cHIPmUnkS

[PRBuzz]

Until they die, might be scrounging for food source any/everywhere but the longer term is looking good (from the Boston Globe):

The squirrel looked lost as it scurried in the shade of the old oak trees, searching for sustenance in stumps, beneath fallen leaves, along a grassy bank of the Muddy River that had been like an open buffet in recent years.

But there was not a single acorn to be found.

A year after a bumper crop of acorns littered streets and parks throughout the region, these nuts seem to have vanished this autumn in New England, a little-understood phenomenon that scientists say will ripple throughout the ecosystem and devastate the population of everything from chipmunks to owls.

In a typical fall, he said, a mature oak tree will produce about 250 pounds of acorns, which serve as seeds for saplings and a vital source of food for rodents, turkeys, deer, bears, and many other animals. At his research station in a forest along the border between Massachusetts and Connecticut, Ashton said the oaks this year have each produced less than half a pound of acorns.

Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist and senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., said up to 90 percent of the current population of rodents could die by next spring as a result of the lack of food. That would mean a massive death toll, as the number of rodents has spiked over the past two years, given all the acorns.

“I expect to see a severe crash in the number of mice and chipmunks, and we could be looking at a loss of squirrels of as much as 50 percent,’’ said Ostfeld, who has studied acorns for more than a decade.