ukrewildingstudent

[ukrewildingstudent]

[ukrewildingstudent]

[ukrewildingstudent]

[ukrewildingstudent]

[ukrewildingstudent]

In an accident of geography and history, Romania is home to one of the largest and most important old-growth forests left in the world. Its Carpathian mountain chain, which wraps like a seat belt across the country’s middle and upper shoulder, hosts at least half of Europe’s remaining old growth outside Scandinavia and around 70 percent of the continent’s virgin forest. It’s been referred to as the Amazon of Europe, a comparison apt and ominous in equal measure, because of the speed at which it, like the Amazon itself, is disappearing.

Most of Europe was rapidly deforested during the industrial era; less than 4 percent of EU forestland remains intact. Romania, far enough from the continent’s industrial centers and long a closed-off member of the Soviet bloc, remained a shining exception. During the country’s communist period, the government converted the forests to public ownership and kept them off global export markets, enshrining the forest management trends of an ancien regime. The result is that Romania retains some of the rare spruce, beech, and oak forests that qualify as old- or primary-growth, having never been excessively logged, altered by human activity, or artificially replanted.

But the fall of communism in 1989 dissolved one layer of protection for those forests, and the subsequent wave of privatization inaugurated widespread corruption. In 2007, Romania’s entry to the European Union created a massive, liberated market for the country’s cheap, abundant timber and the inexpensive labor required to extract it, conditions that encouraged Austrian timber companies and Swedish furniture firms to set up shop. Succeeding fractious, ineffectual regimes enacted further pro-market reforms and did little to curb corruption; in the final months of 2021, the country’s prime minister designate found himself unable to form a government at all. Add to that the astronomical growth of the fast furniture industry, which particularly relies on the spruce and beech that populate these forests, and the result has been a delirium of deforestation.

There’s one obvious, notable beneficiary of this situation: Ikea. The company is now the largest individual consumer of wood in the world, its appetite growing by two million trees a year. According to some estimates, it sources up to 10 percent of its wood from the relatively small country of Romania, and has long enjoyed relationships with mills and manufacturers in the region. In 2015, it began buying up forestland in bulk; within months it became, and remains, Romania’s largest private landowner.

[…] Without even accounting for possible violations based on method of extraction, more than half of the country’s timber is illegally harvested. Even legal logging, which on private and public land alike must be preceded by a forest management plan that is approved by the government, can be rife with corruption and abuse. Since roughly the date of Romania’s accession to the EU, between half and two-thirds of the country’s virgin forest has been lost.

[ukrewildingstudent]

do you have any other cursed biology facts about good animal dads?

sure, and the answer may surprise you: wolverines!

like many other carnivorans, wolverines are solitary predators that roam huge swaths of territory alone, with a single male’s territory overlapping several females that he fathers kits with on a yearly basis. (a male wolverine’s territory can be over 500 square miles, which is a lot of Dude Room.)

however, UNLIKE other solitary carnivorans, male wolverines don’t call it quits on their progeny once they tip their hats to the ladies and scram, so to speak. instead, a male wolverine will stop by the homestead of each of his mates in turn when he’s in the area, and will check in on the kits and even borrow them for a day or two of Dad Camping to make sure they’re getting enough to eat and to beef up their survival skills!

(and also sometimes he’ll just sit on them, I guess.) 

and wolverine paternalism doesn’t end when the kits grow up, by any means- wolverine dads will also keep an eye on their young adult children and step in if they seem to be having trouble making ends meet, or if baby manages to get themselves trapped by a bunch of biologists in a tagging program.

(not pictured: angry wolverine father just inside the treeline, waiting for the unwary scientist to turn his back.)

so that’s something to keep in mind if you ever run across a baby wolverine and try to pick it up like a total dumbass: watch out, you’re about to have your limbs pulled off by not one, but TWO angry adult wolverines!

(and you deserve it.)

[ukrewildingstudent]

NEW COW! NEW COW!

NEW YEAR, NEW COW!

[ukrewildingstudent]

[ukrewildingstudent]

Excerpt from this story from Earth Island Journal:

Long ago, the European brown bear roamed Scotland. So did herds of elk. Wolves traversed the islands, walruses populated the rugged coasts, and sea eagles soared over the moorlands. Birch, hazel, pine, and oak trees regally crowned throughout Scotland’s landscape. Woodlands, in fact, covered much of the country.

Scotland lost its bears to hunters and habitat loss by the tenth century. It lost its elk a few centuries later. The country’s last known wolf was shot and killed in 1743. The last sea eagle eggs were taken by an English vicar in 1916 and the last adult sea eagle was shot and killed in 1918. Walruses rarely make appearances along the coast. By 1900, woodland covered only about 5 percent of Scotland’s land area. Scotland today is nothing like Scotland was several centuries ago.

Activists, though, have planted seeds — literally and figuratively — to change that. To return the country, as much as it can be, to the vibrant natural home that it once was: one full of foxes and fescues; beaver and bees; capercaillies and cloudberries. To return it to a place that supports the species still present in the landscape, and then slowly reintroduce lost species over time.

Enter the Scotland Rewilding Alliance (SRA). The SRA, formed in 2019, is a collaboration of over 20 like-minded organizations that share a mission to enable rewilding at a scale new to Scotland. To not only conserve what little natural habitat remains in Scotland, but to expand it. Member organizations, such as Trees for Life, Woodland Trust Scotland, Rewilding Britain, Cairngorms Connect, South Uplands Partnership, Open Seas, and others, are asking the government to make Scotland the world’s first “rewilding nation” before Scotland hosts the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November by committing to a nationwide rewilding effort.

[ukrewildingstudent]

Grey Partridge family in Northumberland

[ukrewildingstudent]

European Mink successfully hunting crayfish in Catalonia

Footage by @ukrewildingstudent

[ukrewildingstudent]

helloo, i'm trying to get into natural sciences and conservation but i have next to no knowledge, so i was wondering if you maybe had any book recs? i'm currently reading the hidden life of trees and loving it, gathering moss is probably my next one but i'm craving to delve deep (thanks!)

do i ever?!

alright, here goes:

soul of an octopus, sy montgomery 

the wild places, robert macfarlane

the snow leopard project, alex dehgan

a primate’s memoir, robert m. sapolsky 

wilding, isabella tree

the invention of nature, andrea wulf

my family & other animals, gerald durrell

h is for hawk, helen macdonald

thank you madagascar, alison jolly

wildwood, roger deakin

the vanishing: india's wildlife crisis, prerna singh bindra

letters to a young scientist, e.o. wilson

spying on whales, nick pyenson

dark ecology, timothy morton

rebirding, benedict macdonald

the deep, alex rogers

running away from elephants, rauf ali

silent spring, rachel carson

the genius of birds, jennifer ackerman

baboon metaphysics, dorothy cheney & robert m. seyfarth

upstream, mary oliver

the colors of nature, (ed.) alison hawthorne deming & lauret e. savoy

in the shadow of man, jane goodall

atmosphere of hope, tim flannery

the mushroom at the end of the world, anna tsing

two trees make a forest, jessica j. lee

lab girl, hope jahren

nature cure, richard mabey

braiding sweetgrass, robin wall kimmerer

a forest in the clouds, john fowler

pilgrim at tinker creek, annie dillard

feral, george monbiot

the living mountain, nan shepherd 

the snow leopard, peter matthiessen

there’s a definite bias towards uk nature writing because, well. i’m british.

probably a disproportionate number of primate-centric books in there too but we’ll allow it.

hope this is useful!