wildlife

A herd of buffalo in a field

Before the 19th century, wild buffalo (bison) dominated the North American continent — with individual herds covering 400 square miles or more and taking days to ride through on horseback. It’s estimated the bison population was more than 60 million at its peak. 

“Buffalo herds in the East were never huge, never teeming, never rivaling the truly vast herds that thundered across the Great Plains until the latter half of the 19th century,” Belue says. “Eastern buffalo herds often numbered 100 head or less, and droves of fewer than 20 were common.”

A black and white photo of a person standing in front of a large boulder

Here’s a word lesson. Erratic: to lack a fixed course or uniformity; to wander or deviate from the ordinary. Now, let us apply that to Ohio’s geology, which is anything but ordinary. 

If you need a reminder that the world is held together by stone, then consider Ohio’s basement. You cannot see it except in the long strands of bored-out cores that have been extracted from hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface. The basement is composed of sedimentary rock, settled and compressed at the bottom of what was once a deep ocean. That bedrock dates to about 570 million years ago, geologists say. It’s called Cambrian period stone, named after Cambria (which is now called Wales), where the stone type was first described and given a name around 1835.

A group of lineworkers raising a nesting pole for a family of ospreys

Brad Bussard and his team are accustomed to working almost invisibly.

It was the end of May, the time of year when ospreys return to Ohio from their winter home in Mexico, and a breeding pair had decided that one of the utility poles in the training yard next to the co-op’s office was a good spot to build a nest. The population of ospreys, once nearly wiped out in the Buckeye State, has been steadily growing here since the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reintroduced them in 1996, to the point where the Division of Wildlife no longer even bothers to count them.

Two butterflies resting on a flower

The 21-acre slice of the Hocking Hills on State Route 374, about halfway between Pine Creek and Laurel Run southeast of Rockbridge, has been in Christopher Kline’s family since 1863.

When Kline and his wife, Kris, members of Lancaster-based South Central Power Company, acquired the land, they weren’t sure exactly what they were going to do with it.

“We could cut for timber, but that didn’t seem fulfilling,” he says. Finally, they decided to fall back on what they know. Christopher has a master’s degree in plant biology from Ohio University and served as education director at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center in Columbus. He also was interpretation specialist at Franklin Park Conservatory, where he was known as “The Butterfly Guy.”

A starling chirping in the grass

Learning any hobby is always easier with a mentor — even a virtual one. Take birding, for example.

“The Merlin Bird ID app contains identification support and photos, sound recordings, maps, and descriptions for more than 10,000 bird species from around the world, with more species being added constantly,” says Kathi Borgmann, communications manager for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which developed and owns Merlin. “More than 29 million people worldwide have installed Merlin on their phones, with June 2024 seeing the greatest number of Merlin users, more than 5.4 million during that month alone.”  

A painting of Constantine Rafinesque-Schmaltz

Constantine Rafinesque-Schmaltz is the scientist you did not know that you knew. His walkabouts through Ohio impressed upon him a desire to discover more about plants and fishes and a prehistoric culture that predated him by millennia. 

The family moved to Italy to escape the terrors of the French Revolution. It was there that a self-educated Constantine came of age and took an ardent interest in natural history and languages, which would come to have its consequences in the names of organisms — through the eastern U.S., in Ohio, and even into the American Southwest. 

Hebron State Fish Hatchery sign

Do you like to fish? Me too. As a kid, one of my earliest memories was of sitting beside a pond fishing for bluegills with my father.

“The majority of Ohio’s fish populations are sustained through natural reproduction,” says Chris French, fish hatchery program administrator. “However, stocking expands and diversifies fishing opportunities in waters where existing habitats don’t support some fish populations. Stocking is only one of many fish management tools used by the Division of Wildlife to improve angling.”

Steve Graham, an Ohio farmer

It’s easy to tell you’re approaching the farm of Union Rural Electric Cooperative member Steve Graham.

The original farm contained a few small woodlots, which Graham kept. Also, because much of his ground is made up of water-loving hydric soil, he built a sizable pond and large wetland, paying for their construction through cost-sharing. The wildlife haven now attracts myriad songbirds, waterfowl, pollinators, white-tailed deer, and even a bald eagle or two.

A painting of Labrador ducks

Professional ornithologist Glen Chilton made quite the interesting offer in 2009: “I will pay a reward of $10,000 to the first person who can direct me to a genuine stuffed Labrador duck that I have not seen and described in my book, The Curse of the Labrador Duck.

Chilton made the offer because he had just completed a nearly 10-year study to personally examine all 55 known remaining taxidermic mounts and study skins of the bird, and he wanted to make sure he had located them all. 

His quixotic quest took him to museums throughout North America and Europe. He logged 72,018 miles on airplanes; 5,461 miles on trains; 3,408 miles in cars; 158 miles in taxis; 43 miles on ferries; and 1,169 miles on buses. That total of 82,257 miles is longer than three times around the earth at the equator! 

The fisher, also known as a fisher cat

A secretive, solitary hunter of the deep woods is attempting a comeback in the Buckeye State.

The fisher, a fur-bearing mammal found only in North America, is also known as black cat, black fox, or fisher cat because of its dark brown to nearly black coat. 

“Fishers [have been discovered] in archaeological sites in Ohio, and they were found in Ashtabula County as late as 1837,” says John Harder, associate professor emeritus in evolution, ecology, and organismal biology at Ohio State University. “However, unregulated trapping and habitat loss led to the extirpation of fishers from the state by 1850.”

Fishers are not small. Males can measure 4 feet in length from nose to tip of tail and weigh as much as 15 pounds. Females are half that size.