Octopocalypse

This is my friend, Jas! She is beloved on the island I have called home for years now, as a compassionate, outspoken, kind, and indomitable member of our community. Tonight her ship carrying humanitiarian aid to Gaza was intercepted, and she and her crew have been detained by the IOF. Watching this, listening to these words in her voice, does not feel real.

If you are in the U.S. please contact your representatives now and demand the safe release of Jasmine Sau Mun Ikeda, the release of her crew and all humanitarian aid workers, the release of aid to the people of Gaza, and a ceasefire NOW!

Closed captions added by me. Video Transcript is under the cut:

If you are in Washington State, your rep contacts are listed above!

Use this page for instructions on how to find & contact your state reps:

Hey, we've got another public comment period with a rapidly approaching deadline here in the United States! Short version is that the Department of Agriculture, which manages the U.S. Forest Service, has severely curtailed its obligation to public outreach and comment on its activities, to include timber sales and environmental impact reports. The foundation of a democracy is in the power of the voices of the people, and this decision circumvents our ability to give feedback on Forest Service decisions.

That means that it will be easier for the Forest Service to clearcut old-growth forests regardless of the ecological impact, and make it easier for profiteers to exploit the natural resources of these publicly owned lands. This decision was made to benefit the few, not the many, and it's blatantly obvious.

Tree boss explained it to me once that the older trees have a black mold problem because they just kinda planted them. Because of this, they're root bound. Root bound trees get mold and rot. Sure enough- a big storm happened this summer and one of those trees that looked healthy on the outside came down, hit the roof of city hall, and you could see the decay inside.

There is a way to plant trees near streets and businesses so that the roots run under the structures and I think that he called it a 'root shelf.' But the people who planted those trees didn't have that knowledge, so we try to replace them with proper techniques when we have the opportunity.

But unfortunately, in order to do it properly for the health of the trees and the structures, we have to plant a sapling instead of an adult tree.

A lot of the time, I hear people talking about 'old growth trees' and how they can't stand to see us cutting them down. But the majority of these trees aren't old growth- they're maybe 50-75 years old and weren't planted with the future in mind. So sometimes we cut down an older tree that looks 'fine' from the outside, but the soil sucks or there's an infestation or the storm damage is worse than it looks from the outside.

I once saw Tree Boss just... push an adult tree down by leaning on it and the inside was fuckin' paper.

I don't know what to do about it. Call your reps and complain, that's a given, but ultimately no one knows what happens now. The museums which still exist do not have the space and resources to take on all of the material that will likely need homes in the near future as grants run out and positions are eliminated. We in the "industry" just keep showing up to work, doing our jobs on a shoestring and trying to not remind each other too much about how bad it is. The atmosphere is very tense.

I can share how to help one museum: PRI Museum of the Earth in Ithaca NY, where I worked a few years ago, is in danger of closing this year because of this executive order garbage AND because additional rich people are now withdrawing money they had previously pledged to donate. They take donations and they have an online store with plush toys and apparel and other things, they're good quality. As far as I know, nearby Cornell University is not doing anything to help, so they've had to reach out to the public. It's a fantastic place, if you have something to spare I'm sure they appreciate it.

What this means, in layman's terms, is that not all water or wetlands would be under environmental protections, so some could legally be dumped in, scraped out of, or otherwise harmed.

the fundraiser has 24 days left and has only reached 2% of its goal with 11 donations. black-footed ferrets are an endangered lazarus taxon that was thought to be extinct from 1979-1981 before being rediscovered by accident. they’re a miracle of conservation and it would be horrible to lose them for good, not to mention (again) the impact of people working with these animals losing their jobs which is outlined in the fundraiser link. indigenous-led conservation efforts are extremely important for a wide variety of reasons and as someone in the zoology area i feel obligated to share this fundraiser to contribute to those efforts.

i know that things are hard right now and there’s a lot of people and organizations all across the world that need help, so don’t feel pressured BUT if you have extra money and you can contribute to this fundraiser or share it with people who can that would be great.

ah, i’m so bad at posting here. acknowledging this Day of Mourning from the lands of Kiikaapoi, Peoria, Potawatomi, Myaamia & Ochethi Sakowin people, aka Chicago, derived from a native word for garlic (mmm…) which is really suitable for me because I live here now 🌱🧄✨

whose.land are you on? talk about it over dinner this weekend with your fam & what it means to give the #landback. considering everything, listening & learning from indigenous people is the least you can do.

GULLS WILL DECIDE WHAT TO EAT BY WATCHING PEOPLE 

Herring gulls (Larus argentatus) can perfectly thrive in coastal  and urban landscapes, however, these birds will steal your food as soon as you are distracted. Urban gulls pay attention to human behaviour in food-related contexts, and will mimic what humans almost all the time, a new study shown.

