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Impacts of ORV Use on Small Mammals in the Big Cypress

robert4570

robert4570

Well-known member
Impacts of Off-Road Vehicle Use on Small Mammals in Big Cypress


Found a picture of my buggy and other ORV categories on this site.
Apparently some research was done regarding the impact of ORV's on small mammals in prairies.
Not much info , just a brief cover on the research.
Read it and draw your own conclusions.

Robert

[PDF]
Impacts of Off-Road Vehicle Use on Small Mammals in Big Cypress ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
1 USGS and University of Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Big Cypress National Preserve, Ochopee, FL. 2 USGS, Florida Integrated Science ...
http://www.wec.ufl.edu/coop/print/poste ... effery.pdf - Similar pages



http://www.wec.ufl.edu/coop/print/poste ... effery.pdf
 
Robert,

Hard to believe that the U of F folks are that bored....I got a bunch of projectys for them if they are that bored!

Do we really need scientific data on whether or not the common field mouse is disturbed by ORV use?

Basketcase
 
Environmentalists are nothing but a bunch of cash cow munching up all of or heart earned green money :twisted: remember the whole and the ozone thank of the money we spent on that >now it's global warming. These people do not have a life :(
 
It's about control. The environmentalists are just the puppets for some body's agenda. Oil, gas, mineral whatever it may be when the Everglades was protected those in power had no idea that there may be some raw resource or some consumable that could produce cash flow, it was just a no mans land. Now they are trying to take it back.

Of course this is my opinion.
 
All comments above are right on target.

It's a shame that they ASSUME FROM THE START that ORV are bad.
They admitted this fact in the "hypothesis" section.

This is akin to a bias or prejudice.

Odd how these enviro-types are also the types that claim to fight racism,
when they are just as bad as the worst racist - just shifting their prejudices to another direction.

We hypothesize that small mammal weight to foot ratio will be smaller in ORV impacted areas than in non-impacted areas. The lose of habitat, food source and cover would have it’s influence on the small mammal community, therefore decreasing their size. We also hypothesize that water levels will influence what species are caught in the prairies. The Rice Rat (Oryzomys palustris) are found more abundant in wet areas. We should see a transition from the Hispid Cotton Rat (Sigmodon hispidus) to the Rice Rat as the water levels rise in the prairie system. We also will be looking at if percent cover of the transects affects the capture probabilities of the small mammals. Less cover means less protection and food availability.
Click to expand...

That last line is simply NOT A FACT. Less cover (from buggy wheels smashing grass) does not mean less food. How do we know that the flattened out grass and broken stalks does not grow a fungus, which could attract insects, which the rats could eat? They state something as a fact, when they dont know. It MIGHT mean less food, but it MIGHT mean MORE FOOD.
The rotting vegetation may fertilize the soil faster and richer creating new growth buds and shoots which are delicious to cotton rats.

And overall:
It kinda sounds like they OPPOSE the feeding of owls and snakes on these little rats they love so much. :roll:
Kids and environmentalists often assign human emotion to animals which simply does not exist.
This fuels their fire to "protect" them even from nature itself.
And that is more damaging than any buggy rut!!!!!

matt.
 
Hey Basket ,
You might be right , maybe there's not much else goin on and this rat study was proposed . Regardless , its the agenda behind it thats of concern.

My issue with this research and all the concern over the well being of small mammals is ...why don't they adress the problem of water missmanagement with South Florida Water Management regarding the flooding we get yearly ? No uproar about that from all the friends of the fill the blank critter lovers.
Sustained high water levels pose a greater threat to wildlife than buggies do .


Those who are familiar with the cypress know that by September there is atleast a foot of water everywhere ,in some places waist deep and a few inches in the pines .
Dry ground is a rare commodity for large critters such as deer and hogs ( forget hogs they are all gone ,but thats a different subject). So imagine a Rice Rat which is the size of a small mouse ,every bit of 4'' tall on all fours coping with 6-18" of water in some 790,000 acres.
Whats a bigger threat to wildlife ,buggies or water mismanagement ?

Many questions come to mind with this, from who initiated this study , the source of funding and the intended purpose of data and how it will be put to use.
Its a bit alarming to read of this study knowing its intended purpose .
Its just another angle/card up their sleeve towards countering any additional trails from being established ,IMO.

Glad I found that link yesterday , cause I never knew there was a study done on rodents and their dissfunctional relationship with ORV's in the Cypress.
Folks , seems like there's a surplus of funds available for "research" when we can afford to study rats.
Hope the Gov. gets wind of this .
 
Also keep in mind this was a school project which some professor is going to give those kids a grade.

It may not be so much a surplus of money for research when it's a school project. They gotta research SOMETHING to learn how to be an environmental whacko.

If it was not the rats in BIg Cypress, then maybe the crows in Lake Jesup. Every morning 5000 crows fly east to the Seminole County landfill, and every night they fly west into Lake Jesup. There has gotta be some man-made environmental impact there waiting to be discovered.

Point being - Impact happens.

It burns me up when I think about how they truly believe they are SAVING the environment with this crap!

Right on about the water mismanagement. It's like they can't see the forest because all the trees are blocking the view.
 
I'd rant on this one but it seems yall have it about right to me.

Waste of time
Waste of money
Wasted education project
Ulterior motives
Incompetance
Maybe even Ignorance

All seem to apply, but then academia never has been very good at anything but talk.

Scotty
 
Don't even get started on the panthers, they won't be happy until
the posted speed limit on every major hiway south of SR 70 is 25 MPH.
 
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