Celebrating 25 Years of Innovative Wildlife Science
By Deborah McKew, BRI Communications Director
On the remote island of Rota, a tiny dot in the vastness of Oceania, a group of field biologists from distant places join forces each year to study threatened and endangered species of bats, indigenous crows, and other wildlife. In 2017, New Zealand native and bat specialist Josh Guilbert started full-time research on the “Friendly Island.” That first year, he met two seasonal volunteers who had previously worked at a wildlife research group in Maine—Biodiversity Research Institute. Josh made a mental note of this organization and over the next few years, BRI rose to his consciousness every so often. After five-years working on the tropical island, Josh knew he needed to do more to help curtail the environmental crisis. His search for a new position led him to the other side of the world, finding BRI just when he was needed. He relocated to Maine to steer the Institute’s mammal program, adding another critical thread to BRI’s story.
Creating a tapestry of interconnecting threads
The connection Josh made on that spit of land in the Northern Mariana Islands was no accident. Over the past 25 years, BRI’s reach has stretched across oceans and continents. This expansion is due in no small part because of David Evers, Ph.D., BRI’s founder, executive director, and chief scientist, whose special gifts include a compelling ability to bring people together to get the job done. Josh is one of many scientists eager to contribute to the research BRI is conducting around the world.
In essence, BRI began with the capture of a Common Loon at Seney National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan one summer night in 1989—Evers, then a graduate student, spent 12 fruitless nights canoeing on Seney’s remote waters. Wrapped in darkness, his crew trained a searchlight along the shoreline for hours each night, slowly scanning the water for loons. Swift and intelligent, these deep divers eluded them, until Evers spotted a female with its young. The fragile “peenting” cry of the chick triggered an idea—the young biologist began mimicking the sound. Immediately, the adult loon swam toward his voice, right up to the boat. The capture and sampling was quick and purposeful.
That singular event opened opportunities for wildlife biologists to conduct demographic, behavioral, and contaminant studies on the iconic bird Sigurd Olsen described as a “symbol of wildness.” Knowledge gained that summer served as the basis for BRI’s mission—to conduct scientific investigations to better understand ecological health through the lens of animals. If the air, water, and landscape are healthy, wildlife and humans share in that vitality.
Once the scientific community learned there was a reliable method for capturing loons, requests for blood samples began to arrive at Evers’ door. A veterinarian at Michigan State University taught the biologist how to draw blood from loons, which began the researcher’s studies on mercury contamination in loons. He spent most of the next decade capturing, sampling, and color-marking loons across North America, always with a high respect for the individual animal, teaching his methods to others along the way.
Loon capture not only provided a way to assess contaminant levels in lakes and waterways, it later served as a means to determine how mercury pollution affects behavior and reproduction. The Common Loon is now considered the flagship wildlife species for mercury monitoring and policymaking in the U.S. and Canada.
“Catching loons and studying mercury contamination were at the core of BRI’s early work,” says Evers. “The more we learned, the more I felt a responsibility to continue to expand this work to encompass other at-risk wildlife.”
BRI scientists soon realized that any wildlife feeding on the same lakes could be at risk for contamination. As these researchers found ways to expand the mercury work to include a variety of species, the research programs began to build. And as programs grew, Evers’ foundational mercury studies in North America led to an extraordinary moment for BRI when he stood at a critical intersection where science informs policy. In 2013, BRI was invited to participate and consult on the elements of the UN’s new international mercury treaty. That event was BRI’s gateway to the world, literally. Since then, the organization, now a technical advisor and executing agency for the United Nations Environment Programme, has conducted mercury studies in more than 100 countries, building ever deeper and broader connections in the urgent fight to combat mercury’s impact on wildlife, biological diversity, and ultimately human health through global climate change.
First and foremost — gathering information with integrity
Much of BRI’s research depends upon working hands-on with wildlife in the field. Research staff specialize in the live capture and sampling of a broad range of taxa including invertebrates, fish, birds, and mammals. Successful captures require ingenuity as well as skill. In the field, often in remote locations and under harsh conditions, BRI biologists rely on a broad range of traditional capture techniques, often developing new methods specific to the ecosystem or habitat of the study species. For most, their work is not a job, but a deliberate way of life.
