Deer Are Expanding North. That Could Hurt Some Species Like Boreal Caribou

This episode explores the ecological implications of white-tailed deer expanding their range northward and its potential impact on species like the boreal caribou.

1. White-tailed deer are expanding their range due to warmer climates and human land use, though climate has the more substantial impact.
2. This expansion threatens boreal caribou by introducing more predators, like wolves, into their habitats.
3. Innovative research is ongoing to mitigate human impact on ecosystems, such as developing biodegradable plastics and agriculture in space.
4. Understanding the factors driving deer expansion is crucial for effective wildlife conservation and land restoration.
5. The episode also touches on broader environmental issues and scientific innovations, linking terrestrial and extraterrestrial ecological strategies.

1: Introduction

The hosts introduce the topic of wildlife movement and its ecological impacts, along with other scientific news. Emily Kwong: "We're going to share three science stories that have caught our attention."

2: The Expanding Range of White-tailed Deer

Detailed discussion on how and why white-tailed deer are moving north, including the potential consequences for boreal caribou. Melanie Dickey: "Understanding what's driving deer expansion will help us protect wildlife like caribou."

3: Innovative Plastics and Intercropping

Exploration of scientific innovations like biodegradable plastics and growing crops in simulated Martian soil. Adam Feister: "We really need to think about effective life cycles of these polymers."

1. Support wildlife conservation efforts to mitigate the impact of expanding deer populations.
2. Reduce plastic usage and support innovations in biodegradable materials to lessen environmental impact.
3. Advocate for and participate in scientific research that seeks to understand and solve ecological challenges.
4. Stay informed about local wildlife and environmental issues to participate more actively in community decisions.
5. Encourage local and national policies that focus on sustainable development and conservation.

Wildlife ecologists have seen white-tailed deer expanding their range in North America over many decades. And since the early-2000s these deer have moved north into the boreal forests of western Canada. These forests are full of spruce and pine trees, sandy soil and freezing winters with lots of snow. They can be a harsh winter wonderland. And ecologists haven't known whether a warmer climate in these forests or human land development might be driving the deer north. A recent study tries to disentangle these factors – and finds that a warming climate seems to play the most significant role in the movement of deer.

People

Emily Kwong, Juana Summers, Regina Barber, Melanie Dickey, Adam Feister

Content Warnings:

None

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Emily Kwong
You're listening to short wave from NPR.

Hey, short wavers. Emily Kwong here with two beloved colleagues for our regular roundup of science news. We got Juana Summers with us. Hello.

Juana Summers
Hey. Thanks for having me back. Hey.

Emily Kwong
And news roundup veteran champion MVP Regina Barber.

Regina Barber
Thank you.

Emily Kwong
Yes, we bowed down. Okay, as you both know, we're gonna share three science stories in the news that have caught our attention recently.

Juana Summers
I have heard one of the stories is about growing food in Mars.

Emily Kwong
Yes. We have another about how to build a plastic that can break itself down.

Regina Barber
And lastly, we have a story about white tailed deer and how they're expanding throughout Canada.

Emily Kwong
All that on this episode of Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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Emily Kwong
All right, Juana, as our guest, which topic do you want to start with? What speaks to you the most?

Juana Summers
I mean, as a good steward of the environment, I feel like I've got to hear about these plastics. It sounds a little too good to be true.

Emily Kwong
Okay, just fair warning, this is just a pilot study. It was published in the journal Nature Communications this week. But it is exciting because plastics are a global problem. Juana. Right. Like according to the EPA, less than 10% of us plastic waste has been recycled.

Regina Barber
Ouch.

Emily Kwong
Plastics also take decades to decompose. Like, they never truly go away. They just break down into smaller and smaller pieces.

Juana Summers
And if I remember correctly, these are called microplastics.

Emily Kwong
Right?

Regina Barber
So what if I told you that there are these researchers that found a way to embed something special in the plastic to help break it down more quickly? Guess what it is.

Juana Summers
I really should have paid more attention in science class. You gotta tell me.

Emily Kwong
Well, help you. It's microbes, microbes that love to eat this kind of plastic called polyurethanes that are found in all kinds of things. Watch bands, phone cases, and footwear.

Juana Summers
Okay, go on.

Regina Barber
To break down this polyurethane, the researchers identified a strain of bacteria which they then engineered to withstand extreme high temperatures so that the bacteria could survive the manufacturing process.

Emily Kwong
And the final product, this microbes plus plastic construction. It looked kind of like linguine pasta when it came out. It was this, like, long, yellowish strip, and the researchers then put it directly into compost, causing the microbes to wake up and do their thing.

Juana Summers
To eat the plastic?

Emily Kwong
Yes. And after only five months, more than 90% of the plastic had degraded.

Juana
Wow.

Emily Kwong
Adam Feister, researcher on the study, was pretty pleased with that result.

Adam Feister
As our consumption of plastic skyrockets and is expected to continue to do so, we really need to think about effective life cycles of these polymers, what that time of use is, and then what the time of breakdown is.

Juana Summers
That's really interesting. So here's a question. Am I going to be seeing micro plastic in my shoes anytime soon?

Emily Kwong
Not anytime soon. Plastics experts I spoke to had a lot of follow up questions for these researchers. They wanted to know things like, would a product like this break down in a landfill as easily as it did in a lab?

Or is this microplastic better than, say, plant based alternatives already on the market? Still, it is promising. The team wants to do more tests applying this methodology to other kinds of plastic to ultimately tackle the global plastic pollution problem. Worthy goal, for sure.

Juana Summers
But speaking of innovation, Gina, I understand you've got a story about growing crops in space.

