We're passionate about this stuff, but every other tumblr about ecology/animal behavior/climate change seemed so stale and staid - biology is about life and diversity and beauty and not being afraid to get dirty in the name of science!
Care for the red pandas! Love them!
Doomsday Vault
Deep within an Arctic mountain lies a vault that has been dubbed the “Noah’s Ark” of biological diversity. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located in a remote Norwegian archipelago 1,000 km from the North Pole, and it has the capacity to store 4.5 million individual seeds of all crop types from countries all around the world. It aims to protect them from both natural and man-made disasters—global warming, diseases, nuclear warfare, earthquakes, and even asteroids. The frigid, out-of-the-way location makes it ideal for protection: the region has low tectonic activity, and the vault’s temperatures are kept at –18 degrees Celsius so the seeds can be preserved for thousands of years. It might not seem like a big deal, but preserving seed samples is crucial—their raw genetic materials may one day be needed to adapt crops to endure climate change, droughts, and other catastrophes, and thus secure the global food supply. There are 1,400 seed vaults in the world, but Svalbard is considered one of the most protected areas, and so provides back-up should the others be damaged—war has already wiped out seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a typhoon flooded one in the Phillipines. The Svalbard bank, however, boasts blast-proof doors, an airlock, and 130m of Arctic mountain to protect the precious seed samples—not to mention the polar bears prowling outside.
I hope armoured bears are keeping watch in Svalbard.
US Actress Maggie Q swims with an endangered whale shark off Cancun, Mexico. As an ambassador for international conservation group WildAid, Maggie Q is in Cancun this week to publicize the plight of sharks threatened by demand for shark fin soup in the same week that China announced a ban on shark fin from all official banquets.
Maggie Q plays the main character in the television show Nikita. WildAid reduces demand for the products of endangered species by targeting consumers with public service announcements and education initiatives. Learn more at http://www.wildaid.org/.
Other WildAid ambassadors include Yao Ming, Larry King, Hayden Panettiere, and Jared Leto.
Citizen science projects are a great way for scientists to collect loads of data with the help of volunteers, and a great way for the public to get involved with science and research.
From May 12 - 20th, get out anywhere in North America and hunt for snakes to contribute to the efforts to map the abundance and distribution of snake species in the US.If snakes aren’t your thing, check out options in your area for other citizen science projects. Many states have projects for butterflies, dragonflies, amphibians, and even “bioblitz” days where volunteers catalog every species they encounter in a given park or region.
Anyone want to join me?
Did you know that the Philippine Tarsier (Tarsius syrichta) commits suicide during captivity due to trauma from touching and loud noise.
YOU CAN HELP PRESERVE THE TARSIERS BY:
- Not keeping tarsiers as pets.
- Not buying captured tarsiers in the pet market.
- Reporting cases of hunting, killing or smuggling of tarsiers; as a specially protected faunal species
- Not patronizing outlets displaying illegally-acquired tarsiers.
- Sending donations to duly recognized bodies promoting tarsier research and conservation.
For more info: tarsierfoundation
by jaeWALK
I would hope that none of y’all would keep one of these amazing creatures as a pet but this information is important regardless.
Super depressing but true. This doesn’t even consider species yet discovered by science.
The goal of the Biodiversity Project is simple: to show what’s at stake, and to get people to care, while there’s still time to save them. More than 1,800 species have been photographed to date, with more to come.
Signal boost, guys: Black-footed ferrets, one half of what Pabu is based off, are an endangered species in the United States. They are one of only three species of ferrets in the world (all domesticated ferrets are thought to be bred from European polecat ferret), and back-footed ferrets were believed to be extinct due to habitat loss and disease until they were rediscovered in 1981. The Black-Footed Ferret recovery program was established in 1996 to help contribute to the recovery of the species. The recovery efforts mainly revolve around captive breeding and then reintroduction into the wild, and around 1,000 ferrets now live in the wild. It’s been a lot of progress in the 30 years since they’ve been found, but the ferrets still have a long way to go until their numbers are high enough to maintain the population. To learn more about the Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Program efforts, click here.
Conservation, cute animals, and The Legend of Korra!
(Source: jkateel)
Thank you for asking!
- The demand for palm oil is going to make orangutans extinct. And very, very soon.
Orangutans are highly endangered.
In 1900, there were (give or take) 300,000 wild orangutans. A conservative estimate in 2003 numbers them at 50,000.
In just the last decade, the population has dropped by 50% - during the same time, the land used for palm oil plantations has doubled.
