#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This will not be published.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

[larapaulussen]

[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.

[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

[thoughtlessarse]

The destruction of global forests increased in 2023, and is higher than when 140 countries promised three years ago to halt deforestation by the end of the decade, an analysis shows. The rising demolition of the forests puts ambitions to halt the climate crisis and stem the huge worldwide losses of wildlife even further from reach, the researchers warn. Almost 6.4m hectares (16m acres) of forest were razed in 2023, according to the report. Even more forest – 62.6m ha – was degraded as road building, logging and forest fires took their toll. There were spikes in deforestation in Indonesia and Bolivia, driven by political changes and continued demand for commodities including beef, soy, palm oil, paper and nickel in rich countries. The researchers said attempts at voluntary cuts on deforestation were not working and strong regulation and more funding for forest protection were needed. The report highlighted a bright spot in the Brazilian Amazon, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new government cut deforestation by 62% in its first year. “The bottom line is that, globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade,” said Ivan Palmegiani, a consultant at the research group Climate Focus and lead author of the report. “We’re only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be chopped down, degraded, and set ablaze at alarming rates,” he said. “Righting the course is possible if all countries make it a priority, and especially if industrialised countries seriously reconsider their excessive consumption levels and support forest countries.”

continue reading

That's great 'cause possible zoonotic viruses are not reaching us fast enough and habitat loss need to be faster.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

🤎🦛🤎

[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.

[thicc-astronaut]

Some of my favorite one-liners from the talking flowers

[tilbageidanmark]

Golden snub-nose monkey eats an orange

[asgardian--angels]

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time and effort to put together the long climate/environment post, especially the online resources. I've wanted to replace the neglected/dead non-native plants at my place with native plants for months, but didn't know where to start my search for species except to walk around my local nature preserve trying to find something that isn't invasive lol. I'll be able to start (re)introducing native plants this month because of you :-)

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad the post has been helpful and inspiring. If you'd like more directed guidance on native plants, I can probably point you in the right direction if you can give me a general area to work with (state would suffice!). In general, go for keystone species- those that are common in your area and support many kinds of insects- or pollinator favorites, or host plants for rare/imperiled butterflies/bees/moths.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

What’s driving ominous declines in insects?

While a growing body of research shows decreases in many insect populations, it has been hard for scientists to disentangle the possible causes. Are insects suffering from habitat loss as natural areas are plowed and paved? Is climate change doing them in? What about pesticides?

The latest insight comes from a study on butterflies in the Midwest, published on Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE. Its results don’t discount the serious effects of climate change and habitat loss on butterflies and other insects, but they indicate that agricultural insecticides exerted the biggest impact on the size and diversity of butterfly populations in the Midwest during the study period, 1998 to 2014.

Especially detrimental, the researchers found, was a class of widely used insecticides called neonicotinoids that are absorbed into the tissues of plants.

“It’s a story about unintended consequences,” said Scott Swinton, a professor of agricultural economics at Michigan State University and one of the study’s authors. “In developing technologies that were very effective at controlling soybean aphid and certain other agricultural pests, non-target species that we care about, butterflies in particular, have been harmed.”

Europe largely banned neonicotinoids in 2018, citing risks to bees. The new findings come as wildlife officials in the United States weigh whether to place monarch butterflies, which range coast to coast, on the endangered species list. (They have already found such protections to be warranted but said they were precluded by higher-priority needs.)

In addition to delighting humans and pollinating plants, butterfly species are a critical food source for other animals, notably birds, during their life stage as caterpillars. In fact, research has linked some bird declines to insect declines.

For the new study, researchers integrated multiple data sets and used statistical analysis to make comparisons between different potential drivers of decline across 81 counties in five states. They found that in the median county over the 17-year study period, pesticides were associated with an 8 percent decline in butterflies when compared with a scenario in which pesticide use remained unchanged over the same period. For monarchs, that comparative drop was a whopping 33 percent.

[covenawhite66]

Ways to save steel head trout by fixing Southern Californian rivers.

Removing obsolete damns

Removing non-native species

Reducing water diversions and groundwater pumping to ensure sufficient flows in streams and restoring watersheds' natural ecosystem

Habitat loss, Fragmentation, and Urbanization

Fragmentation: meaning when one population of animals are separated by barrier and no longer able to contact each other to breed. Creating 2 or more breeding populations or isolated gene pools.

[the-blaze-empress]

episode three of genloss was fucking phenomenal but theres one thing that makes me kinda sad

how much of this stems from ranboos own experience? obviously not the killing and maiming part, but the underlying themes. being held to unreasonable extremes and standards, having other people dictate what you do and dont do, being nothing but a character, not being able to stop until other people decide you can, not being able to stop unless you never want to start again? being told other peoples decisons were your own, fearing punishment for that?

the subtle commentary (and not so subtle commentary) is incredible, and its clear theres was so much fucking love and effort put into the entirety of gen 1, dont get me wrong. im so glad ranboos been able to break the 4th wall. also fuck hetch i knew something was up as soon as he showed up