#Save Our Species

[artnoidslave]

My Wandering Albatross: A reminder that the world is a big and beautiful place.

source

[ratatatastic]

idk about you but the cats team letting the cubbies reel in fish that most fishers tell you to avoid is sooooooooo (houndfish and a barracuda)

[parabelllvm]

How can I be normal at work when thoughts of Nate playing with Cindrel exist in my head?

Like more oft than not, Nate will be doing his thing and Cindrel will also be doing his thing but like....

The type of creature Cindrel is... they're very solitary. They have packs and stuff like that but they don't necessarily stick together all the time. They do, however, take good care of those that they deem "weaker" or "more vulnerable". Cindrel is a bit spoiled because Nate babied him a bit, but his spoiled nature does not mean he doesn't do this. On the contrary, it means that Cindrel is more protective of Nate than he naturally would be because of that inherent... need to protect his owner--who he knows is emotionally vulnerable.

Cindrel does a lot of rubbing up against Nate's legs, just so Nate knows he's there. He will squeeze into a chair while Nate is sitting in it just to be close. He'll get up on Nate's legs and just stare up at him, looking for pupil dilations and nervous, facial twitches, etc.

Needless to say, the thought of Nate just sitting down and playing with Cindrel is... extremely cute. Because it'll be less for Cindrel's benefit and more for Nate's. Sometimes, it'll be to distract him but others, it'll just be to engage him and to make sure he's doing alright.

Additionally: Cindrel being kind to you, because he is a mean little mf, is also indicative of how much he trusts you not to hurt Nate. So while Nate might be okay with someone, Cindrel likely wont be for a while and he will Not budge on it.

[invertedspoon]

god i hate everything about global warming but the thing that grinds my gears is that during the pandemic, the ENTIRE WORLD banded together and were able to (mostly) get rid of a disease that would have killed billions within 2 years.

but as soon as something isn't a immediate threat, people turn a blind eye. if we're not all going to die in a year, then i guess it doesn't matter.

but people are dying. wildfires are rampaging and wiping out towns and islands. there is going to be a HURRICANE on the WEST COAST. a global heat wave is harder to control than a global disease. in the pandemic, the average community had control over spreading a disease, no matter what politicians and the rich would say about it.

but now, the common people cannot control what the rich are pumping into our oceans and atmosphere. you can cut down on your personal carbon footprint. you can convince others around you to cut down. but nothing will make a dent in our carbon emissions unless everyone in the world does it.

the time to try and stop things is now. soon enough, it'll be far, far too late to go back. there's no way to reverse the damage that'll be done in a few years.

we cannot save our own PLANET and that is terrifying.

[avinox]

Last post reminded me I finally got sent the picture of me holding the baby seagull (probably Larus michahellis)!! I couldn't look worse, but hey, baby bird! 🐣

[smallboyonherbike]

idk if i've mentioned my very rich uncle on here before but he rents a private jet along with some other rich families and my dads gonna ride in it for the first time to go to family reunion in memphis w their cousins. and ofc PJs are rather despicable but also i'm like "dad make sure someone takes pictures" lmao.

now keep in mind my uncle lives in california and the rest of my family lives in DC area/east coast lmao. i have no idea if he shares the plane only w ppl in cali prob not but it's so absurd. but he also owns a condo in DC and like four beach houses on rehoboth so 🙄 anyways they also aren't inviting any of the spouses of the siblings bc the plane seats 6 and there's 6 siblings and i was like "okay but couldn't y'all just go commercial?" but my mom was like they said we're not invited so 🤷‍♀️ meanwhile i've never been to memphis and would like to go but ah well that's for the future i guess

[argonavta]

Do not be fooled!

I live with my lack of hope for the future in absolute serenity!

[great-and-small]

When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

(Source 3)

[enviroeco]

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[artnoidslave]

The Hog Deer: A symbol of hope for the future.

source

[spideyladman]

I'm sorry to break your statement but I can barely save myself and I'm an AO3 Author 💀

Na Cruinne Atá Ag Méadú

Averill_Ryker_84888

They give us a whole season of soap drama in one paragraph then apologise for making their readers wait 💀

[reasonsforhope]

"In 2021, scientists in Guelph, Ontario set out to accomplish something that had never been done before: open a lab specifically designed for raising bumble bees in captivity. 

