Restoring Biodiversity - 7/18/2023
Partnerships that protect habitat. Let's talk about wolf predation. Poison use quadruples. And more...
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Here is what we’ve been reading, watching and writing about this week…
Articles
Regulators, Landowners Form Habitat Protection Partnership
As discussed in the article below, it is ESSENTIAL that public forest managers and the private landowners that border them work collaboratively.
This needs to happen in the Greater Yellowstone area.
Let’s Tell the Truth About Wolf Predation
As discussed below, actual livestock deaths from wolf predation are few, and greatly exaggerated.
Bad News for Wildlife and Habitat: Use of Vietnam-Era Plant Poison More Than Quadruples
The Wall Street Journal, arguably one of the most respected newspapers in the country, has swallowed the Kool-Aid, or, in this case, the 2-4-D. If readers were to accept this piece at face value, they would come to the conclusion that it is reasonable for the agrochemical giants to push ever-stronger poisons as the solution to the unintended consequences of ill-advised agricultural practices, including past reliance on poisons.
Every year, more and more poisons are used. Every year, soil fertility declines and unintended consequences proliferate. Every year, the agrochemical giants promise that their “new” generation of chemicals will be the silver bullet. In truth, they offer old, stronger poisons in ‘new-and-improved’ bottles.
The business, government, university, and agency cronies of the agrochemical giants, like the Wall Street Journal (wholly-owned by the world’s largest newspaper company), avert their eyes from the environmental catastrophe. A co-opted USDA, which in 2014 will receive $200 billion in taxpayer dollars, much of it to track food and environmental safety, no longer compiles data on herbicide use. Why? It is ‘too costly.’
“As discussed in the paper below, recent discoveries indicate that humans arrived in North America thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
If so, this earlier dating of the beginning of human hunting of American wildlife would explain the human role in the catastrophic loss of wildlife known as the “Late Pleistocene Extinctions” in much less controversial ways, strengthening the argument that early Native Americans played a primary role in the largest extinction event since that of the dinosaurs 60-million years ago.
Breaking the Code on the Invisible Fenceline
Someday soon, a workable livestock grazing collar – such as what is described in the article below – will transform restorative grazing practices.
Videos
Watch Rare Mexican Wolf Pups Meet Their Wild Foster Families
“Cross fostering” Mexican Wolves for reintroductions and to increase genetic diversity.
The Incredible Hulik and His Beavers
Biologist Tomas Hulik spent more than 300 days and nights in the wild riverine forest along the river March, separating Slovakia and Austria. After that, Rachel, the matron of this beaver territory, allowed him to watch the daily routine and dramatic adventures of her family of five at close range. In more than 200 shooting days, an ORF camera team accompanied Tomas to gather scenes never before filmed in the wild.
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And that’s it - as always thank you..
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