This article starts with the rather arresting sentence, “Most people see about 4–5 lions each day — as toys, on television, in logos.” It goes on to discuss that this overrepresentation has caused people to think that there are generally a lot of lions in the world, with repercussions for conservation. I’ve seen 2 lions already today - a toy that Glassbab had this morning, and the one in the article. Today, I am going to keep track of how many lions I see.
National Park Service rangers and scientists who surveyed the mountains’ mossy, muddy creeks on March 14 found nine egg masses belonging to the California red-legged frog, a species popularized by Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” in 1865, Park Service officials said.
A single egg mass can contain 1,000 to 3,000 eggs, said Park Service ecologist Katy Delaney, who spearheaded the frog’s replenishment program…
yoooooo we live in the same state, corn hell
iowa is wild but scary bc of how desolate it is??? like. theres corn. corn forever. you get on the highway and you can look out and only see plants in organized rows into the horizon. every once in a while theres a gas station. even if you reach a city, if you drive in any direction you will stumble upon endless farms again in a few minutes.
I went to the university of iowa’s natural history museum this last april and they had a display showing iowa’s change over time; today, 90% of Iowa is farmland. it used to be 90% natural prairies and forest. It’s important to remember that the only other place in the world that has the exact growing conditions as us is Ukraine. a huge precent of the US’s corn crop comes from Iowa.
so when we talk about sustainability and soil health and making sure in general that we keep farmland healthy so it doesn’t get drained to the point of forming ecological wastelands incapable of growing anything, it’s super scary and real here when you think about it. there are better practices for farming (for example: plowing actually harms soil health a lot bc it disturbs the complex microorganism communities in the land. a recent thing thats being looked at is farming in mounds instead of plowing, so like, you would have a machine like a plow that would poke little uniform holes in the soil and put a seed in each one, planting them without disrupting the ecosystem) then what they have here, and all that depends on education and research to help us protect the land we have. like it would be great to have those natural prairies back, but as it is now, Iowa is a huge supplier of corn (and beans to a lesser extent) in our country, and we have to protect it.
this has been some iowa corn discourse
The tadpoles represent hope for the critically endangered Puerto Rican crested toad (Peltophryne lemur), the only toad native to Puerto Rico, and a unique species that had been thought extinct for much of the 20th century. Preferring arid or semi-arid areas of Karst limestone, the toads are identifiable by their unique head crests…
During the breeding of this rare species, the Zoo’s Herpetology team was able to decide what sex the hatchlings would be by monitoring the temperatures during the 80-85 day incubation period. Incubating at cooler temperatures typically hatches males and incubating at warmer temperatures hatches more females.
When the time is right and the turtles are ready to emerge from their shells, they are equipped with an egg tooth, which is a hardened piece of keratin that protrudes from the tips of their noses. A team of keepers was on standby during hatching to ensure the smooth and safe hatching of each of the four turtles…
She realized that agencies and authorities responsible for policies that determine the horses’ fate, and advocates who lobby strongly that the horses should be cared for humanely, don’t see the poor conditions suffered by the horses and the environmental degradation of the land.
“The area is a quarter million acres in size. There are no main roads, so you have to take ATVs to see the horses,” Snell said. “We realized we needed to provide visuals to show people the horses and what the landscape looks like due to unmanaged grazing by the wild horses.”
Snell places wildlife cameras for two-week periods near 24 remote water sources in wild horse territory in Modoc and Lassen counties. At each site, the camera takes a burst of three pictures automatically every 15 minutes; motion detectors on the cameras also trigger a shot whenever an animal enters the field of view.
Preliminary data from 2015 show some striking findings. At one spring site, for instance, more than 71 percent of all animals detected over the sampling period were horses. Cattle accounted for 19 percent and the rest were pronghorn antelope, deer and hawks. The study will continue through 2017.
Wild horses are running in the Devil’s Garden territory, and outside the territory, on private and tribal land. Fences don’t hold the horses in, Snell said. Federal wild horse management areas are intended for multiple uses, including livestock grazing, hunting and wildlife habitat. But in Devil’s Garden, livestock have been excluded because of the environmental degradation.
“It was never intended to be single use area,” Snell said. “The horses are gorgeous animals, but I also like to see pronghorn, elk and mule deer. Some groups of wild horses are getting large and studs are getting aggressive. I know people who no longer ride their personal horses because it’s not really safe with the territorial nature of the stallions.”
