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December 2008 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: The year of getting closer Feature: Hungry as a bear Feature: Plight of the bumblebee Feature: The messenger The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte

Feature story The year of getting closer Top 10s: Animal stories Just a little bit closer Strange days Hello, goodbye Resources IUCN Red List World Wildlife Fund Canada Species at risk (SARA) Canada CG Photo Club: Field Reports

Stingray die-off ~ The sudden death of 41 cownose stingrays at the Calgary Zoo is still under investigation. Photo: istockphoto.com/Tammy Peluso

The toxin-laden pond attracted the ducks because other water sources along their flyway were frozen solid. Photo: istockphoto.com/Andy Gehrig

Ah … were it that simple. In a nutshell, this little anecdote reflects a pattern that has run through the past year’s most significant news reports about wildlife. Almost every one involves a point of contact between humans and animals. And the contact often ends badly for the animals. This is such a big country, but even here, it seems, there isn’t enough room for us all. Most of the incidents reveal an inherent theme: humans are encroaching on wildlife at every turn — some to preserve it, others to minimize its disturbance while still earning a living from its habitat, and still others to destroy it.

The former was the intention but the latter may have been the result at the Calgary Zoo in May. The zoo’s stingray pool, a hands-on educational exhibit where visitors could touch and feed the bottom-dwelling rays, had been operating for only three months. Suddenly and mysteriously, 41 of the 43 rays went into distress and died — 26 the first day and 15 more over the next several days. There was no mechanical failure in the life-support system, and independent lab testing showed that the water chemistry was acceptable. Toxicology tests were ordered, the police were called, and the exhibit was closed until further notice. At press time, the zoo had yet to announce any investigation results.

Could a foreign substance have been added to the water? “It is disturbing to think of this as a possibility,” says Cathy Gaviller, the zoo’s director of conservation, research and education. “We are not suggesting that criminal activity led to the ray deaths. While we have not been able to rule out that possibility, there are other potential causes that cannot be excluded.”

Disturbing, but possible. What kind of malicious mind would do such a thing?

Salmon by the million ~ By 1900, overfishing, farming and development had wiped out Atlantic salmon in Lake Ontario. Two years ago, the Ontario government, anglers, conservationists and corporations launched Bring Back the Salmon, a program to release fry, fingerlings and yearlings into three Lake Ontario tributaries. In May, the millionth salmon was released in the Credit River near Brampton. The 15-year goal is a self-sustaining population. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Timothy Knepp

Flawed logistics, not malice, were apparently to blame in the death of 500 migrating mallards that landed on a partly frozen Syncrude oil-sands waste pond north of Fort McMurray, Alta., at the end of April. Open water on the three-kilometre-wide oil-and-toxin-laden pond attracted the ducks because other water sources along their flyway were frozen solid in an unusually cold spring. And, because of the harsh weather, noisemakers, scarecrows and other deterrents had not yet been installed. Heavily coated with oil, five in the flock were saved, thanks to the efforts of volunteers at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Society of Edmonton. The incident did nothing to improve the reputation of Alberta’s oil industry and government in the eyes of the environmentally concerned worldwide. Indeed, in a coincidental gesture just four days earlier, Greenpeace activists had crashed a fundraising dinner speech by Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and unfurled a banner reading, “$telmach: the best Premier oil money can buy.”

The relationship between wildlife and the economy could not have been more clearly illustrated when, on May 14, the polar bear became a threatened species under the United States Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Under the ESA, a “threatened” species is at risk of becoming “endangered” within the foreseeable future in all or a significant portion of its range, while an “endangered” species is at risk of going extinct in all or a significant portion of its range. Canada, with two-thirds of the world’s population, lists the polar bear as a species of “special concern.” A memorandum of understanding signed by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne and Canada’s Minister of the Environment John Baird promises the conservation and management of polar bear populations shared by the United States and Canada.

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