#and eradicate invasive species

[carbonated-fenwater]

Mostly screaming into the void with this one but I'm almost to the end of earning my Bachelor's and I've got something to say.

It is not edgy or subversive to redirect your hatred onto animals that you deem morally impure or to try and yassify misunderstood creatures.

"Sea otters assault their females to death and drown their pups" they are still a cornerstone species worth protecting and whole ecosystems are suffering for the loss of them.

"Sharks are just ocean puppies and big sweeties." No they're not, they are apex predators and you have to treat them with respect. Saying they're not capable of aggression or completely misunderstood is still spreading misinformation, you cannot generalize a group of animals like this.

"Dolphins are super smart and actually capable of understanding that some of their behaviors are evil" I am actually going to break into your house and steal your shoes if you say this to me.

"Charismatic megafauna are useless and overrated and taking away from underappreciated species that Really need our help" wrong again dipshit. Animals like pandas, elephants, whales, and others that I'm sure you're tired of seeing plastered everywhere are important to get the general public involved. It's called PR (and while I wish it wasn't necessary and that people would care regardless I digress) and what conservation work IS done based around them is advantageous to other threatened species that share their habitat.

As someone going into the field of ecological conservation and marine biology, I have met one too many people who think it's okay to say a certain animal doesn't deserve to be protected because it makes them feel yucky or just because they think it doesn't deserve it. I shouldn't have to tell you why that is SO not okay. The underappreciated and overrated can both exist, you don't need to proselytize people into hating dolphins just so sharks can get their dues.

You're also allowed to just dislike an animal! But if you sensationalize their behaviors that are morally incorrect by human standards, then I am begging you to reevaluate yourself, get more educated on the subject, and talk to a real ecologist.

No creature on this planet deserves to be eradicated just because you are personally offended by their natural behaviors or deem them unfit to take up space.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #516

Common carp!

The species is classified as invasive in many areas, but it is a vulnerable species in its natural range! Common carp domestication has very long roots, hence why its range has become so large.

[towelpng]

i’m a lettuce girlie yknow what i mean. me and the other lettuce girlies enjoy our topping and dressing flavored lettuce for the first half of the salad, and spend the second half of the salad trying to re balance the ruined topping economy only to end up with straight dressed toppings at the end of it.

[hanscapons]

i dont usually agree with wild caught animals as pets but i do think its okay and even good to just snatch up pigeons and give them a home

[wandering-wolf23]

Look, I don't care how invasive or "bad" a species is, but if you start talking about how you detest that species and want to kill all of them, I'm going to give you the side eye and avoid you.

Plants and animals aren't inherently evil and they aren't malicious. They just are. Maybe they're in the wrong place, but they are acting according to their natural instincts. They're not being evil or mean or invasive on purpose. Chances are, people put them in a place they're not supposed to be.

Talk about managing them, yes. But don't talk about wanting to kill them with fire or how you'd like to take a gun and shoot them all so they suffer before they die. That's really fucked up.

[unpopularvetopinions]

The most important thing to remember about "ethical vegetarians" and "ecological vegans" is that you don't have to pay attention to anything they say about ecology or ethics.

A frustrating part of the mainstream vegan “love all animals and protect the environment” mindset is the fact that things need to die in real-life ecology all the time but deer hunting season makes icky feelings and carp culls aren’t cottagecore

[hostilehospitalbeds]

so tired of that ‘your dislike of this animal doesn’t outweigh its right to live’ post. Like for one if you’re new here - I don’t believe in animal rights. So that immediately irritates me. And then you can see in the notes people are interpreting this post in all different ways. Bc OP said live/exist and many people are honing in on the exist part and not getting that OP isn’t just saying “mosquitoes shouldn’t go extinct” they’re saying “you’re evil if you squash a mosquito on your leg”. And while “if you go outside at night and clap, you won’t get your blood back” is a sick ass lyric, I also just don’t care if people kill individual mosquitoes. I don’t care if you kill bugs in your house. I DO care if people kill animals that are just living their life out in the wild and posing no threat to anyone. And I understand the ecological value of these species even when I kill an individual. And that is it.

for further clarification: animal welfare not animal rights. The animal rights movement is a very particular thing. So I’m in favor of legal protections against animal cruelty just not in granting them a generic human concept of “rights”.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

This is evident from their recent limited approval for use in Northern Territory and Queensland in attempts to eradicate the imported red fire ant (figure 18.6), which was discovered in Brisbane in early 2001 and subsequently in Victoria and other places including Auckland.

