Earth

On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,” he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the Native peoples.”

Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples’ guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. “Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,” he said.

During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world’s most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the Church’s role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism. As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world — and far-right politics continues to rise globally — experts see the conclave’s selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV, as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn’t going anywhere.

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Decided to go glamping of a sort this weekend. loaded up the back of my truck with shit i never take like a ginormous rotomolded cooler, and a mountainbike, and a cot and tent instead of my hammock and tarp. I even brought my fucking ipad to watch movies from. I brought aUSB powered fan to use in my tent. How bougie am i now? I even have 50 Amperes of 120vAC on tap approx 25' away if i choose to use them.

After dinner i went for a walk on a fishin pier. Ran across almost a dozen of these snakes and maybe five red eared sliders. Im fairly sure the snakes are Diamondback Watersnakes, but im not a snake guy so im going off of sesrching moreso than my own knowledge of snakes. This was the only photo i got of the two species in close proximity together. The lake i am at has Texas Rat Snake, Cottonmouth, Copperhead, Diamondback Watersnake, and maybe a half dozen rattlers of some sort but I'm fairly sure I'm right about the ID here.

The lake has these aluminum things someone welded and they dropped in to provide a habitst for panfish and larger to have somewhere to go. The lake is so low that what is typically 12+ feet below the surface has become a perch for surface life.

Anyway thanks for coming to mutual of omaha's wild kingdom

This shit be fire yo

They also tend to each other's wounds, very cool to learn more about primates.

The better to see you with - motion parallax in young owls

Owls are not really able to move their eyes in their sockets*, so they have to move their entire heads in a somewhat exaggerated manner to change their field of view. This bobbing and head-swaying motion is called motion parallax, and it helps birds (not just owls) more accurately judge distances.

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*more details on this in “Bobbing for Owls”

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The Parallax View (1974)

Director: Alan J. Pakula
Stars: Warren Beatty

An ambitious reporter gets in way-over-his-head trouble while investigating a senator's assassination which leads to a vast conspiracy involving a multinational corporation behind every event in the world's headlines.

Last year while waiting to start my studies, I spent a few months volunteering for a project radio tracking Ringtail Possums. The ringtail possum is a small nocturnal arboreal marsupial, and a lot cuter than opossums

I was involved in all parts of the field work - weighing and measuring, collaring, releasing, getting pissed on (they respect neither god nor man), releasing and tracking the possums.

We did unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) lose some to predation by foxes and cats. These were possums that had been injured and rehabilitated at a wildlife hospital and the high predation rate was pretty much the reason the study was carried out. Obviously not showing photos of those, but it was pretty upsetting for the rehab volunteers (and for we field volunteers too, of course! But we didn't really know the possums personally the way the hospital volunteers did.) We also found a few collars that had fallen off - they're designed with a weak link to try and eliminate any strangulation risk. Mostly the evidence we saw around lost collars suggested they were fine.

We started with 22 candidates for release; one sadly needed to be euthanized before release, due to the severity of its injuries and the fact it wasn't recovering. One was initially released but we then found it dehydrated and disoriented the next day while tracking it, right by a busy street - he was taken back into the hospital for further rehab. Of the others, by the time the several months were up, only I think four were still being tracked (most of the others knocked their collars off - we didn't lose 80% to predators!) which is a good result, to be honest, because this group of possums had been put through "possum finishing school" to try and train them to be scared of predators. Straight releases in the past did show predation rates on that order. So as sad as it was to see the ones that didn't make it, from what we could tell, the rehab's efforts were not in vain and the training did help. Which is especially nice when you consider how devastating it must have been to the hospital to learn that the vast majority of the individuals they treat were being eaten by introduced predators (it's a wildlife hospital, so losing some to eagles or quolls would have been sad but nowhere near as upsetting!)

I got this opportunity as a recent graduate (environmental science and conservation biology) through my contacts at the uni, but members of the public who had volunteered at the wildlife hospital were also involved. It was a very rewarding experience so I highly recommend it to anyone who has a similar opportunity.

Bonus: while out spotlighting a few months after the program ended, I saw some with their babies!

These were brushtail, not ringtail, possums which is why they look a little different. Didn't get a photo but shortly after this, they decided they didn't like being watched and the baby climbed up on mum's back to get a ride away from the strange man with the bright light 🩷

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40338549/

Results: A total of 419 incident PD cases were identified (median [IQR] age, 73 [65-80] years; 257 male [61.3%]) with 5113 matched controls (median [IQR] age, 72 [65-79] years; 3043 male [59.5%]; 4504 White [88.1%]). After adjusting for patient demographics and neighborhood characteristics, living within 1 mile of a golf course was associated with 126% increased odds of developing PD compared with individuals living more than 6 miles away from a golf course (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.26; 95% CI, 1.09-4.70). Individuals living within water service areas with a golf course had nearly double the odds of PD compared with individuals in water service areas without golf courses (aOR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.20-3.23) and 49% greater odds compared with individuals with private wells (aOR, 1.49; 95% CI, 1.05-2.13). Additionally, individuals living in water service areas with a golf course in vulnerable groundwater regions had 82% greater odds of developing PD compared with those in nonvulnerable groundwater regions (aOR, 1.82; 95% CI, 1.09-3.03).

Conclusions and relevance: In this population-based case-control study, the greatest risk of PD was found within 1 to 3 miles of a golf course and risk generally decreased with distance. Associations with the largest effect sizes were in water service areas with a golf course and in vulnerable ground water regions.

This fun fact brought to you by the DPRS Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection: helping nature take its revenge since Juche 1.

Hello new followers, in addition to birds I spend the warmer months chasing bugs. Here is a fun one for #FlyWeek, a stalk-eyed fly found in the Ecuadorian cloud forest.

(Richardia stylops), El Septimo Paraiso Lodge, Ecuador

https://bsky.app/profile/jencross.bsky.social/post/3lok4feqdlc2k

Newt On Rhubarb sounds like an aphex twin song title but it's real and it's in my yard

https://subium.com/profile/drewtoothpaste.bsky.social/post/3lojmhzbtwk2g

aka Andean Bears or Andean Spectacled Bears

Another Red-legged Honeycreeper, this time he's creeping some honey at @tapirvalley.bsky.social

#birds #costarica #nature

https://bsky.app/profile/mikemelton.bsky.social/post/3lo3kfbf5us2f