In a simple test, researchers studied how herring gulls behave in front person eating snacks on Brighton beachfront, UK. They gave the gulls the choice between two differently coloured potato chips,  and when the human were eating potatos chips from one color, seagulls approached the food, and chose the same colour that the experimenter was eating, the 95 per cent of the time.

Seagulls were able to use human cues for stimulus enhancement and foraging decisions. Given the relatively recent history of urbanization in herring gulls, this cross-species social information transfer could be a by-product of the cognitive flexibility inherent in species who steal food, called kleptoparasitic species. This success in urban environments is suggested to result from behavioural flexibility, which is likely to require specific cognitive adaptations. In food-stealing birds, success is said to reflect an ability to integrate and use information about both the environment and other individuals, and kleptoparasites generally have usually larger relative brain sizes than their hosts.  

Photo by Jon J. Laysel

What, or even who, is a tree?

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Humans that are closely entangled with nonhuman environments and attentive to nonhuman life do not need to theorize about any nature-culture division.

For others, the concept of nonhuman life and the idea of a more equal or just relation to it causes considerable difficulties. Recent criticism has focused on the way nonhumans are included in discussions of nature, ecology, and climate change. This critique says that speaking for the nonhuman is unproductive, and thinking on their behalf only supports existing humanist ideologies that anthropomorphize and patronize other species. Astrida Neimanis, for one, has written about the ways that nonhuman “others” are represented. She proposes a “representation without colonization,” pointing to the questionable ethics and politics of humans who position themselves as spokespeople for nonhuman beings. […]

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About a decade ago […], the writer Arundhati Roy spent some time “walking with comrades” through the dense forests of Dandakaranya in central India. These comrades were […] Indigenous rebels hailing from the Gond, Halba, and Muria tribal communities, and they were fighting state-backed exploitation, including the destruction of forests, lands, and water. Roy describes how the Indian state’s “institutionalizing [of] injustice” affected these groups. The Dandakaranya forest has been a highly contested space for decades, because the corporate appetite for minerals and other resources remains limitless. The tribal communities of the Dandakaranya forest, as well as the tribal communities […] like the Kayapo, the Arara-Karo, and many others, have been defending rainforests for a long time. Many Indigenous people living in forests have a specific relation to nonhuman life there […]. The communities living in close relation with these woodlands are aware that, by exploiting forest resources, it is not only human lives that are ruined, but all other life that depends on the forest. […]

The relationship between nature and culture, and the so-called division between them, has been a major subject of debate throughout Western history. This endless analysis and negotiation has even been regarded as a kind of “conceptual prison.” […]

Who is actually given the privilege to speak in the name of nature(s)? What is the right way to “represent” the thing we call “nature”? What, or even who, is a tree?

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To take trees as an example, people have not only depended on trees for shelter, fuel, and food, but also for medicine and spiritual fulfillment. In many cultures […], trees represent an important aspect of communal life […]. Until quite recently, in Slovenia the linden tree symbolized the central space of village communities. In traditional Japanese culture, tree spirits, or kodama (first mentioned in the eighth-century Kijiki chronicle), and holly trees, or shinboku, still play an important role in cultural life. Not only are these trees protected in Japan, but knowledge of the trees that kodama inhabit is very important for many communities, being passed from one generation to another. Trees have also sometimes been declared monuments, signifying important sites, events, and even people.

We cannot say that trees are actually aware of the monumentness imposed on them by humans.

The same goes for other human concepts applied to trees, such as “history” – do trees have history beyond their human-made ones? What could that history be other than the genetic changes trees have undergone since the first Archaeopteris species of proto-tree arose more than three hundred million years ago? What is certain is that trees are without a clear division between life and death, between the present and future, at least not in the same way humans understand these concepts. […]

Fully grown trees support young seedlings in a shaded understory […]. When in danger – from insect attack or disease, for example – trees also send out distress signals to other nearby trees. Apparently, the trees synchronize their behavior so that they are all equally successful and the rate of photosynthesis is the same for all. A group of researchers working in the southwestern Pyrenees recently discovered a complementary relationship between different tree species – for example, between pine and beech trees, where growth of both is reduced when intraspecific competition increases. […]

Scientists have noticed that it is very difficult to distinguish what is actually part of a tree and what is not […]. Trees form hybrid collectives, involving underground mycorrhizal fungi networks that connect trees, roots, and fungi to one another in a kind of collaborative, self-organized way. […]

Realizing that representation can never really be bypassed – we can only speculate about “nature writing itself” – is a crucial part of understanding nonhuman beings and our relationship to them.

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