Regina Barber
Yes, I do. And growing food in space is, like, really crucial to future space exploration, because bringing cargo from Earth is way too expensive. So scientists like Rebecca gonsalves are looking at growing tomatoes, peas, and carrots in Mars like soil called Mars regolith right here on Earth.

Rebecca Gonsalves
We don't need to wait until there's actual colony on Mars. Just start researching with actual Mars regulates, like, we can get there within, like, 90% of the way. Done already.

Juana Summers
Okay, hold up a second. Earth does not have martian soil. At least that I'm aware of. So how exactly did they grow these plants?

Emily Kwong
Yeah.

Regina Barber
So, scientists know from Mars rovers what Mars soil is like, and they mixed up a simulation of that using materials from hawaiian volcanoes and the Mojave desert.

Emily Kwong
And, like the martian soil, this regolith soil doesn't have a lot of nutrients that plants need. It doesn't have any water. It doesn't have any organic material for them to feed on.

Juana Summers
Sounds like some pretty sad soils.

Emily Kwong
Mars is harsh, juana.

Juana Summers
Okay, so tell us, what did they do with the soil?

Regina Barber
Well, we already know that we can grow stuff in this regolith, and they experimented with this technique called intercropping, which is an ideal growing method when resources are limited. The ancient Maya used it to grow the three sisters, corn, beans, and squash. The corn providing a structure for the beans. And the bottom there was squash, where leaves would provide shade to the roots to, like, help maintain soil moisture.

Juana Summers
Okay, so using this intercropping technique for the study, what did they find? Yeah.

Emily Kwong
So, in this martian like soil, intercropping did help. It helped the tomatoes grow better when they were grown with peas and carrots. Unfortunately, though, the peas and carrots didn't do as well. The study was published in PLOS one this week.

Juana Summers
Helpful for me. I like tomatoes better anyway.

Emily Kwong
Tomato salads on Mars. Here we go.

Juana Summers
Love it. So, I mean, this technique seems to help with some crops, but aren't there.

Regina Barber
A whole lot of other variables to.

Juana Summers
Consider when you're growing stuff in space? Say, like, I don't know, lower gravity?

Regina Barber
Well, Rebecca isn't worried about lower gravity specifically because, like, tomatoes are already grown in microgravity in the International space Station. But Amy Grundin, another microbiologist not on the study, mentioned, there are other growth and safety factors that need to be looked at, like metals and other toxins in the mars surface. But she thinks this study has a lot of promise.

Juana Summers
Interesting. All right, let's move on to our last story. I've heard that deer are moving north. Tell me what that's about.

Regina Barber
Yeah, so, wildlife ecologists have seen white tailed deer expanding their range in North America over many decades. And since the early two thousands, they've moved north into the boreal forests of western Canada. And these forests are full of, like, spruce and pine trees, sandy soil, freezing winters with a lot of snow. So living there can be, like, really harsh.

Juana Summers
I don't know about y'all, but that does not exactly sound like a place I want to live. So why are these deer moving there?

Regina Barber
It's kind of like a mystery, because is it the warmer climate in these forests that's happening recently, or is it human development that might be pushing them up? So Melanie Dickey, a wildlife biologist at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, she tried to disentangle these two things by hiding 300 cameras in western Canada. And she collected data for five years. And then her team used these images to estimate the number of white tailed deer there.

Emily Kwong
Now, the beauty of this setup, Juana, is that the team placed these cameras along two axes. Some were north to south, where the winters got more intense. As you moved north, some of the cameras were east to west, where the further you move west, the more human disturbance there is. So they were able to look at both factors.

Juana Summers
And what did they find?

Regina Barber
Well, they found that, like a warming climate seemed to play the most significant role in the movement of deer, although human land use was a smaller factor. And they published all of these results last week in the journal Global Change Biology.

Juana Summers
Okay. And I don't want to be a hater here, but why does it matter if the deer are moving into these new areas?

Emily Kwong
No, fair question. Fair question. Okay. Melanie described these deer as an invasive species. With the deer come more predators like wolves. And while the deer are able to cope with the wolves, other species like the boreal caribou are not. So Melanie says these caribous, they have evolved to mostly just avoid areas with.

Juana Summers
A lot of predators.

Emily Kwong
They're not equipped to handle these wolves at all.

Regina Barber
And she also says that the deer is just like one piece of the puzzle for caribou. But having more information about what exactly is driving the deer expansion will help her and other researchers find out where to start when it comes to restoring land and protecting wildlife like Caribbean.

Emily Kwong
Juana, thank you so much for hanging out.

Juana Summers
Thank you.

Regina Barber
You can also catch Juana on consider this NPR's afternoon news podcast.

Emily Kwong
Before we head out, a quick shout out to our short wave plus listeners.

We appreciate you, and we thank you for being a subscriber. Short wave plus honestly helps support our show. So if you're a regular listener, we would love for you to join so you can enjoy the show without support sponsor interruptions. Find out more at plus dot npr.org shortwave.

Regina Barber
This episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliotta.

Emily Kwong
Me, Regina and Rachel Carlson checked the facts, and the audio. Engineers were Ted Mebane and Patrick Murray. I'm Emily Kwong.

Regina Barber
And I'm Regina Barber.

Emily Kwong
Thank you for listening to short wave from NPR.

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Juana
Is it possible to engineer our way out of the climate crisis? Some entrepreneurs want to shoot particles into the stratosphere to combat global warming. Experts say regulations on this technology aren't keeping up the world of solar geoengineering. On the latest episode of the Sunday Story from NPR's up first podcast.