The holy animal of Mongolia is big-headed and stocky, like a pudgy foal that overgrew in odd places. Its body is the color of a stirred cappuccino, but the legs are dark, as if dressed in stockings. Its muzzle is white, its mane black and bristly, erect as a fresh-cut mohawk. A matching line runs like a racing stripe all the way down the horse’s back. The babies are often pale gray, and woolly like lambs, and while any sensible human would immediately want to pet one, if not outright hug it, wolves see lunch.
If you were able to observe this creature in person, which is hard to do, given that they live in only a few places on earth, you would find it in a family network—a harem—with a dominant stallion watching over mares and their offspring, in groups of 5 to 15. For this to happen, you would have to be in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, China or Russia, the only places the horse lives anymore in the wild. Not so long ago, the species, once prolific on the Central Asia steppe, was one cruel winter, one hungry wolf pack, one outbreak of disease away from extinction.
This animal is generally known as “Przewalski’s horse” (pronounced shuh-VAL-skee), or “P-horse,” for short, but Mongolians call it takhi, which means spirit, or worthy of worship. You don’t ride the takhi, or stable it, or—pony-like as the horse appears—saddle it up and perch children on it at birthday parties. The horse is too wild for that. While it has been captured and occasionally confined to zoos, it has never been tamed—it is the only truly wild horse in existence. Other horses that are thought of as wild are in fact feral…
Here we see the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s set-up for the study of Darien stubfoot toads [Atelopus certus]. These toads in particular are part of an assurance colony which seeks to preserve the species, which has been impacted by the deadly chytridiomycosis fungus. They are endemic to Panama and are one species of many to have suffered from chytrid in the region. Images by amphibian conservation biologist Brian Gratwicke.
Happy Halloween! Remember when I did a little quiz asking if you guys wanted an article on internal parasites or the origins of spooky animal myths? Well, the surprise winner was FEAR ECOLOGY! Because I was reading about it and it SEEMED APPROPRIATE for the season!
In this article, you will learn:
And more!!!
A deadly fungus, chytrid, is attacking frogs’ skin and wiping out hundreds of species worldwide. A chytrid infection prevents the normal movement of water and nutrients through the amphibians’s skin.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Mountain yellow-legged frogs, found only in California’s alpine lakes, have been in steep decline due to the fungus (as well as predation by non-native trout). More than 90 percent of the population has disappeared.
Now in a last-ditch effort, scientists are trying something new: build defenses against the fungus through a kind of fungus “vaccine.”
Read more about the effort to battle chytrid fungus here. And watch the video by PBS Digital Studios’ Deep Look here.
Video Credit: Josh Cassidy/KQED
Think of ten animals that you know are endangered – go on, we’ll wait. Now, cross out every animal on that list that has fur, hair, feathers, or scales. Do you have many left on that list? Do you have any left at all? - @pagurus
Although invertebrates make up the majority of the animal kingdom, they are often overlooked in conservation efforts. Will we ever look beyond the mighty, the cute, and the magnificent?
Illustrated as the final instalment in a series covering endangered animals, published on Earth Archives.
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via: Xinua News
Cameras at a nature reserve in northwest China’s Gansu Province recorded wild takins nursing their young.
The pictures feature two or three mature takins tending as many as 15 calves in a mountain forest in Baishuijiang National Nature Reserve. The mature takins watch over their young while they nap, according to the photos shot from 12:56 p.m to 2:08 p.m. in April this year.
After waking up and foraging for food, the takins lay bask in the sunshine, showed the photos.
The cameras were installed in early April, and when they were checked recently, the pictures were discovered, said Wu Juncheng, head of the reserve’s Rangshui River Protection Station…
(read more: ShainghaiDaily.com)
Hey everyone! So, my sister wrote an amazing children’s story about human-wildlife relationships, and has collaborated with an artist who has created adorable illustrations! She (my sister) works for the World Wildlife Foundation, where she’s been working to improve human-wildlife relationship dynamics, and she had always been passionate about this subject!
Please go to their Kickstarter to at least check out the description of the story! Gia and the illustrator have been working a long time to bring the dream of a children’s book to fruition, and both they and I would really appreciate your interest!
(P.S.: the book rhymes, and Gia is wonderfully fun with rhyme - she makes up little songs for her cats all the time! P.P.S.: there’s a little picture of those cats in Gia’s profile picture if you go to the link above!)
