Emilee Hardesty, wildlife management consultant for the Ohio Division of Wildlife. Aug. 7, 2021 Ohio wildlife professionals work day in and day out to help ensure healthy, thriving ecosystems for both animals and people. For the OWMA’s first manager spotlight, we caught up with Emilee Hardesty, a wildlife management consultant for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife. In her job, Hardesty works with landowners across central Ohio to help them establish, improve and maintain wildlife habitat. Read the interview below. Could you give us some background about your educat ..read more

A tri-colored bat (Perimyotis subflavus) in Coshocton County, Ohio. Image taken by Mattea Lewis. July 18, 2021 Bats in North America have been dealing with their own infectious disease called white-nose syndrome — and it’s had a much higher death rate than COVID-19 in humans. Caused by a non-native fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, white-nose syndrome has devastated Ohio’s bat populations since spreading to the state in 2011, said former Ohio Division of Wildlife Technician Sarah Stankavich. “The fungus likes the cold, so it actually grows on the bodies of the bats when they’re hibernating ..read more

A Blanding’s turtle (Emydoidea blandingii). Image courtesy Corey Wycoff and the Toledo Zoo. July 11, 2021 Having roamed the Earth for around 200 million years — including through the last mass extinction event — turtles appear to have evolution and survival on their side. But turtles now face unprecedented challenges in the familiar tunes of habitat loss, human encroachment and overexploitation. They are one of the most threatened taxa on the planet, with about 60% of all turtle and tortoise species at risk of extinction. Unfortunately, the story is the same for the Blanding’s turtle, a fres ..read more

Ohio University students Sam Riggs, Jacob Jackson, Ashlynn Canode, Marissa Dyck (+Sadie) and Chase Hull July 5, 2021 Immersed in the forested wilderness of southeast Ohio, biology PhD student at Ohio University Marissa Dyck is spending her summer gathering clues about Ohio’s bobcat and coyote populations. Both medium-sized carnivores, bobcats and coyotes eat much of the same prey, such as rodents, squirrels and rabbits, and prefer similar habitats including forests and grasslands, said Dyck, a member of Ohio University professor Viorel Popescu’s conservation biology lab. Although both animals ..read more

A roadside pollinator habitat established by the Ohio Department of Transportation. Image courtesy Scott Lucas. June 25, 2021 Pollinators like bees, butterflies, beetles, birds and some mammals provide a critically essential ecosystem service — they help plants reproduce. Without them, we’d lose about a third of the global food supply. Yet pollinators have been declining over the past several decades, with scientists pointing to issues like habitat destruction, climate change and pesticide use. As of 2020, more than 70 pollinator species native to the U.S. are listed as endangered or threaten ..read more

An oblong wool carder bee (Anthidium oblongatum) on a coreopsis plant. Photo by Denise Blough. June 24, 2021 Small actions can make a big difference for pollinators, which are critical to life on Earth and increasingly challenged by habitat loss, pesticide use and other threats. To celebrate and learn about the important environmental role that pollinators play, Ohioans of all ages visited the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens on June 19 for the park’s annual Pollinator Palooza, which kicked off Pollinator Week (June 21-27, 2021). Visitors met with entomologists, observed bees ..read more

A bobcat (Lynx rufus) in Ohio. June 12, 2021 It took more than a century for bobcats to return to Ohio after being wiped out by hunting, trapping and habitat loss. Today, the wild cats are finally settling into a permanent Ohio home again, though a lot has changed during their absence. Vast development and agriculture have replaced much of Ohio’s forests, leaving bobcats with only a fraction of the habitat once available to them. To better understand bobcat habitat suitability and connectivity in present-day Ohio, a team of biologists from Ohio University pieced together data from bobcat sigh ..read more

An eastern gray squirrel in Marysville, Ohio. Photo by Denise Blough June 1, 2021 Squirrels are essentially everywhere in Ohio. They’re so common, they’re almost invisible — most people don’t think twice when they encounter one. But successfully flourishing alongside humans without intensive management is somewhat of a remarkable feat in 2021 — one that few wildlife species can lay claim to. Upon closer look, squirrels provide a fascinating glimpse into forest ecosystems in Ohio, and the rodents have plenty of unique traits worthy of our attention. Here are five things to know about Ohio squi ..read more