"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

yknow I was gonna post a long incoherent rant here, but I'll just say that as someone who's worked outdoors and had to filter my own water, under the supervision of trained/lifelong professionals, as someone who almost majored in this stuff, as someone who currently works closely with the MOST "radical" of water rights activists (not on this issue, we just run in the same circles), and as someone with a basic understanding of the water cycle and the ability to look outside and observe reality

I call mega super huge BS on this post. either its outright lying, or (way more likely) lying by omission by using real scientific facts with 0 context.

how "dangerous" are these chemicals and what exactly do they do? has this been proven to affect wildlife in any way? are these chemicals present in drinking/tap water right now? "a study" seems like a reliable source, but that isnt always the case, especially re: "studies" used in headline news. I'm not in the statistics field, is there anyone who is who could tell us more about the "study" linked in the first article?

there are lots of things that are scary in the world, and many if not most of them ARE caused by human evil. before ppl reading this post spiral, think about what context is missing.

and, HUGE red flag for me: why is the first reblog someone feeling outraged and saying they need to protest and that they feel powerless/dont know what to do.... and the second reblog is OP, with a comic of a person being handed a gun.

and why does that message keep repeating throughout the thread.

I'm not anti-science. I'm DEFINITELY not "anti-leftist" or "anti-anarchist". I work regularly in radical leftist spaces irl and know people who are on domestic terrorist watchlists for their activism in Land Back and water rights movements. These spaces are the most hopeful, freeing, and welcoming places, and yes, anger IS present there, rage IS present there.

but what neither the "facts" as presented in this post, or the reactions encouraged here, are present in those spaces. so. yeah

hard side-eye

ALT

[headspace-hotel]

I am small and I can't do very much. That is the despair of an individual in a big and violent world. But the plants teach me it is okay to be small. Everything is either small, or made of things that are small. We are all connected. Symbiosis.

So, on the subject of bugs.

It is the fourth summer of the Meadow. My plants grow strong and wild and cover more space than ever before. I have worked to eradicate the invasive lawn grass and carefully curate large clumps of only native species (with a few esteemed naturalized weeds allowed---I have no quarrel with Chicory, it has a positive effect on the ecosystem).

I have tall, huge native Field Thistles, multitudes of tough and aggressive evening primrose, wild strawberry spreading everywhere, a dozen vigorous gray-headed coneflowers, giant clumps of cup-plant, and so many asters and goldenrods that I've had to start targeting them in my weeding.

Yes, yes, I have the showy ones like purple coneflowers and black-eyed susans, but I also encourage and cultivate weird little weeds that are too inconspicuous or ugly to be often planted on purpose. White avens, lanceleaf frogfruit, nettle-leaf vervain.

There are too many plants. I'll spend forever listing them all. What is really interesting, is what's happened with the bugs.

Every year, there has been a much bigger variety and population of insects. I am both seeing many more species, and seeing the same species in much, much larger numbers. Even on the same plants that were already there 4 years ago, I can see way more bugs.

Flower flies, for instance. There are tiny yellow and black flies known as flower flies that are very beneficial for gardeners, because their larvae are predators that attack aphids. It used to be that I could often see a dozen, but now I see hundreds of them every time I go outside!

Or wasps. There are more species of wasps than I possibly could have imagined. It used to be that I would only see the reddish paper wasps, the ones that make big paper nests in the eaves of your house, but now, there are dozens of different wasps. Some are black, others black and white, others black and yellow, others black and brown, and they come in all different sizes. A bunch of blue-black wasps with white stripes live in the log next to my pond.