Orangutans have lost 90% of their habitat and the wild populations that are left are cut off from each other, left in genetic and reproductive isolation.
Orangutans live in only two places: Borneo (Indonesia and Malaysia) and Sumatra (Indonesia). Borneo has lost 50% of its rainforest and Sumatra has lost more than 70%. Orangutan habitat in Sumatra is less than 6% of the original forest.
Climate change has contributed to the loss of orangutan habitat - but, by far, the main culprit is loss of environment from recent human activity. Rainforest clearing (occasionally for human settlement, sometimes for logging, but primarily for for palm oil plantations) is accelerating at a dramatic rate. At least 87% of the rainforest clearing in Malaysia since 1985 was for palm oil plantations. In Indonesia, there were approximately 4 million hectares of palm oil plantation in 2002 - and the government intends to increase that to 11 million hectares by 2020.
If the current rate of palm oil industry expansion continues, orangutans will be extinct within the next decade - if not sooner.
- Palm oil is bad for the environment.
Rainforests are cleared for palm oil plantations by burning everything down - including the peat bog below.
Not only are massive amounts of carbon released (each year, burning in Indonesia releases more carbon emission than all activity in India and Russia combined), but animals (and people) are killed in the fires the fires that grow out of control. (One fire in 1997 killed one third of the orangutans in Borneo.)
While 70% of palm oil is currently used in food (and a lot in cosmetics and household goods), there’s a growing push to use it as an alternative fuel. Sadly, once you take the peat bogs into account, it’s actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels.
- Palm oil is bad for farmers, bad for the land, and bad for the economy.
Rainforests have incredibly high levels of biodiversity. Palm oil plantations have incredibly low biodiversity. (Indonesia, although it’s only 1.3% of the earth’s surface, is home to 11% of the world’s plant species, 10% of its mammal species, and 16% of its bird species.)
Biodiversity isn’t just the animals that call the forest home, but the number of plant species - and the nutrients in the soil.
Burning down the forest adds nutrients to the soil - growing palm oil trees in the land soaks the nutrients back up, depleting the soil and making it useless. Farmers have to move on to fresh soil every few years. If the patch is in the middle of the rainforest, it can be naturally reclaimed within a few decades (and re-filled with nutrients) - but, as more and more land is cleared, that becomes less likely. The cleared land is less fertile - now useless.
While the palm oil plantations may be able to sit on useless land, small farmers can’t afford to - yet, they are clearing their land of edible crops and planting palm oil in record numbers - only to starve after a few years.
Share-cropping programs, which lend money to farmers to buy supplies to begin growing palm oil trees - which do not bear fruit for 7 years. The high start up costs and the chemicals and fertilizer mean that farmers rarely manage to earn back enough money to pay the debt and are left in worse poverty than they began.
Palm oil has come to monopolize the industry and infrastructure in Indonesia and Malaysia - a highly precarious economic situation, particularly as they abandon other agricultural crops and the ability to feed their own citizens.
- Palm oil is bad for the local communities.
Plantations are notorious for poor working conditions: chemicals, children, and long hours. Immigrants from other countries are brought in to work (often illegally, sometimes by force).
Human rights abuses aren’t restricted to the plantations, either.
“Plantations are often forcibly established on land traditionally owned by indigenous peoples, and plantation development has repeatedly been associated with violent
conflict.”In Indonesia, between 1998 and 2002 alone, nearly 500 were reported as having been tortured in community land conflicts and dozens killed. (An estimated 5 million more indigenous people will be evicted from their land by 2010 in West Kalimantan.)
- Palm oil is bad for you.
Forget the geo-political and environmental repercussions - here’s a reason that might actually manage to get Westerners to boycott palm oil: It makes you fat.
Palm oil is a highly saturated fat - unlike most vegetable oils.
Saturated fats are bad for you: they increase cholesterol, are a leading cause of cardiovascular disease, and contribute to Type 2 diabetes.
While some saturated fat is necessary in the diet, palm oil isn’t being used to replace traditional saturated fats (from meat and dairy) - it’s being used in lieu of traditional vegetable oils, which are generally unsaturated (and healthier) than palm oil.
This was too good to not put into rebloggable form.
Looks like about 200 orangutans were killed. I’ll post more in the am.
Sumatran Orangutan: “It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears”
Hundreds of orangutans are believed to have died in fires deliberately lit by palm oil companies in the last few weeks. Conservationists say the rare Sumatran orangutan could now be wiped out within weeks.Read more here.
