- American burying beetles (Nicrophorus americanus) were once found throughout the eastern United States but now inhabit only 10 percent of their historical range due to habitat degradation and increasing competition for prey by mammalian scavengers, among other factors.
- The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) designated the beetles as endangered in 1986. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) initiated the current project to save the species from extinction shortly thereafter.
- This is the fourth year in a row in which the Zoo has released members of its captive breeding population of the insects back into nature.
The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden released 110 pairs of endangered American burying beetles at the nearby Fernald Nature Preserve last week as part of ongoing efforts to restore the beetle’s population in the wild.
The 110 pairs were carefully matched by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Species Survival Plan, then placed in holes in the ground to breed, according to a statement released by the Cincinnati Zoo. This is the fourth year in a row in which the Zoo has released members of its captive breeding population of the insects back into nature.
American burying beetles (Nicrophorus americanus) were once found throughout the eastern United States but now inhabit only 10 percent of their historical range due to habitat degradation and increasing competition for prey by mammalian scavengers, among other factors. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) designated the beetles as endangered in 1986, and they’re currently listed as critically endangered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) initiated the current project to save the species from extinction shortly thereafter.
The USFWS partnered with the Cincinnati Zoo and the Fernald Nature Preserve on the project, for which a limited number of beetles were taken from the wild in order to establish a captive population and allow for the beetle’s reintroduction in its former habitat.
“After this year we will have placed over 600 adult [American burying beetles] at Fernald in an attempt to found a wild population,” the Cincinnati Zoo’s Head Insectarium Keeper, Mandy Pritchard, said in a statement.
The American burying beetle is also known as the giant carrion beetle because a mating male and female pair will find the carcass of a small animal, such as a rodent, then bury it and raise their young on the carcass. “When we release the beetles we actually set them up to breed right away so that each pair of beetles can create up to 40 offspring,” Pritchard wrote in a post on the Cincinnati Zoo’s website.
While no adult beetles have been found to still be inhabiting Fernald the year after their release, Pritchard is hopeful there is a good reason for that. “That may sound dismal, but it is my opinion that they are just dispersing beyond our ability to survey for them,” she wrote. “These beetles can fly up to 2 miles in one night!”
She added that, this year, the Zoo will be holding a second reintroduction in July to see if that affects the beetles’ over-wintering success and dispersal rate.
The Cincinnati Zoo picked the Fernald Nature Preserve as the location for the reintroduction of the beetles because of its flourishing wildlife. The site of a former uranium processing facility that ceased operations in 1989 and underwent a superfund cleanup that entailed spending a few billion dollars to strip and replace the soil, the preserve is now home to hundreds of species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates — which will hopefully soon include a fully functioning wild population of American burying beetles.