Signal boost for a friend! This is a neat project!
The kaka is a cavity nester, meaning that it nests in the trunks of hollow trees. Two to four eggs are laid, and the female will incubate them for the next 90 days, relying on her mate to bring her food. Sadly, this means both mother and eggs are extremely vulnerable; introduced predators such as stoats and possums will attack a brooding female, killing her and devouring the eggs/chicks. Ecologists fear that this is leading to a severe imbalance in sex and age ratios among the kaka, with there being fewer and fewer young birds and fewer breeding females.
Hi all, I’m making this post for my friend/coworker Jessica, who is currently running a campaign to help Save The Frogs! fund an expedition to Ghana. She just went on an eco-tour with some of their staff and had nothing but positive things to say about them.
Most of you will already know about the current crises facing the world’s amphibians, which in simple terms is that 43% of all amphibian species are in danger of going extinct. This is pretty scary and we need to take a lot of action if we want to save even some of our remaining species. Jessica’s campaign would help send one biologist to Ghana to participate in education and habitat restoration efforts- here’s the project description:
SAVE THE FROGS! team members are going to be traveling to Ghana in September to gain the support from the community for two of the world’s most endangered species of frogs (the Giant Squeaker Frog and the Togo Slippery Frog). The trip will also give the team an outstanding amount of experience and continued knowledge that they can bring back with them to their home countries of the USA, Ecuador, Mexico and Bangladesh.
EXPEDITION GOALS
Lack of education and environmental awareness across West Africa impedes successful wildlife conservation efforts. The SAVE THE FROGS! Ghana Expedition Team will educate and inspire thousands of Africans and westerners to care for andprotect amphibians; we will restore habitat for critically endangered frogs; facilitate and enable international partnerships and networking opportunities that would not otherwise be possible; and significantly accelerate amphibian conservation efforts in Ghana by bringing national and international attention to the plight of Ghana’s frog populations. Expedition members will learn about Ghana’s amphibians and environmental issues; develop skills that they can apply to conservation programs in their home country; educate and be educated by the student members of SAVE THE FROGS! Ghana university chapters; assist with Giant Squeaker Frog habitat restoration efforts; and visit local schools to educate the next generation of Africans about environmental issues, ways to protect amphibians and how to conserve Ghana’s natural resources. The SAVE THE FROGS! Ghana Expedition will serve as a model for similar expeditions to other countries.
You can click the link above or here to find out more information about Jessica’s campaign or to donate! Thanks for reading!
Hi all, I’m making this post for my friend/coworker Jessica, who is currently running a campaign to help Save The Frogs! fund an expedition to Ghana. She just went on an eco-tour with some of their staff and had nothing but positive things to say about them.
Most of you will already know about the current crises facing the world’s amphibians, which in simple terms is that 43% of all amphibian species are in danger of going extinct. This is pretty scary and we need to take a lot of action if we want to save even some of our remaining species. Jessica’s campaign would help send one biologist to Ghana to participate in education and habitat restoration efforts- here’s the project description:
SAVE THE FROGS! team members are going to be traveling to Ghana in September to gain the support from the community for two of the world's most endangered species of frogs (the Giant Squeaker Frog and the Togo Slippery Frog). The trip will also give the team an outstanding amount of experience and continued knowledge that they can bring back with them to their home countries of the USA, Ecuador, Mexico and Bangladesh.
EXPEDITION GOALS
Lack of education and environmental awareness across West Africa impedes successful wildlife conservation efforts. The SAVE THE FROGS! Ghana Expedition Team will educate and inspire thousands of Africans and westerners to care for andprotect amphibians; we will restore habitat for critically endangered frogs; facilitate and enable international partnerships and networking opportunities that would not otherwise be possible; and significantly accelerate amphibian conservation efforts in Ghana by bringing national and international attention to the plight of Ghana’s frog populations. Expedition members will learn about Ghana's amphibians and environmental issues; develop skills that they can apply to conservation programs in their home country; educate and be educated by the student members of SAVE THE FROGS! Ghana university chapters; assist with Giant Squeaker Frog habitat restoration efforts; and visit local schools to educate the next generation of Africans about environmental issues, ways to protect amphibians and how to conserve Ghana's natural resources. The SAVE THE FROGS! Ghana Expedition will serve as a model for similar expeditions to other countries.
You can click the link above or here to find out more information about Jessica’s campaign or to donate! Thanks for reading!