The successful management of many species relies on a sound understanding of their local and/or annual movements, and the timing of those movements. When do they arrive? How long do they stay? What habitats are most important? Where do they feed? Where do they raise their young? When do they leave? Where do they go? Answering these types of questions can help define the potential exposure of a species to specific environmental stressors, identify ways to improve their reproductive success and survival, or indicate how best to monitor them.
Color marking allows field staff to identify individual animals from a distance, without the need to recapture them. Color marking is ideal for species such as loons, which are large, long-lived birds that use open habitats and return to similar breeding and wintering areas each year.
With advances in computer miniaturization, tracking wildlife has become considerably more high tech in recent years with radio transmitters, nanotags, geolocators, cellular tracking technologies, GPS tags, and satellite transmitters. Using a variety of survey and monitoring techniques, BRI researchers assess wildlife health issues, estimate population sizes or trends, describe distributions, and identify responses to climate change. “From decades of experience, we also know that the implementation of successful surveys and monitoring projects relies on clear research objectives, based on a thorough understanding of the issues and exactly how data will be used to inform decision making and ecosystem management,” says Evers.
In addition to gathering data in the field, BRI operates three research laboratories in its Maine headquarters including:
- The toxicology lab is used to analyze tissue samples (feather, fur, blood, muscle, liver, talon tips, fish, and eggs) for total mercury and lead. BRI is also instrumental in helping establish regional hubs around the globe to better facilitate the study of this toxin in sensitive areas. The first of these opened in the Caribbean, in Antiqua and Barbuda, in 2021. A second regional hub will begin operation in west-central Africa in Gabon in 2023.
- The wildlife health and pathology lab includes a necropsy facility for post-mortem examination of wildlife and enables in-house processing of samples for routine health evaluation such as hematology and parasite examination.
- A new wildlife forensics lab provides swift and reliable identification of dead and injured birds and bats and reflects BRI’s extensive specimen reference collection.
Gaining insight into ecological processes
Ecosystems, the foundations upon which life is structured and interconnected, are complex and ever-changing. To synthesize the vast amount of information that is available through its field and lab research, BRI developed the quantitative wildlife ecology research lab (QWERL) using sophisticated analytical methods such as statistical data integration, species distribution models, and movement modeling to answer critical ecological questions. Insight gained is communicated to appropriate audiences using a variety of visual and descriptive tools (e.g., maps, graphs, tables).
A critical mission—assessing emerging threats
Over the years, BRI’s research capabilities have grown in response to pressing ecological issues, from the ability to study the natural history of loons to the development of new technologies that enable researchers to predict risks due to climate change and human development. The Institute has evolved into four distinct Centers of Study that currently oversee 15 programs across taxa, ecosystems, and ecological issues: 1) Mercury Studies and Policy (2009); 2) Waterbird Studies (2011); 3) Research on Offshore Wind and the Environment (2021); and 4) Climate Change and Conservation (2022).
“The biggest threat to humankind is climate change,” says Evers. “I am always asking the question: How can we, as an organization, help mitigate climate change? Answering that question naturally leads our teams to each next step.”
BRI’s commitment to provide clear and accurate scientific information to help inform decision makers is demonstrated by their work related to the renewable energy industry. Since 1994, BRI biologists began and continue to conduct studies to help power companies meet the environmental requirements of regional agencies and states as overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). BRI now manages breeding Common Loon populations on 10 reservoirs and has been monitoring reproductive success using rafts and color-marked individuals for more than 25 years.
In 2011, BRI initiated its wildlife and renewable energy program in response to rapid advances in renewable energy development. Ecological assessments are critical for identifying sensitive habitats, the presence of and use by rare, threatened, and endangered species, and concentrations of migrants. The program grew to encompass three major energy sectors—hydropower, wind power, and solar energy.
BRI’s mid-Atlantic baseline study (2012-14) positioned the Institute as a leader in assessing the use of offshore areas by wildlife. The results of that study informed the siting and permitting of offshore wind power facilities, both in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Great Lakes.
As renewable energy sectors in the United States continue to grow, the demand for natural resources consulting services remains high. “BRI has long prioritized the need to advance emerging natural resource sciences and we are now pairing that with practical applications. We have initiated a new permitting and compliance program specifically to increase our capacity to meet local, regional, and continental demands for renewable energy development services,” says Evers.
Collective research empowers deeper understanding
The environmental challenges we face today require more and better science to identify and assess emerging threats, and innovative technology to identify and recommend solutions. BRI recognizes the need to provide results of their scientific research to a wide audience. They provide unbiased scientific information to policymakers and resource managers that helps inform critical decisions regarding environmental health and integrity.
