Tiffany

People want to cry “even the populations of concern??” but the fact is they were almost never of concern until colonizers started overhunting. The decline of the polar bear in North America (and in most of its range) is a perfect example of how in very little time, white colonizers decimated a healthy population of animals that indigenous people had been responsibly surviving on for hundreds and often thousands of years.

It doesn’t just stop at us white people letting indigenous people hunt for subsistence though. It’s extremely important that we ask for and use indigenous knowledge and ideas when we create hunting laws and treaties. We need to hand over the power.

Again, the international agreement on polar bears is a good example of indigenous hunting traditions and knowledge being used to actually make informed decisions on hunting regulations.

I’m not trying to lecture or inform OP, but to make sure white people reading this understand how important it is that moving forward, indigenous communities are included in hunting regulations and treaties, because it is not their fault their survival has been threatened by colonial overhunting, and often they have vital knowledge about species range, migration, populations, and behaviors that non-native biologists haven’t figured out yet.

Here is a read on why the largely held white idea on “saving the animals” (especially seals that advocacy groups love to claim indigenous people club constantly, all the time) is a racist, misinformed, tunnel-vision view on a much larger picture made of way bigger problems:

http://www.ppehlab.org/blogposts/2017/3/18/1y0q4mmk9vzjfe135r5cbdv0pljwox

I say it a lot, but it deserves repeating:

*******PLEASE DON’T LEAVE DISHES OF SUGAR WATER OUT*******

Post from a beekeeper

Oh dear - I keep hearing tips about leaving bowls of sugar water out to “help” keep bees hydrated. Please, please, please DON’T. Bees are really good at finding what they need and there are so many reasons not to do this. The MOST IMPORTANT reason is that if you within 3 miles of some hives (and most people are) if the bees find the sugar water they’re going to think its a great source of easy food, go back to the hive and recruit more bees to come and collect the “food” and before you know it you’ll have 1.000s and 1,000s of bees descending on your garden/balcony - a very scary sight. This is known as robbing and as beekeeper I’ve seen this a couple of times - once started it is impossible to stop until the source of the “food” has gone.

Other reasons not to do this are - sugar water is essentially “junk” food for bees. Its full of carbohydrates which will give them an energy burst, but has no other nutritional value unlike the food they should be having i.e. nectar.

Honey bees will store this as honey in the hive. The beekeeper unknowingly may end up extracting and selling this as honey later in the year. You don’t want to buy sugar syrup and the beekeeper doesn’t want to be prosecuted for selling a product which isn’t honey.

This is also an easy food source for social wasps.

By all means give a tired bee a drink of sugar water on a spoon, but please don’t leave it out for them.

If you want to help bees there are lots of ways you can do this from planting nectar rich plants or leaving out bowls of water with gravel/small pebbles in so they can access the water which they would be very grateful for.

PLEASE SHARE THIS AND TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS

Edited - It appears that a lot of the advice I have seen about leaving out sugar water stems from advice from DAVID ATTENBOROUGH. He was absolutely right in his advice, but his advice was if you see a struggling bee to put some sugar water where the bee could reach it - not to leave out bowls of sugar water. Unfortunately it seems like, as usual, media publications have misquoted advice and not done their research

Also please don’t feed bees honey. Surprisingly they don’t eat honey - they eat nectar. Honey bees make honey for their own use during the winter months, but bumble bees collect and use nectar as and when they need it.

OR REGISTER HERE

anyway i go in to see paul one week in the summer of 2016, and i’m doing my usual bullshit which consists of me talking shit about myself, and paul is staring at me, and then he cuts me off and says that he’s got a new tool for helping people recognize when they’re using negative language, and gets up and goes over to his desk

and i’m like alright hit me with that sweet sweet self-help article my man, because i’m a linguistic learner and whenever paul’s like here i have a tool for you to use it’s pretty much always an article or a book or something

paul opens a drawer, takes something out, and turns back around. i stare.

i say, paul.

is that a nerf gun.

yeah, says paul.

i say, are you gonna shoot me with a nerf gun in this professional setting.

he happily informs me that that’s really up to me, isn’t it. and sits back down. and gestures, like, go ahead, what were you saying?

and i squint suspiciously and start back up about how i’m having too much anxiety to leave the house to run errands, like it was a miracle to even get here, like i’ve forgone getting groceries for the past week and that’s so stupid, what a stupid issue, i’m an idiot, how could i–

a foam dart hits me in the leg.

i go, hey! because my therapist just shot me in the leg. paul blinks at me placidly and raises an eyebrow. i squint again.

i say, slowly, it’s– not a stupid issue, i’m not stupid, but it’s frustrating me and i don’t want it to be a problem i’m having.

no dart this time. okay. sweet.

so the rest of the hour passes with me intermittently getting nailed with tiny foam darts and then swearing and then fixing my language and, wouldn’t you know it, i start liking myself a little more by the end of the session, which is mildly infuriating because paul can tell and he’s very smug about it 

daylio (available on google play and app store for free) - “Pick your mood and add activities you have been doing during the day. You can also add notes and keep an old school diary.” 

calm harm (available on google play and app store for free) - “Calm Harm provides tasks to help you resist or manage the urge to self-harm.”

impulse DBT (available on google play and app store for free) - “Impulse DBT is an invaluable tool for those who need to keep track of daily impulses for Dialectical Behavior Therapy.”

7 cups of tea (available on google play and app store for free) - “Whether you are going through a challenging time or just want to talk to someone, at 7 Cups you’ll find a path connecting you to kind people and helping you develop new skills to solve your problems. Over 16 million conversations.”

what’s up - mental health app (available on google play and app store for free) - “What’s Up? is a fantastic free app utilising some of the best CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) methods to help you cope with Depression, Anxiety, Anger, Stress and more.”

pacifica (available on google play and app store for free) - “Pacifica gives you psychologist-designed tools to address them based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mindfulness meditation, relaxation, and mood/health tracking.”