I identified them and looked up the species, and they had not been studied at all since the 1960's. Supposedly they are solitary species, but several different wasps have made nests inside the log right next to each other. That's the first interesting thing. The second interesting thing is that the nests were first inhabited last summer, and the same species of wasp still lives in them, so their town has been inhabited for multiple years instead of being abandoned when the larvae emerge. Has the next generation taken over the old nests? I am observing something about the species that is not known to science.

Wasps are hated and feared, but my wasps have never been anything but peaceful and polite, and they have so much beauty and importance in the ecosystem.

And the bees! I am observing bees this year that I had never even heard of before. Many of them are so tiny, I doubt they could even reach the nectar in large flowers like purple coneflower. What if the small, inconspicuous flowers are essential for smaller pollinators like the tiny bees? That would make sense. Different flowers evolved to attract different bees.

Beetles, ants, leafhoppers, flies, moths, butterflies, all kinds of bugs. Specific plants attract specific bugs, but it is not the plants individually that restore insect biodiversity, it is the way the plants interact and form a bigger ecosystem.

What I mean is, as my garden grew, the increase in bugs was not linear in relationship to the plants, it was exponential. The combination of the many different plants into an ecosystem attracted many more bugs than would be expected from the sum of each plant individually.

I remember the emptiness and barrenness before. I see it around me when I visit other places. The disappearance of bugs. The insect apocalypse. It's so clear to me now. The cause is biotic homogenization. I call it plant sameness.

Everywhere around me, landscapes have been made into expanses of the same few plants. But when plant sameness is replaced by variety and diversity, many plants interacting in many different ways, everything changes.

[cursedauxiliary]

in an environmental sociology class and its nuts to me how little ppl understand like... basic things of nature... I'm talking like how nature that does not follow property lines or borders

[reasonsforhope]

"The world’s largest hornet, an invasive breed dubbed the “murder hornet” for its dangerous sting and ability to slaughter a honey bee hive in a matter of hours, has been declared eradicated in the U.S., five years after being spotted for the first time in Washington state near the Canadian border.

The Washington and U.S. Departments of Agriculture announced the eradication Wednesday [December 18, 2024], saying there had been no detections of the northern giant hornet in Washington since 2021...

“I’ve gotta tell you, as an entomologist — I’ve been doing this for over 25 years now, and it is a rare day when the humans actually get to win one against the insects,” Sven Spichiger, pest program manager of the Washington State Department of Agriculture, told a virtual news conference.

The hornets, which can be 2 inches (5 cm) long and were formerly called Asian giant hornets, gained attention in 2013, when they killed 42 people in China and seriously injured 1,675. In the U.S., around 72 people a year die from bee and hornet stings each year, according to data from the National Institutes of Health.

The hornets were first detected in North America in British Columbia, Canada, in August 2019 and confirmed in Washington state in December 2019, when a Whatcom County resident reported a specimen. A beekeeper also reported hives being attacked and turned over specimens in the summer of 2020. The hornets could have traveled to North America in plant pots or shipping containers, experts said.

DNA evidence suggested the populations found in British Columbia and Washington were not related and appeared to originate from different countries. There also have been no confirmed reports in British Columbia since 2021, and the nonprofit Invasive Species Centre in Canada has said the hornet is also considered eradicated there.

Northern giant hornets pose significant threats to pollinators and native insects. They can wipe out a honey bee hive in as little as 90 minutes, decapitating the bees and then defending the hive as their own, taking the brood to feed their own young.

The hornet can sting through most beekeeper suits, deliver nearly seven times the amount of venom as a honey bee, and sting multiple times. At one point the Washington agriculture department ordered special reinforced suits from China.

Washington is the only state that has had confirmed reports of northern giant hornets. Trappers found four nests in 2020 and 2021.

Spichiger said Washington will remain on the lookout, despite reporting the eradication. He noted that entomologists will continue to monitor traps in Kitsap County, where a resident reported an unconfirmed sighting in October but where trapping efforts and public outreach have come up empty...

“We will continue to be vigilant,” Spichiger said."

