Batty about Bats
UK Chiropteran species include three pipistrelle species: Pipistrellus pipistrellus, P. pygmaeus and P. nathusii, along with 15 other recorded bat species in mainland UK.
Volunteer-run local bat groups in the UK have various schemes to install bat boxes and check occupants regularly, as a means of gauging populations, and recording which species are present and using surrounding habitats in these scheme areas. This information is vital for national recording of bat species.
This weekend we were checking bat boxes prior to winter hibernation – when bats go into torpor – weighing individuals, checking for general health, and learning how to distinguish between the three pipistrelle species based on common morphological differences, courtesy of the wonderful volunteers in my local bat group.
It was amazing for me to get so close to these amazing animals which I’ve been studying both personally and as part of my job for a few years! It was a bit like Christmas coming early!
I have now had my first rabies vaccination jab, with the following two vaccinations booked for this month. Once I have rabies immunity I will be able to handle bats and work towards a class licence for bats as part of my work.
I don’t really understand those who don’t think bats are incredible, highly-adapted and fascinating animals, and likewise those who can’t see how cute they are! See for yourself with these images I took while conducting bat box checks with the Staffordshire Bat Group.
Extinction Rebellion: Extremism?
This is (I presume) a screenshot taken of new (now redacted) police guidelines relating to government-led advice on handling the organisation Extinction Rebellion.
To clarify, Extinction Rebellion state:
“Extinction Rebellion is an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse.”
The government and police force have effectively implied that ER are a terrorist organisation. ER’s response can be found here. https://rebellion.earth/2020/01/10/how-dare-they-extinction-rebellion-responds-to-terrorism-slur-by-police/
If protesting loudly against the destruction of our planet and all living things on it, including ultimately ourselves, is somehow seen as extremism, then you know the system itself is ruled by insane oligarchs and fascists who wish to strictly control the narratives and push us further into capitalist and consumer-led environmental destruction and death. This is an attempt to silence and destroy rightful dissent against a broken system. We are not extremists; we are humans who are wide awake to the insanity of the world we currently live in and who desperately want to stop the destruction and ecological collapse happening all around us right now.
This Was The Decade Climate Scientists Stopped Being Polite | Gizmodo Australia
Scientists’ ‘politeness’ went on for far too long. If you know a truth – one that will change the world if rampant consumerism and greed continue unchecked – you do something about it, especially if you’re backed by science and academia. The people I can’t forgive are past politicians and some scientists who said little and did nothing while knowing our natural world was doomed. This applies to consumerism and capitalism, deforestation, predator persecution, climate, whaling and overfishing and more. Where were they? For 30 years from childhood I looked around and saw chaos coming and no one in power doing anything about it. Only charities like FoE, Greenpeace (back in the day) and WDC were speaking out. Too late now I fear. Humans are our own worst enemies. Too few listening to science, logic and fact, and the rest too easily swayed by rhetoric, propaganda, brainwashing and greed.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/01/this-was-the-decade-climate-scientists-stopped-being-polite/
Wildlife Crime — [Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]: 20 Mar 2019: Westminster Hall debates wildlife crime
In her response to the wildlife crime debate Therese Coffey demonstrates a distinct lack of understanding or willful ignorance on the issues of illegal hunting, raptor persecution and killing of hares. Does she get that hares are killed by their thousands in ways other than hare coursing and that the government have made those ways perfectly legal. They need protecting – full stop.
And we need an end to brood meddling. It clearly doesn’t work.
“In the recent judicial review into the lawfulness of Natural England’s decision to grant a licence for trials of hen harrier brood management, the claimants’ claims were dismissed. The proposed brood management scheme will continue. It seeks to manage the conflict between the conservation of hen harriers and the grouse shooting industry. That decision means the important work to protect and conserve the hen harrier can continue.”
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2019-03-20a.374.2#g393.3
Bolsonaro’s election is catastrophic news for Brazil’s indigenous tribes
Bolsonaro’s election is catastrophic news for Brazil’s indigenous tribes.
Bolsonaro plans to deregulate deforestation. Since the election in Brazil and his ecocidal rhetoric, deforestation in Brazil doubled in two months.
Bolsonaro is quoted as saying:
“It’s my advice and I do it: I evade all the taxes I can.”
“I would never rape you, because you don’t deserve it.”
“I will not fight against it nor discriminate, but if I see two men kissing on the street, I’ll beat them up.”
“I would be incapable of loving a gay son. I wouldn’t be a hypocrite. I prefer that he die in an accident than show up with some guy with a moustache.”
“She doesn’t deserve it [to be raped] because she’s very bad, because she’s very ugly. She’s not my type, I’d never rape her. I’m not a rapist, but if I was, I wouldn’t rape her because she doesn’t deserve it.”
