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#wild species
birds-and-friends · 1 year
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Orange-breasted Fruiteater (Pipreola jucunda), James Muchmore
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planthealthday · 2 years
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Assess the risks and opportunities of trade in wild plant ingredients.
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Thousands of consumer products around the world contain ingredients obtained from wild plants. Wild harvest accounts for some or all the harvest of the great majority of plant species in trade (between 60-90 percent). Wild-harvested plants often come from the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth and many have been used traditionally or by local communities for generations. While these products have global markets and provide critical sources of income, they can also have deep ties to particular cultures and places. Demand for wild plant ingredients is growing rapidly, having grown by over 75 percent in value over the past two decades. Thousands of harvested species are at risk mainly from a combination of overharvest and habitat loss: of the 21 percent of medicinal and aromatic plant species whose threat status has been assessed, 9 percent are considered threatened with extinction. Despite their ubiquity, importance, and the threats facing them, wild plant ingredients are often obscured from consumers and escape companies’ due diligence due to a lack of awareness and traceability. Best practice standards exist but have yet to capture a significant portion of the market. This report aims to address these challenges by making information on a selection of ‘flagship’ wild plant ingredients, the Wild Dozen, readily available and easy to understand. By offering this information without obligation to a specific prescription for follow-up action (e.g. through certification or policy change), it is hoped that a wide range of users will access the report as a first step towards responsible sourcing. Along with a broader update on the state of wild plants trade, the report provides a ‘profile’ on each of the Wild Dozen species, summarising key facts on production and trade. Each profile contains a traffic-light risk rating on biological and social factors, along with an overview of opportunities for responsible sourcing. The information is aimed at industry, consumers, policy-makers, investors, and practitioners, concluding with a summary of what these various stakeholders can do to contribute to a sectoral shift towards responsible sourcing of wild plant ingredients.
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reasonsforhope · 2 months
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In the Willamette Valley of Oregon, the long study of a butterfly once thought extinct has led to a chain reaction of conservation in a long-cultivated region.
The conservation work, along with helping other species, has been so successful that the Fender’s blue butterfly is slated to be downlisted from Endangered to Threatened on the Endangered Species List—only the second time an insect has made such a recovery.
[Note: "the second time" is as of the article publication in November 2022.]
To live out its nectar-drinking existence in the upland prairie ecosystem in northwest Oregon, Fender’s blue relies on the help of other species, including humans, but also ants, and a particular species of lupine.
After Fender’s blue was rediscovered in the 1980s, 50 years after being declared extinct, scientists realized that the net had to be cast wide to ensure its continued survival; work which is now restoring these upland ecosystems to their pre-colonial state, welcoming indigenous knowledge back onto the land, and spreading the Kincaid lupine around the Willamette Valley.
First collected in 1929 [more like "first formally documented by Western scientists"], Fender’s blue disappeared for decades. By the time it was rediscovered only 3,400 or so were estimated to exist, while much of the Willamette Valley that was its home had been turned over to farming on the lowland prairie, and grazing on the slopes and buttes.
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Pictured: Female and male Fender’s blue butterflies.
Now its numbers have quadrupled, largely due to a recovery plan enacted by the Fish and Wildlife Service that targeted the revival at scale of Kincaid’s lupine, a perennial flower of equal rarity. Grown en-masse by inmates of correctional facility programs that teach green-thumb skills for when they rejoin society, these finicky flowers have also exploded in numbers.
[Note: Okay, I looked it up, and this is NOT a new kind of shitty greenwashing prison labor. This is in partnership with the Sustainability in Prisons Project, which honestly sounds like pretty good/genuine organization/program to me. These programs specifically offer incarcerated people college credits and professional training/certifications, and many of the courses are written and/or taught by incarcerated individuals, in addition to the substantial mental health benefits (see x, x, x) associated with contact with nature.]
The lupines needed the kind of upland prairie that’s now hard to find in the valley where they once flourished because of the native Kalapuya people’s regular cultural burning of the meadows.
While it sounds counterintuitive to burn a meadow to increase numbers of flowers and butterflies, grasses and forbs [a.k.a. herbs] become too dense in the absence of such disturbances, while their fine soil building eventually creates ideal terrain for woody shrubs, trees, and thus the end of the grassland altogether.
Fender’s blue caterpillars produce a little bit of nectar, which nearby ants eat. This has led over evolutionary time to a co-dependent relationship, where the ants actively protect the caterpillars. High grasses and woody shrubs however prevent the ants from finding the caterpillars, who are then preyed on by other insects.
Now the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde are being welcomed back onto these prairie landscapes to apply their [traditional burning practices], after the FWS discovered that actively managing the grasslands by removing invasive species and keeping the grass short allowed the lupines to flourish.
