#loss of habitat

[uwhe-arts]

. . . | uwhe-arts

[inthecityofgoodabode]

November 2024: This Week's Images

Perhaps the most abstract bee butt photo I've ever taken:

Garden production has slacked off but we're still getting a handful of tomatoes like this almost every day:

One of our next door neighbor's took down the two large oaks in their backyard. The upside is our garden will get more early morning sun. The downside is less habitat for backyard wildlife:

Look what I found today:

Cute little bugger:

[timbarrus]

This will not be published. I used the word bulldozer. I submitted this as an example of how the New York Times demands compliance. If the gatekeepers think those of us who deplore the New York Times just disappear into the mist, the gatekeepers are crazier than I thought they were. You do realize that the comment gatekeepers want our voices to all sound alike. To disagree is to be “uncivil.” How is it that a newspaper gets the last word on civility. Comment moderators are mainly from India, and it shows. India is a great country with great people. Who says – mommy, when I grow up, I want to be a comment moderator. No one. These are menial jobs with menial pay. They come and go a lot. In India, it is not considered a good job. It is considered a bad job. Turnover is high. No wonder. The New York Times is clocking in 20,000 comments a day. Can you possibly imagine 20,000 people all sounding like the same person. Bassey Etima used to supervise this stuff, but she might have taken a walk. I don’t know. The NYT does all this work on the cheap because they’re cheap. Civility is something you spit on a dime. – tim barrus

[approximateknowledge]

once you learn enough about evolutionary biology you start seeing ghosts everywhere

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I'll let the article speak for itself today, but the short version is that the Bureau of Land Management is being very sloppy in its protection of old growth forests, and logging is accelerating.

Once again I am frustrated by the existence of a mindset in which a person looks at ancient trees and only sees dollar signs.

[littlepawz]

In Dr. Douglas Gurr's words, "This breathtaking and poignant image allows us to see the beauty and fragility of our planet. His thought-provoking image is a stark reminder of the integral bond between an animal and its habitat and serves as a visual representation of the detrimental impacts of climate warming and habitat loss."

This photo is heartbreakingly beautiful. No wonder the ‘Ice Bed’ by Nima Sarikhani won the 'Wildlife Photographer of the Year ' Award.

[larapaulussen]

[the-blaze-empress]

so genloss is all about breaking the 4th wall right? right. when ranboo wakes up he realises that there is no 4th wall. every time the stream ‘glitches’ we’re seeing through to whats actually happening, we’re seeing beyond the 4th wall and potentially so are the characters (im looking at u sneeg). the mask is what keeps the 4th wall in place for ranboo, but thats not where it ends. the breaking of the 4th wall doesnt just stop with the characters.

what im loving about genloss is the psychological horror and how well and uniquely its handled. its fairly clear at this point that ranboo is not in control of their actions, but has been able to break free/has tried to break free at multiple points. showfall media is the one in control, not ranboo.

but thats not where it ends. genloss is a live show for a reason, and that reason is chat. without chat, genloss would not be able to be what it is. throughout the stream there’s things to do; buttons to press, decisions to make, pipes to rearrange. they exist for a reason.

the first episode was relatively tame compared to what we’ve seen since. options were things like ‘where should i look’ and ‘what wacky device should i use against the guy made of slime’ (i could probably write a whole other post about the connotations of blood and slime but that is For Later). those choices dont seem in spirit with something advertised as psychological horror. the entire first episode was kinda... tame honestly.

theres a reason for that. think back to the inauguration video chain. the first question was harmless, cats or dogs? it got you used to the mechanics of the ‘game’, made you familiar with the concept of ‘pressing buttons’. the first episode serves the same purpose; desensitise chat to pressing buttons, so when the decisions switch from ‘where should i look’ to ‘who do i leave to die’ all they really see is a button, without any real consequences. it’s just a button, we should press it.

showfall media isnt just manipulating the characters, its manipulating us.

what i found really interesting is jerma also being able to manipulate the controls, as such, when he solved the pipe puzzle. it established that chat arent the only ones able to use these controls, and i fear what it’s going to bring. i think that showfall is going to start rigging things in their favour, but we won’t be able to tell. one person alone cannot tell what thousands of others voted in this scenario, so there isnt a way to tell that the vote was rigged from the start. and it gives showfall such an easy way out. chat voted, thats what they wanted. we are going to be tricked into ‘wanting’ what showfall wants, ‘doing’ what they want us to do, even if we’re not the ones with the masks that connect to our fucking brains.

there was never any 4th wall. we’re just as deep into this as ranboo is

[actiwitch]

Everyone's an environmentalist until you mention animal ag. and exploitation. They're the biggest drivers of climate change and habitat loss (by FAR), but no one wants go hear it.

