Nature Conservancy Magazine: Autumn 2008 - NewsFront: Bringing Back Beetles

Go Deeper

The Nature Conservancy in Oklahoma
From the sweeping plains of western Oklahoma to the cool pine forests of the Ozarks, Oklahomans enjoy a state of unparalleled beauty and ecological diversity.

In 2007, the Oklahoma highway department spent hundreds of thousands of dollars burying empty coffee cans in the dirt. When filled with rotten chicken strips, the cans work as traps to catch endangered American burying beetles.

The effort is required by law for all federally funded road, pipeline or other construction projects that might disturb the beetle’s habitat. “If they do find any beetles in the cans, they have to go about a trapping and relocation effort,” says Jay Pruett, The Nature Conservancy’s director of conservation in Oklahoma. “Relocating the beetles is a very intensive effort,” he says.

That’s why the state jumped at the chance this year to turn its beetle conservation efforts over to the Conservancy. Instead of rounding up beetles and moving them a few miles, the highway department and other construction outfits will be able to pay the Conservancy (at a rate set by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) to offset any disrupted beetle habitat by protecting large tracts of beetle-friendly land elsewhere.

This inch-and-a-half-long beetle provides dinner for its young, while protecting the future meal from raccoons, coyotes and other scavengers, by burying carrion—sometimes dead animals several times greater than its own body weight. But the beetle has lost ground in the past century—its range has been reduced by 90 percent—as large parts of the insect’s habitat have been disturbed.

The beetle’s population used to be concentrated in New England, but it is now limited to a handful of states, mostly in the Midwest. Many of the areas of soft soil where the beetle prefers to dig have been tilled for farmland or built up. And to make matters worse, several of the beetle’s competitors for food have learned to adapt to habitat fragmentation, while the beetle is inhibited by nighttime light and other human activities.

“The highway department was excited to let us do the conservation work instead of having to do it themselves,” says Pruett. The Conservancy will use the funding to purchase and protect beetle-friendly lands around Oklahoma preserves with already-thriving beetle populations, as well as to restore existing preserve lands back to prime beetle habitat.

—Curtis Runyan