By restoring the lupines with sweat and fire, the butterflies have returned. There are now more than 10,000 found on the buttes of the Willamette Valley."
-via Good News Network, November 28, 2022
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extinctionstories · 10 months
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Two hundred years ago, the wetlands of Japan rustled with pink-tinged feathers. Tall, pale birds stepped carefully through reeds and iris, hunting small fish, crabs, and frogs. 
Nipponia nippon, it would be dubbed by the national ornithological society, a bird emblematic of its country. The Crested Ibis. The Toki. The Peach Flower Bird.
Marshes slowly changed to rice fields, with farmers who resented the toki for ruining crops; to kill the birds was outlawed, so children chased them from the fields, singing warnings.
The doors of the country were pried open. Laws changed. Farmers bought their first guns, their sights set on birds who were no longer protected. The toki, the red-crowned crane, and many others began to suffer. But the worst was yet to come.
Pesticides are indiscriminate killers. The poison sprayed to kill a beetle can travel up the foodchain, toppling a cascade of larger animals, or affecting their ability to reproduce. It was reckless pesticide use that nearly wiped out the Bald Eagle. In the rice fields, the peach-flower-bird had little chance. 
In 1981, Japan’s last five living toki were removed from a wild that had become too dangerous for them.
I tell a lot of sad stories here, about mistakes we’ve made and animals we’ve lost. This isn’t one of those. This is a story about one of those precious times when we were able to fix the things we’d broken. 
A joint effort between Japan & China, and the discovery of seven more birds in that country, led to a successful breeding program, which in 2008 saw the first ibises fly free again in Japan. Today, at least 5000 toki exist in the world.
The last wild-born toki, one of those captured in 1981, lived almost long enough to see her species’ return. Reaching the equivalent age of a centenarian human, she died in 2003—not of old age, but injury after throwing herself against her cage door. 
Her name was ‘Kin’. ‘Gold’. 
Mended things can never be as whole as they once were. There will always be cracks that show, weak spots that remain vulnerable. Yet, like the shining seams of a kintsugi piece, these scars speak an important truth: here is a thing that someone chose to save; handle with care.
The title of this painting is ‘Restoration’. It is gouache on 22x30 inch watercolor paper
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plesiosaurys · 7 months
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getting emotional over footage of an amateur scuba diver interacting with a coelacanth. they are hunted by large deepwater predators, and here comes a large creature bearing the brightest lights it's ever seen, making strange noises, but it does not shy away. it hovers, calmly, as the diver reaches out and trails a hand down its back. im strongly against the anthropomorphizing of real life animals but the stupid emotional part of me loudly insists this is because it recognizes us, the alternating movements of its four paired limbs matching the diver's four paired limbs, & it is thinking, "hello, cousins, we missed you these 66 million years, it's so good to see you again. welcome back, welcome home."
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rassicas · 7 days
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Thank God splatoon 3 didn't end up introducing a playable cuttlefish dlc like I feared last year (I honestly don't think we need more new playable species, would've been too sudden, my expectations were on the floor after rotm) but the cuttlefish visuals are still so suspicious to me. This hat has to be on purpose. That's absolutely not a fucking squid or octopus
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And this is undeniably a cuttlefish (and the double fin shape resembles the hat)
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Like how the lack of mammals in the splatoon world and ark Polaris was something suspicious in the previous games, and characters like marigold and Glen fiddler and lil judd are suspicious now.... It's way more subtle but I think this could be the splatoon team planting some seeds in case they decide to introduce cuttlefish as a separate species in the splatoon world. ill be keeping it in the back of my mind
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littlepawz · 4 months
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Harpy eagle, the largest eagle in the world looks like a person in a bird costume, but judging by the size of his talons, I wouldn't want to make fun of him face to face. They live primarily in the upper canopy layer of tropical lowland forest and are considered "endangered species" in Central America due to the rapid decline in their numbers as a result of deforestation. Less than 50,000 of them can be seen over the world.
Harpy eagles have a hearty appetite and enjoy munching on a variety of monkeys, tree porcupines, sloths, coatis, birds, snakes, and lizards.
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rebeccathenaturalist · 7 months
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This is a really exciting development! We've already seen the positive effects of beavers returning to their historic range here in North America, so it's even better to see the same thing underway across the Atlantic. A single pair with their first litter of kits certainly isn't a large-scale reintroduction, but it's proof that these animals have the capacity to get back to work here.
Beavers are often called ecosystem engineers, and for good reason. These keystone species alter waterways by building dams and lodges, creating ponds and other aquatic habitats for species that can't handle faster-moving water. These also often serve as water reservoirs during summer droughts. The dams and lodges themselves may also provide nesting sites for birds and shelter for other animals, plants, and fungi.
