on climate change in particular, how is the climate changing or what is climate change? A good one online is what's called the Great Lakes Integrated Science and Assessment or GLISA. So it's like the name Lisa with a G on the front, you just look that up online. But they're part of NOAA, so part of a federal agency, but they're run through Michigan State and University of Michigan. So they have good local information and they take all of that difficult climate science and boil it down to something that everyone can understand. So I definitely recommend, if you're just interested in the climate part, that's a good one. Probably the place that I go for information on wildlife and what you can do as far as wildlife management would be the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science.

And they've done a lot of work of trying to translate all this climate adaptation literature and science into something that managers and everybody else can use and figure out. What would be a good tree to plant now in my neighborhood, what what's going to thrive over the next 200 years. It might be different than what is growing here right now, for example. So they've got tree lists and things like that on their website.

And I guess the last place that I'd look because it's got really good information, is the National Climate Assessment. And you can look that up. It's redone like every five years, and they take a scan of all of the climate change information across all the science that's been done in the last five years, and then boil it down into a document that's pretty easy to understand. And that's where I go and when I'm hearing stuff that I'm like, "Is that good science? Is that solid?" I want to go to someplace where it's really been vetted really well and the National Climate Assessment is vetted through universities, and so it's something that I trust.

Holly:

Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your insights into the complex topic of climate change. So thanks for being here.

Chris:

Yeah, my pleasure. Anytime

Announcer:

Michigan.gov/dnrtrails as your destination for trail maps, trail etiquette and trail closure information, trail information for biking, cross country skiing, horseback riding, hiking, off-road vehicle riding, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, and even water trails for kayaking and canoeing are available. While you're there, remember to check out information about pet-friendly recreation track chairs and the Iron Bell Trail, all available at michigan.gov/dnrtrails.

Hannah:

Now is your opportunity to win a Wildtalk Podcast camp mug. As a thank you to our listeners, we'll be giving away a mug or two every episode. Our June mug winners are Jason Vanheck and Linda Kirsty. Check your email as we'll be getting in touch with you soon. They answered the question, what Michigan bird species has an upside down brain? That bird species is the American woodcock. Now woodcock's eyes are extremely large and set high and far behind on its head, likely so that it has a panoramic vision to easily detect potential predators.

Now, as evolution pushed the woodcock large eyes farther back into its skull, something had to give anatomically. So a woodcock ear openings are now set under the eyes instead of behind, as in most birds and it's cerebellum. The part of the brain that handles muscular control is no longer where it is in most birds at the rear of the skull. It's ended up under the rest of the brain, just above the spinal column and adaptation to its spider has essentially turned the woodcock brain upside down. Bizarre little critter that is super fun to watch.

Now, to be entered into the drawing this month, you'll want to test your wildlife knowledge and answer our wildlife quiz question, what native plant species do karner blue butterflies lay their eggs on? Email your name and answer to us at dnrwildlifemichigan.gov to be entered for a chance to win a mug, be sure to include the subject line as mug me and submit your answers to us by July 15th. We'll announce winners and the answer on the next month's podcast. So be sure to listen in to see if you've won and for the next quiz question, good luck everyone.

Announcer:

Michigan Conservation Officers are working hard to protect and keep the outdoors safe for current and future generations. If you witness a natural resources violation, you can call or text the report, all poaching hotline, 24 hours a day at 1-802-927-800, or fill out the complaint form available at michigan.gov/wrap. If you would like more information on becoming a conservation officer, click on becomeacomichigan.gov/conservationofficers.

Hannah:

Well, thanks for joining us on the latest edition of the Wildtalk Podcast. Remember, if you have questions about wildlife or hunting, you can call 517-284-WILD or email dnrwildlife@michigan.gov. We'll see you back here in August for a fresh episode.

Announcer:

This has been The Wildtalk Podcast, your monthly podcast airing the first of each month in offering insights into the world of wildlife across the state of Michigan. You can reach the Wildlife Division at 517-284-9453 or dnr-wildlife@michigan.gov.