Now, three years later, the scientists at the Bumble Bee Conservation Lab are celebrating a huge milestone. Over the course of 2024, they successfully pulled off what was once deemed impossible and raised a generation of yellow-banded bumble bees. 

The Bumble Bee Conservation Lab, which operates under the nonprofit Wildlife Preservation Canada, is the culmination of a decade-long mission to save the bee species, which is listed as endangered under the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation...

Although the efforts have been in motion for over a decade, the lab itself is a recent development that has rapidly accelerated conservation efforts. 

For bee scientists, the urgency was necessary. 

“We could see the major declines happening rapidly in Canada’s native bumble bees and knew we had to act, not just talk about the problem, but do something practical and immediate,” Woolaver said. 

Yellow-banded bumble bees, which live in southern Canada and across a huge swatch of the United States, were once a common species.

However, like many other bee species, their populations declined sharply in the mid-1990s from a litany of threats, including pathogens, pesticides, and dramatic habitat loss. 

Since the turn of the century, scientists have plunged in to give bees a helping hand. But it was only in the last decade that Woolaver and his team “identified a major gap” in bumble bee conservation and set out to solve it. 

“No one knew how to breed threatened species in captivity,” he explained. “This is critically important if assurance populations are needed to keep a species from going extinct and to assist with future reintroductions.”

To start their experiment, scientists hand-selected wild queen bees throughout Ontario and brought them to the temperature-controlled lab, where they were “treated like queens” and fed tiny balls of nectar and pollen. 

Then, with the help of Ontario’s African Lion Safari theme park, the queens were brought out to small, outdoor enclosures and paired with other bees with the hope that mating would occur. 

For some pairs, they had to play around with different environments to “set the mood,” swapping out spacious flight cages for cozier colony boxes. 

And it worked. 

“The two biggest success stories of 2024 were that we successfully bred our focal species, yellow-banded bumble bees, through their entire lifecycle for the first time,” Woolaver said. 

“[And] the first successful overwintering of yellow-banded bumble bees last winter allowed us to establish our first lab generation, doubling our mating successes and significantly increasing the number of young queens for overwintering to wake early spring and start their own colonies for future generations and future reintroductions.”

Although the first-of-its-kind experiment required careful planning, consideration, resources, and a decade of research, Woolaver hopes that their efforts inspire others to help bees in backyards across North America. 

“Be aware that our native bumble bees really are in serious decline,” Woolaver noted, “so when cottagers see bumble bees pollinating plants in their gardens, they really are seeing something special.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, December 9, 2024

[hauntingblue]

The queen isn't very convincing lmao

[rjzimmerman]

Surprising New Research Links Infant Mortality to Crashing Bat Populations. (New York Times)

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The connections are commonsense but the conclusion is shocking.

Bats eat insects. When a fatal disease hit bats, farmers used more pesticides to protect crops. And that, according to a new study, led to an increase in infant mortality.

According to the research, published Thursday in the journal Science, farmers in affected U.S. counties increased their use of insecticides by 31 percent when bat populations declined. In those places, infant mortality rose by an estimated 8 percent.

“It’s a seminal piece,” said Carmen Messerlian, a reproductive epidemiologist at Harvard who was not involved with the research. “I actually think it’s groundbreaking.”

The new study tested various alternatives to see if something else could have driven the increase: Unemployment or drug overdoses, for example. Nothing else was found to cause it.

Dr. Messerlian, who studies how the environment affects fertility, pregnancy and child health, said a growing body of research is showing health effects from toxic chemicals in our environment, even if scientists can’t put their fingers on the causal links.

“If we were to reduce the population-level exposure today, we would save lives,” she said. “It’s as easy as that.”

The new study is the latest to find dire consequences for humans when ecosystems are thrown out of balance. Recent research by the same author, Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, found that a die-off of vultures in India had led to half a million excess human deaths as rotting livestock carcasses polluted water and spurred an increase in feral dogs, spreading waterborne diseases and rabies.