YOU HAVE BEEN PROPOGANDIZED. YOUR GUT REACTION TO DISMISS ANY EVNVIRONMENTAL OR LIBERATION MOVEMENT (in this case animal liberation) SHOULD BE A RED FLAG 🚩

[creatureimages]

you ever blindly stumble into areas of intense academic controversy

[thepastisalreadywritten]

🤎🦛🤎

[thoughtportal]

[thoughtlessarse]

The world’s wealthiest nations are “exporting extinction” by destroying 15 times more biodiversity internationally than within their own borders, research shows. Most wildlife habitats are being destroyed in countries with tropical forest, according to the study which looked at how wealthy countries’ demand for products such as beef, palm oil, timber and soya beans is destroying biodiversity hotspots elsewhere. It found that high-income nations were responsible for 13% of global loss of forest habitats outside their own borders. The US alone was responsible for 3% of the world’s non-US forest habitat destruction. “That just underscores the magnitude of the process,” said lead researcher Alex Wiebe, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University in the US. Countries that had the most significant impacts abroad included the US, Germany, France, Japan, China and the UK, according to the paper, published in Nature. Globally, habitat loss is the biggest threat to most species and about 90% is caused by conversion of wild habitats to agricultural land. “By importing food and timber, these developed nations are essentially exporting extinction,” said Prof David Wilcove, co-author of the study from Princeton University. “Global trade spreads out the environmental impacts of human consumption, in this case prompting the more developed nations to get their food from poorer, more biodiverse nations in the tropics, resulting in the loss of more species.” A lot of deforestation occurs in places with high levels of biodiversity, such as Indonesia, Brazil or Madagascar. Researchers say that analysing these patterns could help promote more targeted conservation and sustainable food production.

continue reading

[tilbageidanmark]

Golden snub-nose monkey eats an orange

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I always feel a little spark of hope mixed with worry every time a supposedly extinct species is rediscovered. I worry that the population is too small to be sustained. But I feel hope when the immediate response is to protect the place where the species was found, and--when possible--implement plans to reintroduce more from captive populations.

The thing is, though, that we never know where a rare species will turn up. Every acre of wild land that's torn apart for agriculture, mining, logging, development, etc. is an acre that could be hiding something we haven't seen for ages. More importantly, it's not just the rare species that deserve habitat protection, but those that are still common.

I am in my mid-forties. In my lifetime, the planet has lost two out of every three wild animals. If I make it to ninety, and trends continue as they are now, we stand to lose one out of every three animal and plant (and, likely, fungus as well) species entirely by the time my ninetieth birthday rolls around.

Habitat loss is the single biggest cause of species endangerment and extinction. We can combat the losses by protecting the habitat that is left, and restoring it wherever else possible. Even a tiny balcony or backyard native plant garden provides crucial habitat for native insects and other invertebrates which are among the most important beings in the food web. (Here's a chapbook I wrote on the topic.)

Let's keep trying, not just for the earless dragon, but for all the species still with us today.

[panicinthestudio]

They Didn't Make Dire Wolves, They Made Something…Else, April 8, 2025

TL;DW: 1. Dire wolves are probably not that closely related to gray wolves, though Colossal says that's not true, they haven't produced anything to back that up. 2. Dire wolf-like animals will never be ecologically important to our current world because they ecosystems they existed inside of do not exist anymore. 3. Collossal's goal isn't de-extinction, is creating new species to fill in niches left behind by extinct species, which is an idea worthy of debate! But it's not what you think of when you hear "de-extinction." 4. There's lots of really cool science here, which does include maybe kinda creating the frist large mammalian synthetic species.

Fixing my Direwolf Mistake, April 11, 2025

This has been an interesting journey...there is obviously something to like about de-extinction hype, which is that we're talking about the biodiversity crisis, which is absolutely great, because usually we do not! Is lying about making direwolves worth that? I dunno, maybe! Probably even!!