“There will not be a centimeter demarcated for indigenous or quilombo reservations.”
As this article states, “The country’s 900,000-strong indigenous people are among the many minority groups Jair Bolsonaro has frequently targeted with vitriolic hostility. “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated their Indians,” he once said. If he enacts his campaign promises, the first peoples of Brazil face catastrophe; in some cases, genocide.
There are around 100 uncontacted tribes in Brazil, more than anywhere else on earth, and all are in peril unless their land is protected. Bolsonaro has threatened to close down FUNAI, the government’s indigenous affairs department, which is charged with protecting indigenous land. Already battling against budget cuts, if it disappears uncontacted peoples face annihilation.”
What has happened to us? When did the lunatics take over?
When nature says ‘Enough!’: the river that appeared overnight in Argentina
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/01/argentina-new-river-soya-beans
“Until the early 1990s, the Morro basin was a patchwork of water-absorbing forests and grasslands, but they are mostly gone, replaced by maize and soya beans.”
It may be a good move to cut down on cattle ranching worldwide (to prevent deforestation, to cut back on carbon and methane production, to limit the ongoing human health crisis caused by increasing meat consumption, to avoid further water pollution from farm runoff, to limit predator persecution, and to spare countless animals the endless cycle of slaughter), but an irony here is that soya beans, the hero of every vegan and vegetarian, come at a terrible price. Deforestation and clearing for cattle ranching has been replaced with deforestation in favour of this detrimental monoculture of soya bean farming.
If course, it is true that the humble soya bean is the new answer to reducing or cutting out meat consumption, but the majority of this soya and maize is being grown to become feed for the animal agriculture industry, something the attached article completely fails to mention. Animal agriculture is literally eating up our planet in countless ways.
Less than a third of Argentina’s rainforest remains. Losing that much established forest means losing deep networks of tree roots which naturally absorb large amounts of water from underground aquifers. The result is a huge new river appearing on land as has happened in Argentina. Why is this a surprise now? There are myriad experts in these fields worldwide who would have known this was a likely outcome as a result of mass deforestation. Why aren’t scientists involved in such massive economic and environmental processes and decisions?
Brazil has been in the grip of terrible deforestation for decades. With a changing climate, increased precipitation and otherwise poor substrate, deforestation in these countries inevitably means more landslides and more flooding, and perhaps more new rivers. We are drastically altering the landscape of the planet, destroying habitats and disrupting entire ecosystems.
Countless wildlife have lost their homes during this shift to soya bean plantations and deforestation, something that cannot ever be undone. When are governments of countries with such invaluable habitats going to quit putting profit before protecting and preserving their and the world’s most precious and vulnerable natural heritage? Rainforests are incredibly diverse, most are quite ancient, and they are so important to the world in terms of carbon sinks and wildlife biodiversity – they must be protected.
I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations
I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations
I’m stunned by this article. First of all, I had no idea the previous Canadian government destroyed 100 years of Arctic climate data. Secondly, we joke about Trump’s corruption, greedy business mind and being bought off by the Russians and huge corporations (does he think money is all that there is?), and his utter stupidity when tweeting about climate (“It’s freezing where I am so there cannot be global warming”), but this is real. This is systematic, deliberate climate change denial on behalf of big oil and other huge corporations because…money.
How are we allowing this? How are people becoming so blindly led, so brainwashed, so indignant and angry at the wrong people, at each other, instead of at those who have the power to destroy anything they want and are doing so. These very people are our downfall – of everyone, planet-wide. They deny science and deny fact to protect profit and greed, at all of our expense and at the expense of our precious living planet.
Maned wolf | Smithsonian’s National Zoo
More on the maned wolf, my new favourite animal. Genus Chrysostom.
10 Leggy Facts About the Maned Wolf
I may have found my spirit animal. Chrysocyon brachyurus, Maned Wolf. Magnificent Canidae, prehistoric carnivora lineage. I love them! Can I study them?
http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=87334
Humboldt – the greatest Ecologist we’ve never heard of?
Born in 1769, Humboldt observed deforestation and its effects in the Amazon rainforests 200 years ago and wrote about them; he was possibly the first person to express concern for the negative effects of anthropogenic activity on the natural environment. He wrote of nature as a “living whole” and a web or tapestry – all life as connected – a new concept at that time.
Humboldt wrote about soil erosion as a result of deforestation, and of climate change. He describes concern for human destruction of the entire planet – even suggesting we would take that destruction to other, distant planets – and of human greed and violence.
Humboldt evidently influenced Charles Darwin himself. Was he the first ecologist? A fascinating listen.
Dragon Mother 
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