“BRI is a conservation organization that has been working for nearly three decades to reduce contaminants in the environment and has now expanded efforts to focus on broader issues like climate change,” as stated by Tim Tear, Ph.D., director of BRI’s Center for Conservation and Climate Change. This new Center encompasses climate change research that combines the resources of BRI’s other programs to conduct studies that cross geographic boundaries and integrate taxonomic groups. The strength of this collective work contributes to the ongoing dialogue about climate change and informs the actions needed to address it. For example, BRI is forging new ground in developing new carbon projects in grasslands and savannahs across parts of eastern Africa. The goal is to generate soil carbon credits that can be used for offsetting the use of fossil fuels. It is our mission that these projects set high standards for improving indigenous community sustainability while enhancing biological diversity.
Sharing knowledge to further conservation
The plant life, wildlife, and human life that live on this planet are intricately connected in the ecosystems in which they exist. No one species is more or less important as each are individual threads in the tapestry of life.
The long-term, meaningful connections Evers makes with other leading scientists, regional, national, and international government agencies, nonprofits, and universities help us understand environmental effects on a global scale. Josh Guilbert, Tim Tear, and other BRI scientists bring specialized expertise that contribute to the bank of knowledge we collect as an organization.
“Our philosophy of hope,” says Evers, “is that this knowledge provides small but important steps toward the ultimate goal of a sustainable world, one that retains intact ecosystems with their inherent biological diversity.”
BRI biologists maintain strong adherence to protocols that ensure the welfare of the animals they study, and obtain appropriate permits.
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On the Wings of Seabirds: Julia Gulka’s Work at BRI
By Alyssa Soucy, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maine
Julia Gulka tackles emerging environmental issues in an office surrounded by photographs, illustrations, and personal watercolor paintings of the birds she studies and the places she has traveled. Early in her career, a seasonal field position on an island off the coast of Maine sparked her interest in seabirds. Spending several consecutive summers among the open meadows, boulder fields, and granite ledges, she was immersed in the world of seabirds that found their home on the island. While closely watching and handling Arctic and Common Terns, Black Guillemots, Razorbills, Common Murres, and Atlantic Puffins, she became enamored with their resilient nature. Julia’s initial fascination with seabirds remains evident as she describes their lure, “They travel ridiculously long distances, and they are samplers of the marine systems, so you can gain a lot of information about the whole system from them…they’re also just really fun to work on!” Today, Julia works as a marine biologist at BRI. Seabirds continue to be an inspiration, the common thread that connects her to different places, people, and research projects.
That first field job launched a series of diverse experiences for Julia on both coasts of the U.S., to the northeast Newfoundland coast in Canada, and across the globe to Australia, before she joined BRI four years ago. As part of BRI’s Wildlife and Renewable Energy program, Julia saw an opportunity to further explore her interest in seabirds, while continuing to broaden her knowledge of other research areas in her field, such as offshore wind development.
Since starting at BRI, Julia has been engaging with offshore wind energy stakeholders in various efforts to minimize wildlife impacts. Alongside a team of BRI researchers, she works with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to provide critical information that informs renewable energy development and research. Each stakeholder, whether they work for an offshore wind developer, environmental nonprofit, or state or federal agency, brings to the table their own views. Recently, Julia has been helping to synthesize hundreds and hundreds of potential research topics, derived from stakeholder input, into focused priorities that can then be implemented to improve our understanding of the interactions between offshore wind energy development and wildlife. The offshore wind aspect of Julia’s work is relatively new to her; however, she finds the opportunity to learn more about the growing industry both interesting and important. On any given workday, you can find Julia in her office managing multiple screens as she collates information, analyzes data, and organizes stakeholder meetings.
In addition to the offshore wind energy aspect of Julia’s work, she continues to go out into the field to survey birds any chance she gets. “I particularly like the work that includes handling and catching the birds,” says Julia. “It’s just fun to be out somewhere new, travel a bit—and I love being outside.” The information she and other BRI staff collect in the field become part of large datasets integral to data analysis. Whether it is data collected from wildlife contaminant sampling or bird movement patterns discovered through satellite transmitter tags, researchers use the large datasets to explore a variety of questions. While Julia enjoys the data collection aspect of her work, she also loves to revisit that data through analysis. Doing so allows her to answer interesting questions such as: what are the spatial relationships between seabirds and the forage fish that they prey on?
