Nate Hooven (he/him)

Bunny release timeline cleanse

Haven’t been posting here much but if you want an abundance of hare photos/release videos I keep current over on Instagram! instagram.com/nhooven

Hemorrhagic disease confirmed in wild rabbit in Island County wdfw.wa.gov/newsroom/news-…

@GSouchay @MustelidMay I believe it! There are a lot of tiny ones out there

@NDHooven @MustelidMay If the growth is similar to European hare, it would be a 10 days-old leveret Nice

This is the cutest thing that I’ve ever trapped (baby snowshoe hare)

@GSouchay @MustelidMay I did not, guessing it was around 250 grams based on some other similar sized ones that we’ve handled!

@NDHooven @MustelidMay Did you weight this cute leveret?

@cooperjab4 @RaysBaseball Isaac’s Isthmus

@RaysBaseball Issac Island is way better

Might have to consider setting up the Isaac Area next to Randy Land.

Mid-June snow from last week. I’ll miss it when it’s in the 80s up there this week

@KeevilMatthew They’re unstoppable

@NDHooven Lately one has begun girdling tamaracks willynilly by eating a band 2/3 up the trunk before moving on to another😠Red Maple, Manitoba Maple, & apple in my yard have had some branches stripped. A white spruce near a den and gets twigs heavily browsed every winter but no bark yet.

Can anyone confirm that this looks like porcupine damage? About 5 feet up a young lodgepole pine. I’ve never seen a single porcupine at my field sites and hear from everyone that they’re exceedingly rare, so this is a bit of a mystery.

@MarvinGunz Pronouns are an important part of speech MARVIN

@NDHooven pronouns lol

@BeekeeperEric I didn’t know that! Surprised not to see this damage more often with the squirrel population we’ve got. Makes way more sense than a ghost porky!

@KeevilMatthew Wow, they definitely stripped most of the bark off!

@NDHooven One of our local porkies has sampled some small Scots Pines so I took a couple photos just now for comparison:

@KrisSabbi That’s good to know!

@NDHooven Just chiming in to second other comments- it doesn't look tell-tale porcupine. Usually there are more teeth marks for porcupine (or even beaver) noshing. They also return so you should see build up of their scat on the ground. Also, I thought they preferred non-pines.

@crwinsor That makes sense!

@NDHooven It doesn't look like the porky chewing that I have seen, usually similar to the way a beaver strips bark. Also, the porcupines tend to stick with a tree longer and their droppings build up under the tree.

@dave_keiter It totally could, this instance was pretty isolated aside from a fee other nearby trees.

@NDHooven Could it be peeling damage from a black bear? From my understanding they do something similar to this photo to access the sugars in growing trees.

PLEASE SHARE: Come study swamp bears in S. GA and the Okefenokee NWR! We are hiring a black bear PhD student (Aug | Jan Start) to be part of a multi-student/postdoc effort to estimate spatial distribution/abundance of bears. Plenty of opportunity for student-led questions.

I'm hiring technicians to help catch/monitor snowshoe hares again this summer! Join the crew and work in a beautiful place and with an amazing species. Please share with anyone who may be interested. #WildlifeJobs

Back at it catching snowshoe hares for my PhD!

Big news for imperiled wildlife! Over $62 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding will be used to address recovery planning for over 300 threatened and endangered species. fws.gov/press-release/… #EndangeredSpeciesDay

@BenCAugustine I like that! Haha

@NDHooven Don't remember who it was, but someone referred to eastern KY elk habitat as "Minetana", lol

NEW PAPER: Led by (Twitterless) Kate Williams, we document a case of spinal malformation in a newborn elk calf from KY; to our knowledge this has never been reported in this species before. A thread 1/ (CW: dead animal)