Do you ever wish your life was like a pond?
With water lilies,
and visiting friends?
Everyone peaceful,
and getting along.
Well, if your life is not much like a pond,
today, or any day,
why not go visit a quiet one?
You just may find some peace there.
Cheers to you from a peaceful pond~
Tag Archives: Wildlife
iNaturalist.org
Photo courtesy of http://www.fabulousnature.com/img2451.htm
I recently posted a conservation article on my group blog, League of Bloggers, that mentioned a website called iNaturalist.org. The site has proved to be an ingenious way of gathering scientific data through the help of non-scientists who love nature. I’d like to give some more information about it here. If you’re a nature lover who takes photos of wildlife, this is a great opportunity to help with the conservation efforts of your favorite plants and animals!
Discarded Fishing Line Lethal To Birds And Marine Mammals
Berkley, one of the largest suppliers of fishing line, started the Berkley Conservation Institute, giving fishermen the chance to send in their used fishing lines. Stores and marinas also send Berkley their old lines in bulk. “We turn fishing line into park benches and fish-habs,” said Ji Martin, conservation director for the Berkley Conservation Institute.
Discarded fishing line and other marine debris are killing wildlife in huge numbers.
More than one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year from marine debris,according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Fishing line is the number one culprit cleanup volunteers encounter when they try to save wildlife,according to the Ocean Conservancy organization.
“When these animals get caught in this line, it’s a slow and agonizing death,” said Jim Walker spokesman for Mississippi’s Department of Wildlife Fisheries & Parks.
Stop Koalas From Becoming Timber Industry Casualties (petition)
Photo courtesy of fineartamerica.com
As human civilizations expand exponentially, the habitat of the koala shrinks to almost nothing.
This is the scene in Victoria and South Australia. The Blue Gum plantations have become a make-shift home of sorts for koalas that have lost their natural homes to deforestation. But their new home is dangerous- timber companies are cutting down trees on the plantations, too, and koalas are being injured and killed in the process.
Our-Compass says:
Volunteer wildlife carers are struggling to keep up with the number of casualties — koalas suffering from broken limbs and backs, severed arms and impact wounds. Many more don’t even survive the fall. Witnesses have even described injured koalas still on the felled trees as they are pulled through the shredders.
Stronger protection for wildlife is needed. At a minimum, the detection, capture and relocation of koalas (and other at risk wildlife) needs to occur under government supervision before forest areas are logged.”
The petition: Please call on the Ministers responsible in Victoria and South Australia to stop the tragic killing of koalas and introduce stronger protection for wildlife.
Federal Plan Aims to Help Wildlife Adapt to Climate Change
This is just another example of how those who wish to believe that global climate change isn’t happening will keep being proven WRONG. Even the Obama Administration is on board, creating a bold new program to address climate change and its inevitable effects on wildlife. In fact, they’ve been documenting how it’s already happening. Although this article is a few months old, I think it’s still really important to share here.
WASHINGTON, March 27, 2013 — The Obama administration Tuesday announced a nationwide plan to help wildlife adapt to threats from climate change.
Developed along with state and tribal authorities, the strategy seeks to preserve species as global warming alters their historical habitats and, in many cases, forces them to migrate across state and tribal borders.
Over the next five years, the plan establishes priorities for what will probably be a decades-long effort. One key proposal is to create wildlife “corridors” that would let animals and plants move to new habitats. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Daniel M. Ashe said such routes could be made through easements and could total “much more than 1 million acres.” The plan does not provide an estimate of the cost.
The effects of climate change are already apparent, the plan notes. Oyster larvae are struggling off the Northwest coast. In the Atlantic, fish are migrating north and into deeper waters. Geese and ducks do not fly as far south. In the West, bark beetles destroy pines because winters are not cold enough to kill infestations.
The plan, called the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, does not prioritize species to target, although “the polar bear is the poster child” of wildlife threatened by global warming, Ashe said.
But efforts have already begun to protect wildlife. The lesser prairie chicken in the Great Plains, for instance, also faces threats from mining, oil production, farming and ranching. Climate change models estimate that the chicken’s habitat could undergo a 5-degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature and a drop in precipitation by 2060.
The federal government already pays ranchers and farmers to remove land from production to create wildlife refuges. If native prairie were restored to 10% of that land, according to one analysis, that could offset the prairie chicken’s projected population decline.
Recently, some state-level efforts to adapt to global warming have been stymied by politicians who reject climate science. In North Carolina, for instance, planning to build infrastructure along the coast that could withstand storm surges worsened by sea-level rise has been delayed. State politicians dismissed scientific models that predicted the rise by the end of the century.
But efforts to help wildlife adapt have not provoked a backlash so far, state and administration officials said in a conference call.
“With coastal communities, there are challenges with coral populations, with changing dynamics in fish population,” said Eric Schwaab, assistant administrator for fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “So people are less focused on why and more focused on what’s next.”
Illuminate 