It's amazing. If a week ago I had said that were drugs in my tap water, I would have been labeled as schizophrenic. If I say the same thing today, I'm just someone who reads the news. However, I would have been just as right a week ago or even a year ago. It goes to show the truth in that old saying: "Just because your paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you".
Known for gliding along local waterways with statuesque grace, the mute swan is rarely thought of as an environmental hazard.
Wildlife experts in Connecticut say that mute swans, like these at Holly Pond in Stamford, devour shoreline vegetation, displace waterfowl and other creatures, and can even attack people.
But wildlife experts say that the swan’s elegant facade conceals an ecological menace that devours shoreline vegetation, scares away other waterfowl and can even attack humans. The bird is now a target of a campaign to reduce its numbers in the state’s delicate coastline habitats.
The leaders of the effort are conservationists, including the Connecticut Audubon Society, which in the coming months will intensify a campaign to urge state officials to control the swans’ population, which stands at about 1,100.
...
Kathryn Burton, president of SaveOurSwans U.S.A., a nonprofit organization in East Lyme, Conn., said the group would actively oppose the Audubon campaign as well.
“I’m not going to let it go,” Ms. Burton said. “They really don’t care about the birds. It’s just unjust.”
Connecticut’s swan population has more than doubled in the last three decades. Mr. Bull said that one idea for reducing the number of swans was to disrupt the nesting birds’ eggs to limit reproduction, a tactic known as addling. He said the Audubon Society was not suggesting that any of the 1,100 swans in Connecticut be killed — though other states have taken that step.
Humans are far more of a threat to the environment than swans. There are only 1,100 mute swans in Connecticut, if the human population of the state were only 1,100 the humans would still have more of an environmental impact, especially if those humans were typical modern Americans.
Environmentalists wanted to kill of the cherry-headed conures in San Francisco, the monk parakeets are always under attack even though they are essentially a replacement species for the extinct Carolina parakeet. Even here in Arlington, the Friends of Spy Pond still hate the geese.
The Audubon society wants to get rid of swans, well in this world nothing should surprise me anymore. Sometimes things still do, but they shouldn't.
6 of the 10 most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record (in terms of central pressure) have occurred withing the last 10 years, with 5 of those occurring in the last 4 years.
This represents a clear and significant uptick in the strength of the strongest storms. Global warming is not just a problem the future will have to deal with, it is currently happening on a destructive and deadly scale.
Last week, purpleglitter and I found that the landlord at her old place had murdered a nest of starlings, ripping apart the nest and throwing the babies down to the ground like they were worthless. Just getting their down in, eyes never opened. They never saw the sun. We buried them in the back.
Today, the tree cutters came to the back yard here. Supposedly just to cut the branches overhanging the neighbor's, they instead cut main branches which may have had one or two subbranches overhanging the neighbor's yard, but most of which were not over the fence at all. Renting, I have no real control over any of this.
I don't understand the reason people need heavily nitrogenated death-yards. "Kill everything but grass. A dandelion! Kill it! Kill it! No flowers here! Nature is just weeds. Throw on more chemicals on... pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer... everything! It surely won't run off anywhere. Must have that perfect patch of stale green nothing, because lord knows if anything wild and free grows it'll be anarchy! Nature is ugly and must be controlled, but oh yeah, save the rain forests — nature is only ugly if it's where I can see it."
I went out on a coffee house crawl with Heather this evening. Saint Charles has changed a lot. It's got a much more vibrant artistic community than it had when I lived in the area. I was impressed by the variety and quality of the local artists.
One of the coffee houses was in the New Town at Saint Charles development. It is a planned sustainable community with mixed income levels and a focus on pedestrianism and environment. Narrow streets laid out on a grid and shops and residences within easy walking distance from each other, it's a great alternative to suburban sprawl. Even though it is still very much being built, it already has a warmth and a personality. If I were planning to move back to this area, New Town would be at the top of my list.
I talked to my sister (ellynx) last night. Apparently Maddie has been very interested in the Baiji for about a year now, and even has a book on them. She's been very worried about them going extinct. My sister is going to have to find a way to tell her six year old daughter that they are most likely gone.
Maddie has told me about her worry that many of the ocean species that she wants to study will be gone. At six you want to tell her she's wrong, but she's right and she knows it. She's a smart kid. I wonder just how many more animals won't she have a chance see? How many more will be gone in just the next few years, especially as global warming kicks into an even higher gear? The world is changing very rapidly.
Human activity in China's Yangtze river is causing the region's dolphins to go extinct — and more species will follow if fishing is not regulated, conservationists have warned.
Scientists on an expedition in China claimed this week that the freshwater baiji (Lipotes vexillifer), also called the river dolphin, should be declared 'functionally extinct' in the river. This means that even if a tiny handful of individuals still remains, their numbers will not be enough for them to bounce back. The creature does not live anywhere else — making it the first cetacean to be driven to extinction by humans.
"There's no hope to save them," says August Pfluger, chief executive of the Baiji.org foundation, which has just completed a six-week survey of the Yangtze during which they found no baijis.
...
What's more, another Yangtze mammal, the finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides), is also heading the same way, Pfluger says. "In the 1980s there were thousands and thousands," he says. "In the 1990s there were around 6,000, according to surveys. Now there are around 400. The population is declining at an alarming speed."
...
The Yangtze basin, which winds for 1,750 kilometres and ends at Shanghai, is the most densely populated place on the planet — around 400 million people live along its banks. "The habitat is so degraded that it's very difficult for large animals to survive," says [Rob] Shore.
In the short term, he suggests that remaining dolphin species and other mammals should be taken from the river and put into lakes to safeguard them until the river can be restored. "It's not an ultimate solution but it might have to be the way forward," he says.
With the new MBTA fare hikes, it seems there is a desire make it more economically advantageous to buy a cheap used smog-belching car that otherwise would be heading to the junkyard than take public transit. This is because liberal Massachusetts is so concerned about fossil fuel use and air pollution.
For each of the following, indicate which one you option you like more (or dislike less) by selecting a number on that side of the scale. The closer to -5 or 5 indicates the degree to which you prefer that option.
Poll #854560
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All
hungry![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
rm:
pissed off
blank
impressed
8 (14.5%)