Close-up woodland floor scene among moss (a bryophyte). A pale lace-like skeletonised leaf lies across a dark decaying leaf, the fine network of veins still intact while the softer leaf tissue has disappeared. Bright green feathery moss surrounds it, with a small woodland seedling and a catkin nearby.
I saw this while looking at moss today...
A wolf named Bae (BEY03F), the first in LA County in a century, has returned to Northern California, where there are more wolves and less major roads. We need safe corridors and wildlife crossings, and public support for our wild neighbors
www.sierraclub.org/sierra/calif... by @lkbotts.bsky.social
Mexican gray wolves are rebounding 🐺🐾
Last year the number of endangered Mexican gray wolves in the Southwest grew by 33 bringing the wild population up to 319 individuals.
This is an amazing feat considering just three decades ago there were zero roaming the wild!
Read on ➡️ bit.ly/4sj9xmx
[Exit Murderer.]
More to love ❤️ Condor romance
bsky.app/profile/biol...
Yes and so close to the release station. How lucky to see them! It’s hard to understand how enormous condors are until you see them in person.
I love condors. They are critically endangered and quite the characters.
But they’re also incredibly important. With iron-strong stomachs, they are the disinfectants of ecosystems and protect from disease.
We have much to improve in our relationship with them.
www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...
I love this trail-cam video footage of BEY03F, the first wolf in Los Angeles County in a century
Watch: fb.watch/FfAkYgwFpu/?...
Need some good news today? An incredible win for wildlife.
6 genetic California mountain lion populations are now protected under the state’s Endangered Species Act
YEARS of work from colleagues @urbanwildlands.bsky.social and the Mountain Lion Foundation: it may mean more wildlife crossings too
Importing beef = exporting US climate impacts. Despite the hype about local food, both grass-fed & industrial beef are destructive and flawed systems.
“To me, the only answer is, we need to eat less beef” says @profsecchi.bsky.social
Import/export less too.
@grist.org
grist.org/food-and-agr...
Congratulations! Just pre-ordered.
Opening up our public lands to private capture, grazing, mining and industrial destruction, weakening the stop gaps we have to keep them in check: such as NEPA and the Endangered Species Act, which protect wildlife and wild places.
While they violate constitutional rights to private property with 🧊 and border patrol, this doc attempts to limit the reach of govt & accountability when it comes to industrial property and private ranches. You know to regulate clean air and water, and human rights
www.usda.gov/sites/defaul...
Text reads “Lawfare. The Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework. A plan to protect property rights and reverse agricultural lawfare.” Trump raises his right hand in salute over an uninjured right ear and an uncharacteristically thin frame.
If you wondered how the USDA plans to cozy up ti industry, they’ve just …put it all on these pages.
This new doc — not so cleverly called “Lawfare” — is the Project 2025 of Big Ag Polluters. The Dept of War but for food.
What they’ve been doing and plan to do to weaken environmental protections
BEY03F’s arrival in the mountains of LA county is a win for wildlife, but we are still fighting for protections for wolves. Yesterday @biologicaldiversity.org filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s failure to develop a nat’l gray wolf recovery plan
biologicaldiversity.org/programs/car...
This is exciting. The most successful rewilding will often be community driven and in recognition of the relationship between landscapes and ecosystems and between people and place.
Everyone loves stories of the return of wolves. We want wildlife to thrive and wild places to be protected. We want clean air and water and nature.
But we have to connect the dots to understand what we’re fighting for. Livestock operations are the leading threat to wolves and many other species.
16 million sage grouse pre-settlers. 350,000 remain. Habitat is now ranches, invasive grass, oil fields.
Cattle grazing transforms fertile sagebrush steppe landscapes of yellow hawksbeard and mariposa lilies, lichens and moss, compacts fragile soil crust, and turns the ground hard, dry, and dead.
Cows are an invasive species that damage nature. Tribes are showing that less grazing benefits native wildlife like sage grouse.
Yet ranchers dominate public land policy. In the American West, less grazing would mean undoing deeply ingrained “settler-colonial” beliefs
www.hcn.org/issues/58-2/...
She came down from Plumas County, further north, and unfortunately there are dangers from cars and ranchers there too. She’s looking for a mate and suitable habitat. Los Angeles County is big. It’s exciting to have wolves moving this far south, as they once were.
There’s a wolf in LA for the first time in 100 years. A collared gray wolf entered the mountains of north Los Angeles County yesterday. Known as “BEY03F” she traveled hundreds of miles from her pack in Plumas County crossing highways, mountains, creeks and valleys.
www.latimes.com/environment/...
A @biologicaldiversity.org analysis found if half US school meals served bean tacos instead of beef, GHG from those meals would be 48.7% less. Yet the new food pyramid prioritizes beef — which is devastating wolves, bison, prairie dogs and grasshoppers
www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/pop...
A worldview and also a legal strategy to protect nature. The river’s right to restoration and protection comes within a broader rights-of-nature movement that recognizes ecosystems have a right to flourish and that policy decisions should prioritize ecological health.
icmagazine.org/indigenous-n...
Map showing the distance from Tiburon to cross the Raccoon Strait to Angel Island and somewhat warmer waters, vs the deep cold waters surrounding Alcatraz, the heavy currents and busy shipping and ferry lanes the Alcatraz Coyote survived and the seemingly impossible journey from there to Angel Island.
Good question! Since the coyotes on Angel Island came from Tiburon in the north and swam south, a short journey - and the one on Alcatraz came from the city and swam north, it would be awfully far to have been aiming for Angel Island but who knows. He/she might have just been caught in a current.
Who has priority on public land? A good ol’ boy cowboy mythos in the American West prioritizes nonnative cattle on taxpayer-funded lands and yanked a nonprofit’s leases for grazing native bison. But Montana passed a law that bison are legally livestock. Which is it?
yellowstonian.org/on-blm-land-...
We are often given a false dilemma: Western lands must either become ranches or suburban sprawl.
Ranchers benefit from this myth. But there is a 3rd way: conservation. Protecting nature for everyone.
www.sfchronicle.com/california/a... from @kurtisalexander.bsky.social @sfchronicle.com
US “beef plan”= more destruction of rivers, streams and wild places & more conflict with wolves and other wildlife. @biologicaldiversity.org
has documented decades of cattle operations illegally trashing protected habitat and pushing species toward extinction
biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...
US beef is underestimated by ~6x if factoring in the missed opportunity to rewild & restore the land used for its production.
And according to this new WRI report, implementing EVERY existing & breakthrough mitigation tech would only reduce US beef carbon costs by 18%:
www.wri.org/insights/tru...
Trickster Coyote's doing a little occupying.
Happy, for the lion’s sake, to report the mountain lion has been released in the Santa Cruz mountains by CDFW, in a location likely without known male lions, far from city life.
