.:DECLARE:.

amy. 30 something. she/her hokie with a history degree that i'm not using. i play lotro on peregrin. usually as moradriel but sometimes as amaranthe or maerynth. links are under navigation.

[organicmatter]

guys i just found out about this site that does a daily guessing game, it’s phylogenetic wordle- so fun!!!

[arcticwildfire]

🐧 Animal #1038 🐲

I figured it out in 6 guesses!

🟥🟧🟧🟧🟧🟩

🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 6

[dogpuppy]

[squirrelly-13]

they got married btw

[visit-me-here-in-wonderland]

oh you’re not kidding

[ororium-z]

Happy Pride!

[rootbeergoddess]

Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions

[thesaltofcarthage]

I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.

[arcticwildfire]

[arcticwildfire]

The worst thing about sitting down after being on your feet for hours is standing back up.

[fadedlovemp3]

rb to relieve the back pain of the person u reblogged this from

[fandanglefrogfarts]

Unfair of my job to expect me to show up when I have arts and also crafts to do

[pansy2025]

goo goo dolls if they were in dune: and i don’t want the worm to see me

[mezzodical]

[calidotgov-deactivated20240108]

congratulations piracy

[livefromtheloam]

Ad agency: Please don't steal the King's potatoes, no matter how easy it is.

Regular people: Wait, the King has easily stolen potatoes? How do I get in on this?

Internet users who have been stealing potatoes for years: We made a machine that picks so many potatoes and also that machine is free. Enjoy!

[commandtower-solring-go]

Ad agency: you wouldn't steal a movie?

10 year old me with 0 income and no movie: YOU CAN STEAL MOVIES????

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Headline from IFLScience reading: "You Wouldn't Steal a Movie" Advert May Have Led To More People Stealing Movies /End ID]

[geekysteven]

[teaboot]

Fun fact! Both the music and the font in that ad were incorrectly sourced and did not provide compensation to the creators

[topherchris]

[arcticwildfire]

The difference backstitching makes

[arcticwildfire]

Started converting this from a royal rows method to diagonal and I enjoy working on it so much more. But I'm pretty sure I did the slowest 100 stitches of my life tonight. 2 hours and 20 minutes. For 100 stitches. Normal for me is closer to 100/hour.

[natalieironside]

Due to my weird childhood and my weird brain, I have this very unhelpful compulsion to conceal Everything I do from Everyone. I Cannot be observed performing any action, no matter how mundane. My nervous system is convinced I'm gonna, like, Get In Trouble for eating food at dinnertime or sleeping in my bed at bedtime.

I've taken to asking myself, "Okay does this task actually require subterfuge or am I stealing a balloon on Free Balloon Day"

[apolladay]

What do you prefer your house thermostat set at, in degrees Celcius?

64 or lower

65-67

68-69

70-72

73 or higher

No preference

What do you prefer your house thermostat set at, in degrees Celcius?

64 or lower

65-67

68-69

70-72

73 or higher

No preference

Voting ended onJun 2

[rohirric-hunter]

Celcius????

[great-and-small]

When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

(Source 3)

[handforthstudy]

Unfortunately, I don’t have citations, but I have heard about the same phenomenon through Nat Geo Live presentations in the Amazon and Serengeti. Most individuals who are poachers or use slash-and-burn farming are doing this out of survival, not ignorance or greed. They have families to feed and children who will starve if they don’t find food or money. As OP said, fixing the human suffering fixes the conservation issue and is a win-win, while preaching conservation to starving people does nothing.

But on top of that, you know who the most ardent conservationists are once security has been achieved? The people who had once been forced to poach or slash-and-burn to survive. You know who’s great at tracking down gorilla poachers? Ex-poachers. Who’s good at understanding and advocating for people forced to do these things to survive? Ex-poachers. Who can convince others to take a chance on finding a better way to survive? Same answer.

It is win-win-win. As ecologists, conservationists, and environmentalists we must get out of our ivory towers of knowledge, stop carrying them into the field, and remember humans are part of the ecosystem too. And that sustainable change will never happen if human needs aren’t addressed.

[buttons-beads-lace]

I also love this story about the arapaima in Brazil. They increased the population of this endangered giant fish literally a hundred times over- from 3,000 to 300,000- by ending the total ban on arapaima fishing and instead creating legal fishing organizations. The fishing organization members get trained on how do population counts and determine how many fish they can take while still leaving enough for the population to grow.

The former illegal fishers are now sought-after experts, because they know how to spot the arapaima and tell juveniles apart from adults. They get to keep practicing the fishing skills that were passed down to them. The actual process of fishing is easier because they can work together and don't have to sneak around. The profits are higher because they can sell the fish openly to restaurants and to the public. The fishing organization members make sure that other people in their communities don't fish illegally. And the numbers of arapaima keep going up and up, so there's plenty to go around even as more people join the fishing organizations.

If you click all the way through to the report from the conservation org that started the fishing organizations project, there are quotes from fishing organization members:

"We built a second house and I'm putting my oldest two kids through college on the money we get from fishing."

"Nowadays you have young people walking around with pockets full of cash saying "I got 6,000 from fishing this year!" It used to be you wouldn't even get 50 reais of pocket money."

"At the first harvest after we started the fishing organization, I saw full-grown arapaima for the first time, really big ones like they're supposed to be. Before, I had only heard about how big they could get. That's when I knew that our work was paying off and we could keep moving forward."

[slimegargoyle]

in the beginning, the trump assassination attempts were spaced by twenty four weeks. then twelve, then six, then every two weeks. the last one, at the white house, was a week. in four days we could be seeing a trump assassination attempt every eight hours until they are coming every four minutes. we should witness a double event within seven days,

[rosa-de-bayahibe]

Tag from @sergle

Tags from @veganslenderman

[arcticwildfire]

[agent-mcsweetheart]

i saw a post earlier today and now i can’t find it but someone was like the only reason i get through studying is by saying “let’s go steal a grade” where they just imagine they’re doing research for a leverage con and they have to know all the information to pull it off successfully. I’m at my internship rn and i found the original score for the og show and redemption and let me tell you i have never been more productive

[agent-mcsweetheart]

@imaginable-horror you are an inspiration 😌🫡

[onyxbird]

Replace imposter syndrome with the conman method! You're a fraud, and you're such a competent fraud that the mark is never going to realize what hit them until the gloat.