memefarmer

[memefarmer]

DOGE just froze funding to vital Federal and Indigenous conservation programs devoted to supporting the very delicate and tenuous existence of the black-footed ferret.

I fell in love with these animals as a kid traveling to our National Parks. Their rarity and ferocity made me sharply aware, even as a child, of just how much of a responsibility we have toward our environment. I can't bear the thought of them being a fucking casualty of Trump and Musk.

Look at them! They do war dances.

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on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

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Native wildflowers don't need to be watered. They are native and adapted to the average rainfall of the region.

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First mistake was using a border collie (herding dog) as a LGD. Yeah thats not going to work...

Female wolf kills 17 goats after 'befriending' one of the dogs protecting the herd

A female wolf, the only one reported to inhabit Catalonia in the last 16 years, has killed seventeen goats in Cistella, north of Girona.

The farmer and landowner, Francesc Barbany, explained in an interview with RAC1 radio that the attacks began a year ago.

"We know it's the female wolf because she attacks the goats at the jugular, and we have footage of her," Barbany said.

Since the attacks began, Barbany has been forced to electrify the fence to protect the goats and put GPS collars on the more vulnerable animals.

"The wolf is smart and waits for us to corral the goats before attacking the ones left behind in the group," he added.

The female wolf, however, continues to visit the property to have "night dates" with the dog assigned to protect the goats.

"When it's dark, the wolf arrives, walks past the dog, and they quickly leave together," Barbany explained.

To put an end to the "friendship" between the dog, a Border Collie, and the wolf, Barbany is considering having the dog neutered before the wolf goes into heat.

The she-wolf is the only one living in Catalonia, and there are four other wolves, all males.

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Carolina Native Nursery

Nov 4 2024 - discount native plant shopping spree

I've been wanting to visit this place forever! Lately I've been sharing the Gofundme for this important place, b/c they lost 90% of their plant inventory and insurance doesn't cover everything - by a long shot.

They do super important work by growing native plants at the scale that they do. Most native plant nurseries are little places and only sell their own at retail prices. This place is pretty big, growing at wholesale scale, and their plants are shipping all along the east coast of the USA. I want to see them not only survive but thrive.

Thanks to V, Critter Cove is legally a farm with special tax code that goes with that, which means if we want to bother with it, we can get things at wholesale cost. I saw in CNN wholesale newsletter that they had some storm damaged plants that look like shit and/or they had to dig out of the mucky mud and couldn't sell at full price.

But they would sell them to wholesalers/landscapers at $4 for a 1 gallon plant!!!! They are also available for 501c3 nonprofits for free.

So anyway this is the $200 shopping spree we went on to help them out, and to help our garden. It still looks like a moonscape down by the river.

I've also been snagging some free plants and seeds at work, buying plants and bulbs, and then just waiting for some rain to come and maybe even cooler temperatures. The soil temperatures have actually been too hot to plant bulbs.

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Hi, my NB siblings cant afford the tests needed to find out what's wrong with their childhood cat, Vulcan. He's always been such a sweet boy and it really hurts to hear how quickly his condition has deteriorated. Anything would help even if its just a reblog. ♡

Edit: 11/02/24

Unfortunately our boy passed yesterday. He was doing well after taking him to the specialist. They were giving him appetite stimulants and antinausea meds but he stopped eating again and my family decided to end his life before he got back to the point he was at before. Thank you for supporting Vulcan and my family.

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sorry ea why did you give your cows top teeth. why do they look like that. why do. why do your cows have human teeth

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cattle breed highlight - randall !

randall cattle are another historical american breed that conservationists are fighting super hard to keep around! their history is actually super interesting!

this breed actually died out due to crossbreeding a long, long time ago! but a farmer named everett randall maintained a closed herd of them for 80 years, single handedly preserving the breed so we can still see them today! isnt that wild!

after his passing, some of the remaining randalls were saved by conservationists, and theyre still kicking! though they are very rare.

images (x) (x) (x)

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@Tarafarms on youtube

This is always what I want to say when someone tries to baby wild animals or livestock that arent used to people.

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lifting up a log to see all the isopods underneath

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yo mama presence so calming she sits in the barn during stormy weather to help the animals

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What I find really really compelling about Laios' special interest is this:

As a person who's special interest is dogs, I'll tell you right now that I fucking love them. I live in a city full of strays, and I actively go out of my way to pet, play with, and interact with them. It brings me a lot of joy and comfort to be able to be surrounded by puppies.

I will also be the first to tell you that, like it or not, dogs are animals - and animals, ultimately, can be unpredictable. They can be scared, they can be territorial, and they can be impulsive. And while I genuinely believe that there's no such thing as a bad dog or an angry dog - only a scared one - I also don't believe it makes a functional difference once a dog has bitten you what intentions it may have had.

Dogs are dangerous. I've seen people get bitten, I've been bitten, I've had close calls, some of which were my own fault and others which were not.

And Laios reflects this so beautifully, especially in the Kelpie arc. He's not blinded by his love for these creatures, he's not overtaken by baseless empathy - he understands, understands better than anyone, that these are at the end of the day monsters, and they are dangerous, and when push comes to shove sometimes you've just got to kill them. In fact it's his love for them that lands him this knowledge and understanding in the first place - just as I know that there's no room for fear and weakness when it comes to interacting with dogs, he knows there's no room for hesitation and empathy when it comes to interacting with montsers.

It's so fucking realistic of someone who genuinely researches and cares about these creatures, rather than superficially "liking animals" and then trying to assign human qualities to inherently inhuman creatures.

God.

Laios is fantastic fucking representation.

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ABOUT TIME!!! for those out of the loop homeowners’ associations in the US 1. suck horrendously in every way 2. were the beginning of the end of urban biodiversity

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Unmute !

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I thought I’d eat my snack outside because the weather is nice today