“We often pay a lot of attention to global extinctions, where species completely disappear,” Dr. Frank said. “But we start experiencing loss and damages well before that.”

[lockea]

I've been seeing a lot of Discourse around outdoor cats that talks past one of the biggest problems addressing community cats/outdoor working cats so I thought I'd chime in with my two cents.

Many arguments I see just... don't think about the cats at all? Or don't consider the logistics of actually addressing the feral cat problem in a humane way. It's always about how outdoor cats shouldn't be outdoors, which is neither realistic nor helpful.

I used to volunteer at an municipal animal shelter in the USA that had a TNR program (Trap, Neuter, Return) and also adopted out community cats to local farms and businesses. Here's my side of the story.

"Your cat doesn't need to be outside" -- Yes, correct. Your domesticated (non-feral) house cat does not need to go outside at all. They can have a fully actualized life safely indoors. When I see this argument, proponents of indoor only cats are correct in most or all their arguments regarding this.

"Outdoor cats are the largest invasive species in the world, and decimate bird populations." -- This is also correct, and part of the reason why you can help by bringing your house cat indoors. Cats are the largest invasive species. Spay and Neuter your cats, bring them inside, and socialize them so they don't become feral.

"TNR doesn't work." -- False. Whether we like it or not, feral cats exist. We have two methods by which we can address the feral cat population -- decimating them (humanely euthanizing the whole colony) or TNR. For a long time, euthanasia was the preferred way to address the feral cat problem. Afterall, if the cats aren't there, doesn't that save the local wildlife population?

Except that we found, studying these colonies, that when a colony is wiped out, the cats of another colony will spread into their territory and continue to have kittens and the population of feral cats is neither controlled nor diminished.

Hence, TNR. What we found performing TNR on cat colonies was that this controlled the population of the colonies, allowing them to stay in their territory, which kept other colonies from spreading (especially colonies we hadn't performed TNR on yet). We at the shelter felt this was the most humane way to control the feral cat population and safely deflate their existence without dealing with the population blooms that euthanasia caused.

"What about kittens?" -- Kittens from these colonies were brought into the shelter, socialized, and fostered out until they could be adopted. Some of these semi-feral kittens needed special homes to be adopted into, but this was the best quality of life for these cats.

"What about cats that get missed during TNR?" -- We would return to the colony several times over a period of several years to perform TNR on the same colony. We mark cats that have been neutered by clipping their ear (this is done humanely, but is the most reliable way to tell if a cat has been neutered so the poor thing doesn't have to have surgery 3-4 times in their life). Also, during the TNR process the cats would be vaccinated to ensure disease did not spread from the colony (i.e. rabies). Still, even getting 60% of the colony TNR'd would dramatically reduce the number of kittens being added to the colony each year. This controlled the population by allowing the territory to naturally deflate in size over time, buying us time to address the larger feral cat problem.

"What if the colony was in an unsafe location?" -- There were two ways we addressed unsafe colony locations -- remember, we know that when the colony is removed, a new colony will move into its place, so we tried not to move the colony unless we really felt the cats or the public was unsafe -- one was to move the whole colony to a new location. Preferably someplace like a warehouse where we have an agreement with the owners of the warehouse. Some of the cats were even relocated to shelter grounds as our community cats. If the colony was small enough we would bring them into our Feral Cats room and adopt them out as community cats.

"What is a community cat?" -- The way the program worked, was that anyone who needed a working cat could apply to the program. These were often rural farmers or businesses with warehouses that needed rodent protection. We trained the farmers and businesses on how to acclimatize the cats to their new home, and as part of the agreement, they had to care for the cats (veterinary care, vaccinations, food and water). This gave businesses and farms an alternative to expensive and environmentally unfriendly rodent control, and also gave these feral cats good places to live out their natural lives.