Sadly there are still people who want to see beavers trapped and hunted as pests because their dams can sometimes flood fields, to include those that were historically seasonal wetlands. Until we stop seeing animals' value only in terms of whether they're useful to us or not, the beavers are going to face opposition as they reclaim their old territories on both continents.
Nonetheless, I give a hearty cheer to the Mammalian Corps of Engineers!
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himekokosu · 8 months
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Lilium auratum
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is-the-fox-video-cute · 7 months
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Staring down the toothy jaws of a wolf, you might not imagine it’s an animal that needs the help of us bald apes to get by – but across the world, we’ve seen that predator populations are declining. Protecting these species isn’t just crucial for their own survival, but also for the continued healthy function of ecosystems, as new research has pinpointed the irreplaceable role they play.
The study was inspired by how wolves alter wetlands by killing beavers, co-author Tom Gable explained to IFLScience. Gable is a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, and project lead for Voyageurs Wolf Project, and says the paper isn’t just about wolves, but rather “a large synthesis on the ecological role of predators in myriad ecosystems across the world.”
It reveals how predators create “ecological hotspots” that support a diverse range of plants and animals across the world, both directly and indirectly. At a time when rewilding is high on the agenda, it's a good reminder that if we want to encourage biodiversity, we need to consider both ends of the food chain.
We caught up with lead author of the study Sean Johnson-Bice, a PhD candidate at the University of Manitoba, to find out more about the many ways predators influence ecosystems, and why humans alone could never replicate the work they do.
Read more
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I've seen a few of these "reblog with a Pokémon" games going on, so... reblog this with a Pokémon, and I'll reblog with something interesting I've heard a member of the species say!
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cyrwrites · 1 year
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Beware The Boo-nny
Tim's first best friend is a green bunny the size of melon. And then, it gets bigger, so much bigger.
Or, the Fenton family is Tim Drake's neighbors; some of the lab experiments were destined to escape and come into contact with him at some point. In particular, Dani's pet, a ghost rabbit that loved to suck on pools of ectoplasm, reproduced without her noticing and the newborn baby snuck out of the Fenton property. It wandered straight into Tim's arms and he's never gonna give it up now.
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Tim has a ghost guard rabbit. Yes, this is happening.
Bun loves to use its teeth on Jason since he's a bit juiced up with Lazarus water. For reasons that Jason doesn't understand yet, the fact that the rabid animal uses its teeth to suck on his blood makes him feel better.
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planthealthday · 4 months
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When wild plants species are not sourced or used sustainably, it may threatens biodiversity.
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About 50 000 wild species are used for food, energy, medicine, material & other purposes. This includes many plants. But often these plants are not sourced or used sustainably, which threatens biodiversity.
How FAO is protecting them?
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reasonsforhope · 2 months
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The population of giant pandas in the wild has nearly doubled as China steps up its conservation efforts.
China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration said on Jan 25 there are now around 1,900 pandas in the wild from some 1,100 in the 1980s.
This has been due to China’s efforts to protect the species, considered a national treasure, said Mr Zhang Yue, an official with the administration.
The Giant Panda National Park was established in October 2021, covering a total area of over 22,000 sq km and providing a home to around 72 per cent of the wild giant panda population.
Protected areas for giant pandas have grown from 1.39 million ha to 2.58 million ha since 2012.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has adjusted the status of giant pandas from “endangered” to “vulnerable”.
“This indicates that China’s giant panda conservation efforts have been recognised by the international wildlife conservation community,” Mr Zhang said.
The global captive population of giant pandas, meanwhile, has now reached 728, with 46 pandas successfully bred in captivity in 2023.
The genetic diversity of captive giant pandas has also improved. The current captive population of giant pandas can maintain 90 per cent genetic diversity for up to 200 years.
As for giant pandas living abroad, Mr Zhang said China has organised field inspections and assessments of 23 overseas cooperation institutions in 19 countries since 2023.
“The cooperation institutions generally meet the requirements in terms of venue construction, feeding and nursing, and disease prevention and control measures,” Mr Zhang said, adding that pandas living abroad are generally “in good health”.
He said China will further improve the international cooperation management mechanism for giant pandas, carry out regular daily health monitoring and field inspection and assessment, and continue to strengthen cooperation with international partners for the protection of endangered species and biodiversity.
-via The Straits Times, January 25, 2024
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woof-squiggles · 2 months
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i gave them all little names and i couldn't resist designing them all
you can fill out a form to adopt em here!! some of them are ✨canonically✨ adopted but don't let that stop you!!!
you also have my explicit permission to draw your ocs with them and then tag me wink wink nudge nudge
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quixot1sm · 11 months
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all the starters <3 they’ll all get full images eventually!!
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