-via AP News, December 18, 2024

[wachinyeya]

Tiny Indian Ocean Island Shows How Quickly Seabirds Recover When Invasive Predators Are Removed https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tiny-indian-ocean-island-shows-how-quickly-seabirds-recover-when-invasive-predators-are-removed/

18 years after rats were eradicated, Tromelin Island off the coast of Madagascar is a thriving colony of seabirds once again.

The same story happened over and over during the age of exploration: Europeans brought rats or rabbits on board their ships and dumped them on delicate, pristine island ecosystems.

Hundreds of islands became desolate wastelands this way, damage that has for the most part been reversed, as GNN has reported, in one of the greatest conservation stories ever told.

Now, this small teardrop of sand, rock, and palm trees in the southern Indian Ocean, is the most recent example of conservationists being able to completely rewild a landscape back to a period before European contact.

Spanning just 1 square kilometer, Tromelin Island is now home to thousands of breeding pairs of 7 seabird species like the masked and red-footed boobies.

By 2013, these two species had doubled in number from the precarious, rat oppressed lows of just a handful in 2004. In the subsequent 9 years, white terns, brown noddies, sooty terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters, and lesser noddies all came back on their own initiative.

Matthieu Le Corre, an ecologist at the University of Reunion Island, told Hakkai Magazine how, in some cases, restoring seabird populations can be a tricky thing based on the particular species’ nesting habits.

On other islands where Le Corre has worked, they’ve had to install robotic bird calls and life-size replicas to convince the birds the island is a safe place to nest again. But Tromelin Island needed no such help, since these terns, noddies, and boobies are much more dispersed in their nesting patterns.

“In terms of conservation, it’s a wonderful success,” Le Corre says.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Island ecosystems are always more vulnerable than those on larger continents. Less space means fewer resources, which leads to each species having a smaller population. For endemic species that can't fly or otherwise get to another island or mainland, once that one island's ecology is disrupted significantly enough, the risk of extinction becomes very real.

Sombrero Island is no exception, having been completely deforested and torn up for mining. Invasive mice put further pressure on native species. With the mice eradicated, native plants can once again thrive, and the Sombrero ground lizard is less likely to see its eggs or young eaten by hungry mice, and its population has risen from fewer than 100 individuals in 2018 to over 1600 today.

This is yet another example where removing invasive species and restoring habitat with and for native ones can help an ecosystem and its inhabitants recover. The more biodiversity we preserve on our planet, even in these seemingly tiny, isolated places, the better equipped all of us will be to weather the years to come.

[typhlonectes]

Scientists develop groundbreaking method for detecting DNA of invasive snakes in Florida

Scientists at the University of Florida have developed a pioneering tool to bolster Florida's defenses against invasive species: a DNA-based environmental monitoring test that can pinpoint where they've been, aiding eradication efforts.

Once a nonnative species gets into an environment, it is often too late to get rid of it, and the focus shifts to containment or long-term management. Both approaches come with heavy costs concerning native wildlife and funding, explained Melissa Miller, lead author on the study and an invasion ecologist at the UF/IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center (UF/IFAS FLREC). "We hope this novel eDNA sampling tool we have designed will help increase efficiency in invasive species management, allowing for early detection and rapid removal of nonnative species," she said...

Read more:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241122130344.htm

[todaysbird]

why do you keep reposting invasive species like house sparrows and starlings? I love your blog, but am getting exhausted with always seeing invasives. You should already know that they don't belong here and need to be eradicated. They aren't "cute", they're vermin. I guess declining native species means nothing to you?

i mean you could ask the same of any blog that posts about domestic cats. do they not care about native species because they like cats? invasive birds also have native ranges…not everyone is US based and they didn’t spawn in as invasives, we created the problem. im not ‘pro’ invasive species (i support humane control methods) but im not against them existing as a whole either. you wouldn’t complain about someone drawing a lionfish because they are invasive; animals do not exist with a concept of being good or evil, they’re ultimately neutral beings and it’s not their fault we put them in non-native ranges where they thrive