Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record by Errol Fuller
Garry Rogers rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was hard to read. As you pass from one tragedy to the next, you gather sadness like a rolling ball gathers snow. More than a simple chronicle, there is deep concern here. I recommend it.
“The American Burying Beetle, Nicrophorus americanus, is an endangered species with limited habitat remaining. Eastern Oklahoma contains significant habitat that must be preserved or mitigated. Mitigation typically takes the form of a company or organization establishing a permanent habitat area approved by the US-FWS.”
“Some governmental units in Oklahoma, object to the increased cost and would like the Burying Beetle removed from the endangered species list. Perhaps they should instead re-evaluate their development goals? Can they develop by infill of existing already developed areas instead? Do they really need to widen the current roads and bridges?”
Source: livingwithinsects.wordpress.com
GR: Of course, developers and planners in government are not interested in endangered species. If the beetle stands in the way of municipal growth or private profits, public servants and developers will try everything up to and including law suits and congressional campaign contributions to get a loophole.
Ian Johnston: “Conservationists are on the brink of despair over the plight of the lemur after an international appeal for funds to help save the world’s most endangered primates fell on deaf ears.
“About 90 per cent of all lemur species – including the only other primate apart from humans to have blue eyes – are at risk of extinction on their native island of Madagascar.
“But a major appeal for nearly £5m launched in 2013 has since raised less than 20 per cent of the target and conservation groups have now launched a new international body designed to reinvigorate the campaign.” Source: www.independent.co.uk
GR: So numerous the natural world’s problems and so distracted the average sports/fashion/television fan, the great dying, as we name our time, continues unabated. For those that care, the daily disasters are coming too fast. If only more of us could turn from our appetites and fears to perceive the world around us; if only we could see other creatures as having value; if we could, we would redirect our national energies to saving our Earth, our home. Please call out the places you find that enable public support for lemurs.
A Working-based volunteer group strives to create habitats for these nocturnal birds and inspire children to help in conservation, discovers Patrick Barkham.
“These mostly nocturnal birds of prey are an enduring symbol of wisdom and mystery in our culture and children’s books. Harry Potter has triggered a renewed fascination with them. Everyone seems to love owls but there is a problem: populations, particularly of barn owls, have massively declined because of habitat loss but also partly because there are no homes for these much-loved species.
“The possibilities for inspiring schools and young people are endless: owls are a keystone species, bellwethers of biodiversity, and Operation Owl hope that sparking local interest in owls at the apex of a food chain will help people treasure prey species – voles, shrews and invertebrates – and the healthy grasslands, heathlands and woodlands on which they all depend” (Source: www.theguardian.com).
How to set up your own Operation Owl
GR: At least three species of owls live all or part of the year around my place. We have a Barn Owl, Northern Pygmy-Owls, and Great Horned Owls. Last fall I installed a Barn Owl box, and I hope to have residents this summer. Our local Barn Owl story is here.
Monsanto’s Roundup Ready system – a potent herbicide combined with genetically-modified seeds that can withstand it – has decimated the monarch butterfly’s only source of food in the Midwest, putting it on the edge of extinction, according to a new study. Source: rt.com
GR: Evidence indicates that Monsanto is the principal cause of declining bees and butterflies. The article includes an interesting diagram showing the personnel overlap between Monsanto and the U. S. Government.
WASHINGTON –- The fight over the Keystone XL pipeline is about to become a fight over the lesser prairie chicken as well.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) is seeking to attach an amendment to legislation authorizing construction of the pipeline t… Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
Anna Sher Simon: “Tamarisk was introduced to the Western U.S. from Eurasia in the late 1800s, and over the next 50 years it was widely planted as a fast-growing, drought-resistant ornamental and riverbank stabilizer. However, the negative impacts of the tree were increasingly evident, leading to the passage of a national bill to address the issue.” Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
GR: Tamarisk became invasive, replacing native plants, and sucking up lots of water that people wanted. It also became home to an endangered bird species. An introduced beetle effectively kills the tree, but also eliminates the endangered bird’s habitat. What to do.
Land managers conclude: “Our primary task, therefore, is to promote desirable replacement vegetation whenever and wherever we can, taking advantage of the opportunity the beetles create and mitigating any unintended effects. The panelists’ report, expected this spring, is a first step in that direction.”
WELL DUH. Why weren’t restoration and unintended effects considered in the first place? In many similar instances of “land-use management,” the U. S. Bureau of Land Management, and most other public land-management agencies, fail to plan ahead. They praise “adaptive management,” and then do not collect the necessary information. They just don’t look before they leap, and they don’t look back to see why their shoes stink.
Madagascar is home to 5% of global biodiversity and the second highest number of threatened mammals in the world – yet even cartoon lemurs in the movie of the same name seem to receive more public attention and cash Type “Madagascar” into any… Source: www.theguardian.com.
Lack of concern for wildlife is outdated because so many animals disappeared in the past few decades and the extinction rate is exploding.
Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson. All Rights Reserved
Some viewpoints need to go extinct, and the hate-speak espoused by Capt. Ron Malast in his opinion piece, “Let Steller sea lions go extinct,” is at the top of the list. So, the Steller sea lion population is starting to re-grow a little after the commercial seal trade, ruthless bounties and constant shooting as “competition” drove them, and just about every other pinniped species, to the brink of extinction.
The eastern pacific population of Steller sea lions may be up to 70,000 individuals now, but the human population of 7.2 billion grows by 350,000 per day. Let that sink in for a minute… 350,000 PER DAY!
350,000 is also the total number of all other great apes alive today—every chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla and orangutan—combined. Why is that significant? Because scientifically speaking, that’s all we humans really are—just another species…
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