As an integral member of BRI’s research team, Julia is equipped with a diverse skill set and sense of excitement as she continues to look forward to new projects. From working with the stakeholder group for offshore wind energy development to following her passions for seabirds in fieldwork and data analysis, Julia’s career allows her to study her interests in a way that engages others, informs policy, and helps the wildlife she is so passionate about. “Working for BRI,” says Julia, “allows me to carry on a variety of fascinating projects that not only contribute to science, but also conservation and our fight against climate change.”
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The Nurturing Nature of Nature
By Alyssa Soucy, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maine
As the spotlight cuts across the lake, intersecting with the horizon beyond, I saw the trio of Common Loons as only white floating specks surrounded by darkness. Almost like a mirage, they appeared through the fog and the gnats swirling off the surface of the water. I fixed the beam of light on one of the chicks who looked serenely unaware of our approaching boat. My body and mind launched into the sole purpose of illuminating that chick as Carl Brown, BRI’s field biologist leading this loon translocation effort, swung a net over the side of the boat. Under the starry sky that evening, we successfully captured a Common Loon chick for safe relocation and release.
Iain Stenhouse, field biologist and director of BRI’s Marine Bird Program, is accustomed to experiencing the profoundly mesmerizing, immersive feelings that arise when working closely with wildlife. Whether on a boat off the coast of Maine tracking families of Common Eiders, or surrounded by an Arctic Tern colony in Greenland, Stenhouse is at home in the wild working with the birds. In fact, as he recalls tracking these terns, a species that claim the longest migration distance on record, he becomes awakened by the connection he has with them. “There’s not much to an Arctic Tern, it’s almost all feathers. And, to know that this bird, under its own steam, has been to Antarctica and back again since you last saw it, and it doesn’t look any different is just breathtaking.” Stenhouse describes the feeling he has when holding birds as being unlike any other, “I’ve never known anything that had that same kind of rush of excitement and fascination and just awe.”
BRI’s field biologists seek out opportunities that put them into close contact with the natural world. In fact, those encounters captivate, awaken, and spark their motivation and passion. Evan Adams, BRI’s director of the Quantitative Wildlife Ecology Research Lab, was drawn to this career after a trip to Costa Rica. Adams recounts, “There’s a hummingbird called the Violet Sabrewing. You could hear them as they flew by you because they sounded like a Harley Davidson, you didn’t even have to look. And I thought that that was super cool, and when returned home, I thought, ‘I want to study birds’—that was kind of it.”
Helen Yurek, another BRI wildlife biologist, spends many days and nights in remote places. “You just see really cool things; you see animals doing things that you might not have otherwise.” Sarah Dodgin, an ecological analyst for BRI, recently spotted an elusive Upland Sandpiper during fieldwork. She exclaims, “They ran out right in front of the truck and I was like ‘Oh, my gosh, here you are!’ It was a cool feeling.” Similar to my experience working with the loons, and Stenhouse’s in Greenland with Arctic Terns diving overhead, each of us recognizes that sense of awe and wholeness we feel when we are connected with the world around us.
Through our own experiences we are all describing a concept that psychologists have been studying for decades. The term connectedness to nature refers to the emotional and cognitive connections we have with the natural world. In recent years, interest in the relationship between nature and human well-being has exploded. A growing trend of “park prescriptions” involves doctors encouraging patients to spend time outdoors. Spending time in close contact with nature can lead to positive health outcomes, including lower rates of depression and anxiety, anger and fatigue, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Experimental studies have shown that being outside can even improve working memory and task performance, as well as invoke feelings of restorativeness and increase happiness. As Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring, “There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” It is in this personal relationship with nature that we can find solace.
Questions remain as to why spending time in nature may lead to positive health outcomes. Some answers lie in the specific chemical and biological components contained within natural environments. While others turn to the field of psychology. For example, people experience a great sense of awe in response to nature. The awe and fascination that Stenhouse describes when working closely with birds conveys a sense of fulfillment, connection, and restorativeness. As he notes, “Modern living doesn’t provide many real moments anymore. That moment—feeling that little heartbeat against your fingertips and the warmth of another little creature in the world—is very cool.” The Biophilia Hypothesis further suggests that throughout much of our two-million-year evolutionary history, humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, coexisting with the natural world. A connection with nature, or “biophilia,” developed and became integral to human survival. A connection to nature then may be rooted in our connection to our ancestral selves.
