A Bit Much For Most Tourists

Dead fish near a boat ramp in Bradenton Beach, Florida.

Photograph: Chris O'Meara/AP

Agricultural polution, climate change driven water temperature increases on land and sea lead to events like this.  And, like the increase in wildfire intensity due to climate change, we are seeing an increase in the number and pervasiveness of algae blooms like this.








UPDATE:  Florida's governor, Rick Scott, is attempting to pretend that his actions had nothing to do with this rotten state of affairs.

...Scott forced $700 million in cuts to the state’s water management districts — including the South Florida Water Management District, the lead state agency on Everglades restoration. 

And during his first six years as governor, he gutted staffing at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The agency lost more than 600 employees, dropping from about 3,500 to 2,900, according to reporting by Craig Pittman of the Tampa Bay Times. 

About the Everglades: Scott has touted an Everglades restoration bill he signed in 2013 — but doesn't talk about how it phased out a tax farmers pay to grow crops in the Everglades Agricultural Area, leaving taxpayers on the hook for any lingering pollution costs.

Also in 2013, Scott and the Legislature approved 30-year, no-bid leases for farmers in the EAA, including sugar giant Florida Crystals. 

The same year, Scott was among the politicians who took secret trips to U.S. Sugar’s private hunting lodge at King Ranch in Texas. After the trip, Scott appointed a King Ranch executive, Mitch Hutchcraft, to the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District.

Climate of Deceit

Certainly the oil companies understood the impact of burning fossil fuels.  They knew decades ago of the potential that a climate disaster was the likely result of their busiess model.  So, of course, they changed their business model.  Not really, they did everthing they could to hide the evidence and to deny that it even existed.

“If the weather machine were to be wound up to such new levels of energy, no country would remain unaffected...” 

We're Back

Back at the old spot.  Decided to bail out of Facebook and restart the show here. 

This  link takes you to a view of the place we have to save.  Save it and we save our souls.

Monkey Business

Monkeys making tools.  What’s next, using them?  And, then before you know it they are our overlords.

Scientists saw a group of capuchin monkeys making stone flakes, an important type of early tool. It's not clear the monkeys knew what they were making, but nonetheless, it might prompt researchers to be more cautious when they come across ancient sites where similar tools are usually attributed to early humans.

You make a flake by whacking two rocks together. It has to be a kind of rock that breaks in a certain way, and you have to hit one rock on another rock to break flakes off the striking rock. The flake is shaped kind of like a scallop shell. Hold it carefully and you've got a knife.

Source: M. Haslam and the Primate Archaeology Group/University of Oxford/Nature

Save Every Patch of Ground

The battle against invasive insects and plants is being waged at one of the most beautiful botanical gardens in the world – the Cornell Plantations in New York.

John Menard

Cornell University in Ithaca, New York is home to one of the state’s largest and most prominent botanical gardens, the Cornell Plantations. Created in the mid-19th century as a part of the university’s dedication to the natural sciences, the Plantations consists of a 100-acre arboretum, 25 acres of gardens, and over 4,000 acres of nature preserves.

Unfortunately, an influx of invasive species has put many of the Plantations’ over 40 natural areas in jeopardy. Newly introduced non-indigenous species can compete with and consume native plants and animals, dramatically reducing biodiversity in the Plantations. Invasive insects are especially dangerous, as their consumption of native plants could potentially lead to the extinction of trees and flowers that have been housed at the Plantations for over a century.

Conservation vs Slaughter - The US Election

Hillary Clinton has been in awe of elephants since a trip to Africa nearly 20 years ago.  As Secretary of State she pushed an aggressive conservation agenda for the Obama Administration and implemented an $80 million anti-poaching program through the Clinton Global Initiative.  She is committed to wildlife conservation.

“I love the way…the matriarch of the family looks for everybody, I just have such a sense of connection to elephants and it just breaks my heart that they are being poached and murdered and babies being left to fend for themselves,” Clinton said on a portion of the show that only aired on Facebook.

Clinton’s affinity for elephants is not widely known or reported. But during her tenure as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, she helped bring the issue of global wildlife trafficking out of obscurity.

“International criminal syndicates are orchestrating the slaughter of many of the world’s iconic wildlife species and profiteering by marketing ivory, rhinoceros horn, and other wildlife parts in the U.S., Asia, and Europe,” said Jorge Silva, a spokesperson for the Clinton Campaign. “Many of the criminal syndicates have ties with, and are helping to fund, terrorist groups around the world, and also are engaged in human, drug, and arms trafficking.”

When asked for input regarding Donald Trump position on elephant conservation The Guardian got no response.  Of course, you could infer the Trump position on conservation from this photo of his namesake son, taken just after Trump Junior had shot and killed an elephant. 

 The Trump campaign did not respond to repeated requests for its position on elephant conservation or the global wildlife trade, but its website mentions neither. This is not surprising given the website lists very few positions regarding any environmental issues, including making no mention of climate change – although Donald Trump has claimed that climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese.

In 2012, media leaked photos of Donald Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, taken during a big game hunt safari in Zimbabwe. In one image, Donald Trump Jr. stands next to an elephant he shot to death and holds up its severed tail. Cutting off an elephant’s tail is traditional in some African cultures where the hair is made into a bracelet.

Huggin and Freki

The sense of wonder that the wild world provides us makes up for many things that are missing in the modern, technically oriented world.  Below is a bit excerpted from a one-off blog that both discusses the relationship of wolves and ravens in nature and in the symbolic representations of those animals by humans in mythology and religion.   Read the whole post, it is worth the time.

Some zoologists speculate that the raven's relationship with wolves may be because of their psychological make-up. Dr. L. David Mech wrote in "The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species": "It appears that the wolf and the raven have reached an adjustment in their relationships such that each creature is rewarded in some way by the presence of the other and that each is fully aware of the other's capabilities. Both species are extremely social, so they must possess the psychological mechanisms necessary for forming social attachments. Perhaps in some way individuals of each species have included members of the other in their social group and have formed bonds with them."

Wolves and ravens have long been connected in folklore and fact. The Nordic God Odin is often represented sitting on his throne, flanked by his two wolves Geri and Freki and two ravens Huggin and Munin. Tales of hunting interaction involving wolves, ravens and humans figure prominently in the storytelling of Tlingit and Inuit, Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, with the ravens appearing as form-changing wise guys and tricksters, taking advantage of both humans and wolves.

h/t  Avicultural Society of America San Diego