"Can't you just adopt out feral cats?" -- No. Cats that have not been socialized around humans as kittens, or who have several generations of feral cat in them could not interact with humans in a way that did not cause them undue stress. This was not a humane way to handle feral cats. However, when a cat was brought into the feral cat room, they would be monitored for up to a week. If the cat displayed signs of being semi-social or fully social (hanging out outside of their den, allowing staff to pet them, showing interest in staff in the room), then we would either move the cat into the adoption room or place them in foster to be socialized before adoption. Feral cats who displayed signs of being able to live full and healthy lives with human companions were NOT adopted out as community cats. We also observed this behavior during TNRs and would do the same for those cats too.

"But aren't cats bad hunters?" -- Compared to other species, cats are not the most effective form of rodent control. This is true. However, you have to understand that feral cats exist. There is no "undo" button we can push to stop them from existing. We have to deal with the problem we have right now, which is to safely and humanely decrease the number of feral cats in our communities. And yes, we do that by using cats as rodent control in the community.

"What can I do?" -- Stop saying community cats shouldn't exist. That's not helpful and doesn't solve the problem we have. Bring your cat indoors. Spay and neuter your cats. Adopt from shelters. Volunteer with a TNR team. Support TNR efforts in your community. Recognize that those of us actively dealing with the community/feral problem are trying to do what is in the best interest of our communities and the animals we love. We aren't sitting over here saying these cats should exist -- a feral cat will not have the same quality of life as one that is indoors with a family -- but we have to address the problem in practical terms. We don't have the moral high ground to just do nothing while pontificating solutions that have no basis in actuality.

And yes, it's okay to celebrate community cats. If your local farm has a couple of working cats, that means that farm is helping participate in the safe deflation of the feral cat population. Don't shame a farm or business for using community cats. We're all doing the best we can to solve the problem that we have.

[hope-for-the-planet]

If you get caught up in the mindset of "we are doomed because most humans are too dumb and selfish to solve climate change" I really encourage you to watch the first 12 minutes of this video.

I've also done my best to condense the most relevant quotes below.

"The biggest reason why we have a problem, is love. It's that we want to have children, we want them to survive, and so now there are 8 billion of us. And now that there are 8 billion of us, we want all 8 billion of those people to have pretty good lives." "[P]eople are so caught up in [...] the current moment, that you can't see how hard all of our ancestors worked to provide us with a world that has plenty of food [...], climate controlled shelter, and pretty easy transportation to anywhere within [...] 400 miles." "Humans are remarkable. We are very powerful. Give any species this level of power and they will provide opportunities for thriving for themselves and for their children. They will try and prevent their children from dying.[...] For the most part they will walk through fire to make sure that their children don't die. They will destroy the Earth to make sure their children won't die." "I don't want my son growing up thinking that the species that he's a part of is in some way evil. I feel like that's the root of a lot of [...] arm chair environmentalism. I want him thinking, humans are problem-solvers and solving problems creates new problems." "When we solve the global warming problem, we will have created new problems. And we're doing it right now. Renewable technologies use way more land [...], they impact the environment by being there [...]. And I think in the future we will uninstall a bunch of those things because we'll have other technologies that are better [...]. And the people in the future will be mad at us for the work that we did and that's fine. Just like we're kinda mad at all the people who made the world a better place by burning a bunch of coal so that we could have refrigerators [...]."

You can't hate yourself and your fellow humans into saving the world--and if you believe that all other humans are short sighted and selfish and doomed by their very nature then you are far more vulnerable to doomerism and hopelessness and giving up.

As Hank says in the video, the only reason we even know that climate change is a problem at all is because a lot of very intelligent humans were concerned about the possible impacts of fossil fuels on the future and did a whole lot of modeling and research so they could warn future humans about the risks. And we are primarily in this climate change situation in the first place because our ancestors wanted to use the readily available energy from fossil fuels to give their children and their communities better, safer, healthier lives.

Now we are trying to use brains that evolved primarily to deal with relatively little, immediate, tangible problems in small communities to solve a very large, long-term, largely intangible problem on a global scale. As frustrated as I am that we aren't solving this problem faster (and that there is small number of greedy fossil fuel executives trying to stop us from solving it for personal gain), most people are doing their best under very challenging circumstances.

Humans are driven to solve problems for the love of other humans--themselves, their families, their communities, humanity as a whole. We shouldn't base the drive to solve our current problems on disdain for ourselves and our fellow humans.