Weeks later, when remembering the feel of the loon’s heartbeat and the sound of its haunting call, I am transported back to that night, back to that connection I felt with the loons and the lake, and the sense of purpose that enveloped me. As a social psychologist, I study people. Rarely do I have experiences that bring me in such close physical contact with wildlife; yet, it has taken only that one night to realize that there really is no other feeling like it.
Social psychologists continue to document feelings of a connectedness to nature that have profound effects on behaviors, attitudes, and health. In doing so, they offer solutions that address both human and environmental well-being by recognizing the interconnections between the two. Whether you experience nature in a remote place while handling an Arctic Tern, out on a lake on a clear summer night surrounded by the calls of loons, or in the local community forest during your weekly walk, a connection and restoration is there waiting for you. As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”
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The Winds of Change
By Eleanor Eckel, BRI’s Communications Coordinator
A coyote’s lone cry punctuated the darkness as the two biologists hiked the wooded trail, parkas tightly zipped against the chill October night. They had been trekking this route every hour since dusk, winding their way to the mist nets they had set up earlier in the day. Once at a net, they slowly walked along its 36-foot length. When they discovered a northern saw-whet owl lying passively in one of the net pockets, they worked quickly, expertly untangling, banding, sampling, and measuring the tiny raptor in just minutes.
Since 2009, BRI wildlife biologist Kate Williams and others have studied the migration and movement patterns of birds and bats over the Gulf of Maine and elsewhere on the Atlantic coast. BRI biologists documented that migratory owls fly over open water, taking advantage of islands as stopover sites, and that migratory falcons will fly hundreds of miles out over the Atlantic on their way south to the Caribbean and South America. This new information initiated important discussions about how migrating birds and bats might be affected by offshore structures, such as wind turbines.
Careful siting of renewable energy development seems to play a key role in minimizing impacts to wildlife, but this requires detailed knowledge of where animals breed, winter, and migrate. To address this need, BRI established a wildlife and renewable energy program in 2009, which has evolved over the past 12 years into BRI’s Center for Research on Offshore Wind and the Environment (CROWE). Offshore wind energy is an essential component of plans to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and mitigate the effects of climate change on wildlife and ecosystems. According to the 2022 International Panel on Climate Change report, it is now “unequivocal” that human influence has warmed the atmosphere. Fossil fuel use has significantly contributed to the acceleration of climate change impacts, and now the “scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole – and the present state of many aspects of the climate system – are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.” A path forward involves increased renewable energy technology to limit cumulative CO2 emissions.
However, as with other energy sources, offshore wind can also present risks to wildlife and their environment. BRI biologists continue to work to understand wildlife distributions and movements and to identify ways to minimize risks from offshore wind energy development.
CROWE director Kate Williams recognizes the need for rapid, renewable energy development as well as thorough wildlife risk assessments and monitoring. “We are trying to figure out how to mitigate sort of, local scale impacts to wildlife from these developments…but trying to figure out how to minimize that as much as possible for this sort of greater good of trying to figure out how to mitigate climate change to the point that we’re not going to see sort of large-scale extinctions, which is what they’re predicting right now.”
Specific research conducted by BRI staff intended to determine potential risks to wildlife from offshore wind development include bird field studies and assessments for seabirds, waterfowl, shorebirds, songbirds, and raptors, acoustic studies, transmitter deployment and tracking, observational surveys (vessel- and plane-based), digital aerial surveys, stakeholder engagement and coordination, and development of siting strategies and monitoring and mitigation plans.
As with all BRI research centers and programs, the offshore wind team utilizes innovative science and cutting-edge technology to provide accurate information. High-definition digital aerial surveys involve survey planes with an array of cameras that point down to the ocean’s surface which can identify species seen in the video. Aerial surveys allow researchers to determine which species are most at risk in areas designated for proposed wind arrays, and that information can be passed on to decision makers and developers. BRI also houses a Quantitative Wildlife Ecology Research Laboratory (QWERL) that provides large scale population and distribution models that help understand population dynamics in or near offshore wind arrays. Williams notes, “it’s a rare skillset to have that degree of mathematical expertise and also have the ecological expertise to understand how to apply it.” Cutting-edge science, combined with a wide range of ecological expertise, will continue to guide BRI’s wind energy research to provide accurate information to stakeholders and policy makers.
