The Urban Wildlands Group

The Urban Wildlands Group is dedicated to the conservation of species, habitats, and ecological processes in urban and urbanizing areas.

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April 25, 2012 -- A new scientific paper, led by UWG's Travis Longcore and Catherine Rich, estimating avian mortality at communication towers was published in PLoS ONE. The birds are attracted to the lights during nocturnal migration and collide with the towers and the cables holding them up. UWG's GIS consultant, Beau MacDonald, integrated (and did quality control on) three sources of tower data and made the maps. Agency representatives from the United States and Canada, as well as several pioneers in tower mortality studies collaborated on the paper.

Through coordination with and assistance from USC media relations, the story made news around the world.

Longcore, T., C. Rich, P. Mineau, B. MacDonald, D. Bert, L. M. Sullivan, E. Mutrie, S. A. Gauthreaux Jr., M. L. Avery, R. L. Crawford, A. M. Manville II, E. R. Travis, and D. Drake 2012. An estimate of avian mortality at communication towers in the United States and Canada. PLoS ONE 7(4):e34025.

Coverage from the New York Times Green Blog, Livescience, ScienceDaily, BBC (spanish), UPI, Canada.com, High Country News, ABC News, Randy Loftis at the Dallas Morning News (reprinted), and many more in many languages. USC-produced video here.

February 9, 2012 -- Special congratulations to Adam Clause, outstanding alum of The Butterfly Project, who after a stint at UC Davis has now been accepted into ecology Ph.D. programs at UCLA and University of Georgia.

January 10, 2012 -- The Urban Wildlands Group and The Zoological Lighting Institute call on the Indianapolis Zoo to redesign a proposed orangutan enclosure that would attract and kill birds. Two features of the proposed building — expanses of glass and bright illumination at night — guarantee that it will kill migratory birds, which are attracted to tall, lighted structures at night and then collide with and are killed by glass during the day. See full press release.

June 20, 2011 -- A new dark-sky article comes from the design/landscape/urbanism realm: Starry Night in Places. Includes work of many UWG colleagues and quotes Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting.

June 13, 2011 -- This new paper with colleagues connects remotely sensed night lights data to ground-collected strandings of shearwaters: Remote sensing to map influence of light pollution on Cory’s shearwater in São Miguel Island, Azores, published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research.

May 16, 2011 -- Alaska Airlines covers butterfly conservation in Alaska Airlines magazine its in-flight magazine,concluding with our Palos Verdes blue butterfly breeding program and recognizing Dr. Jana Johnson and our outstanding student interns at Moorpark College.

May 16, 2011 -- American Airlines covers light pollution and natural dark skies.

“As much as we humans would like night to be day, for millions of years we’ve had a dark night,”says Travis Longcore, science director of the L.A.-based Urban Wildlands Group and co-editor of Ecological Consequences ofArtificial Night Lighting. “We can mess with that, but it comes at a cost.”

Read more of Starry Night.

April 20, 2011 -- UWG is co-sponsor of the SAVE A BILLION BIRDS fundraiser at the American Institute of Architects national meeting in New Orleans.

January 12, 2011 -- Thanks to ecologist and programmer Jorn Bruggeman, an updated version of our program INCA (INsect Count Analyzer) has been released (ver. 1.53). This free software calculates certain parameters -- day of peak eclosion, dispersion of eclosion, death rate, and population size -- from repeated transect counts of univoltine insect species. The update deals with installation issues that arose with recent versions of Microsoft Office.

October 26, 2010 -- Science Director Travis Longcore wrote an invited "Dispatch" in Current Biology on exciting new research on the effects of night lights on the breeding behavior of songbirds. The dispatch discussess this new article: Artificial Night Lighting Affects Dawn Song, Extra-Pair Siring Success, and Lay Date in Songbirds.

September 23, 2010 -- Science Director Travis Longcore was a panelist at the Gardening under Mediterranean Skies conference at the LA Arboretum. Here is a link to the Butterflies of Greater Los Angeles fact sheet with native and exotic foodplants and nectar sources for the most common butterfly species in the LA basin.

September 14, 2010 -- The US Fish and Wildlife Service pollinator page is featuring the recovery efforts surrounding Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly -- interviews with Dr. Eric Porter (FWS), Dr. Jana Johnson (Moorpark College/UWG), and LtCol Ramer (USAF/DLA). UWG also featured in an article on Palos Verdes blue and El Segundo blue and one on Lange's metalmark from the Endangered Species Bulletin, which are also reprinted on the page.

August 24, 2010 -- See our new report, Habitat Suitability Modeling for Western Snowy Plover in Central California by Beau MacDonald, Travis Longcore, and Shawna Dark.

April 24, 2010 -- UWG co-founders Catherine Rich and Travis Longcore were recognized by Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society with the 2010 Audubon Conservation Award for their "tireless, successful dedication to environmental protection."

April 10, 2010 -- Nice coverage of the efforts being taken to recover Lange's Metalmark, including our captive rearing efforts at Moorpark College.

March 2010 -- The captive breeding program for Palos Verdes blue butterfly at the Defense Fuel Support Point in San Pedro and at Moorpark College, under the leadership of Dr. Jana Johnson (profiled here), was able to release butterflies at Deane Dana Friendship Park and Linden H. Chandler Preserve. Coverage in the Daily Breeze, Los Angeles Times, and CBS Evening News. We thank the Department of Defense for ongoing funding for this project and the especially the landowners: the County of Los Angeles and Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy.

March 4, 2010 -- Science Director Travis Longcore is featured on Swedish Public Radio program Klotet (The Globe) talking about the impacts of trash on stormwater and wildlife (text and video).

January 12, 2010 -- Los Angeles Times columnist Hector Tobar has an excellent essay supporting the use of native plants in Los Angeles gardens, featuring background from Science Director Travis Longcore.

January 7, 2010 -- Science Director Travis Longcore and colleagues have published a new paper on butterfly conservation at San Bruno Mountain, just south of San Francisco, in the international Journal of Insect Conservation. The article emphasizes the importance of good monitoring for endangered species and the need to manage native vegetation to maintain habitat for early-successional species. These issues were in the forefront of a recent vote on further development on San Bruno Mountain.

Longcore, T, C.S. Lam, P. Kobernus, E. Polk, and J.P. Wilson. 2010. Extracting useful data from imperfect monitoring schemes: endangered butterflies at San Bruno Mountain, San Mateo County, California (1982–2000) and implications for habitat management. Journal of Insect Conservation online early.

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