#biodiversity

[grandpriestofthealpaca]

Fun fact : (according to a teacher of mine who is an adviser in a french ministry) the 3 first things company come up with when we tell them to help biodiversity is

1 to put up beehives (usually with a species of bee that will compete with wild insects of the area)

2 to plant trees (without the fertile soil of the forest a tree cannot be the heaven it is supposed to be for microbes, also they often want to plant the same species of tree which is not very... You know... Diverse)

3 water hole

(I have no explaination for this last one, neither did my teacher)

The parking lot near my house has been flooded so long that Google Maps now considers it a natural landmark.

[historicalbookimages]

🦎 North American herpetology: . Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1836-1840.

[great-and-small]

Living in Florida (or anywhere in the southeast USA tbh) and NOT being into birds is like walking into a giant banquet hall feast with every single most delicious food you could ever imagine laid out in front of you only for you to say “oh I’m not hungry” and walk out without taking a bite

[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

[hope-for-the-planet]

I need you all to appreciate how crazy it is to have watched the scimitar horned oryx go from a poster child for "it only exists in zoos" to merely endangered (not even critically endangered!) over my lifetime.

So many heroic people contributed ridiculous amounts of time and effort to make this captive breeding and reintroduction effort a success.

[artfilmfan]

Chase Iron Eyes & Tokata Iron Eyes in Oyate (2022)

[vexwerewolf]

Yo this rules and is genuinely uplifting

[embodiedfutures]

[petterbrorson]

Står stolt, akvarell, 26,5x36 cm Det här och mina två senaste inlägg är målningar av skogar som är anmälda för slutavverkning. Delar av dem är enligt Skogsstyrelsen skog med höga naturvärden och nyckelbiotop. Det finns fynd av rödlistade och fridlysta arter i de här skogarna. Nu riskerar de, precis som 80% av alla skogar som huggs ner i Sverige, att bli pappersmassa eller andra kortlivade produkter som bränns upp inom två år.

...

Standing tall, watercolour, 26,5x36 cm This and my two latest posts are paintings of forests that are notified for logging. Parts of them are defined as having high natural values and being a key biotope by the Swedish Forest Agency. There are findings of several redlisted and protected species in these forests. Now, like 80% of the forests that are cut down in Sweden, they risk being turned into paper pulp or some other short lived product that will be burned withing two years.

[sarahmackattack]

Inject a little science into your Valentines Day with LOVE BUGS valentines!

GET 'EM HERE!

I really love putting science into things people are already doing. Each of these cards has a fact about the animal AND something you can do to HELP the animal. Let's care for our native insects! We love biodiversity!

(I also love getting snail mail. It's just a delight.)

Send these with your kid to school for valentines day exchanges, send them to your friends, bring them to work to bring a little joy (and science!) to the office.

They were designed by Michele Scott in Philly, and printed & packed here at Skype a Scientist HQ (also in Philly).

All sales support science education nonprofit Skype a Scientist!

Tell your friends. Get some Love bugs.

[lovecraftian-frog]

During my internship, I saw another strange fellow. If you like the neck flexibility of the European wryneck you sure gonna love the Little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus). This bird is in the heron family (Ardeidae) but loves to shrink itself. But be warned ! They know where your eyes are and can launch their neck and beak real fast ! One tried to attack me while I was checking its ring and I was lucky to be just 10 cm too far. Despite this vicious attack I love this funny bird and he was quite easy to untangle and to ring. With colleagues, we nicknamed it the "Accordion of death"

[platypu]

[historicalbookimages]

🌾 Field book of western wild flowers /. New York: Putnam, 1915.

[crevicedwelling]

scene from a wooden handrail in Singapore:

a psychid moth caterpillar trundles along in its mobile home stitched together from debris and silk. it’s stopped by a Hospitalitermes nasute-caste termite who pauses its patrol to investigate the strange fuzzy cone. after the soldier finds no threat, the little bagworm resumes its wandering

[reasonsforhope]

"For years, California was slated to undertake the world’s largest dam removal project in order to free the Klamath River to flow as it had done for thousands of years.

Now, as the project nears completion, imagery is percolating out of Klamath showing the waterway’s dramatic transformation, and they are breathtaking to behold.

Pictured: Klamath River flows freely, after Copco-2 dam was removed in California.

Incredibly, the project has been nearly completed on schedule and under budget, and recently concluded with the removal of two dams, Iron Gate and Copco 1. Small “cofferdams” which helped divert water for the main dams’ construction, still need to be removed.

The river, along which salmon and trout had migrated and bred for centuries, can flow freely between Lake Ewauna in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to the Pacific Ocean for the first time since the dams were constructed between 1903 and 1962.

“This is a monumental achievement—not just for the Klamath River but for our entire state, nation, and planet,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “By taking down these outdated dams, we are giving salmon and other species a chance to thrive once again, while also restoring an essential lifeline for tribal communities who have long depended on the health of the river.”

“We had a really incredible moment to share with tribes as we watched the final cofferdams be broken,” Ren Brownell, Klamath River Renewal Corp. public information officer, told SFGATE. “So we’ve officially returned the river to its historic channel at all the dam sites. But the work continues.”

Pictured: Iron Gate Dam, before and after.

“The dams that have divided the basin are now gone and the river is free,” Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe, said in a tribal news release from late August. “Our sacred duty to our children, our ancestors, and for ourselves, is to take care of the river, and today’s events represent a fulfillment of that obligation.”

The Yurok Tribe has lived along the Klamath River forever, and it was they who led the decades-long campaign to dismantle the dams.

At first the water was turbid, brown, murky, and filled with dead algae—discharges from riverside sediment deposits and reservoir drainage. However, Brownell said the water quality will improve over a short time span as the river normalizes.

“I think in September, we may have some Chinook salmon and steelhead moseying upstream and checking things out for the first time in over 60 years,” said Bob Pagliuco, a marine habitat resource specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in July.

Pictured: JC Boyle Dam, before and after.

“Based on what I’ve seen and what I know these fish can do, I think they will start occupying these habitats immediately. There won’t be any great numbers at first, but within several generations—10 to 15 years—new populations will be established.”

Ironically, a news release from the NOAA states that the simplification of the Klamath River by way of the dams actually made it harder for salmon and steelhead to survive and adapt to climate change.

“When you simplify the habitat as we did with the dams, salmon can’t express the full range of their life-history diversity,” said NOAA Research Fisheries Biologist Tommy Williams.

“The Klamath watershed is very prone to disturbance. The environment throughout the historical range of Pacific salmon and steelhead is very dynamic. We have fires, floods, earthquakes, you name it. These fish not only deal with it well, it’s required for their survival by allowing the expression of the full range of their diversity. It challenges them. Through this, they develop this capacity to deal with environmental changes.”

-via Good News Network, October 9, 2024