@champ-wiggle - Tumblr Blog

Arrival, Valentin Pavageau

Light dawns on no one, Andrew McIntosh

"I can't believe humans would hunt the thylacine to extinction, humans are fundamentally evil" Hey, did you know that extinction was long thought to be impossible, and within 50 years of humans realizing that extinction via overhunting was a possibility it practically stopped happening? Did you know that humans are so desperate to prevent more losses that they're funneling millions of collective hours and billions of euros into helping other species? Hours and euros that could be spent on humans, and species on whom humanity's own survival does not depend? Did you know that due to an accidental introduction of rats, the Lord Howe Island stick insect population was brought down to 24 individuals and now there are tens of thousands of them?

This bug. This bug that, to most humans, is utterly useless, relatively gross, and completely foreign. Humans saved it because humans do not want to cause another extinction ever again if they can avoid it.

untimelytophat

@crabussy

crabussy

as someone in the field of ecological conservation, I can promise without a shadow of a doubt that people DO care. SO MANY people care.

I have to race to sign up to volunteer trips because even with dozens of spots available, people rush to devote their unpaid free time to helping the environment. these trips often fill up within hours. people care.

you will see a lot of bad news because that is the kind of news that people pay the most attention to. I know this more than you'd think from my optimism- not only do I live somewhere facing some of the most extreme ecological issues on the planet, I also spend my time studying the Bad Stuff every single day.

to see all of this firsthand and stay hopeful is proof enough that there IS hope. I promise there is good news, brilliant news, all the time. it's just less visible. but it's no less important or impactful.

divinum-pacis

November 2020: An Evangelical holds up a Bible as he shouts about the coming of Jesus and how Wagner Luiz Abreu Machado, a priest from the Afro-Brazilian faith Umbanda, will go to hell as he interrupts the priest's preparations for a ceremony to mark National Umbanda Day in Sao Goncalo, Brazil. The confrontation has become all too common and underscored why Machado and other leaders from Brazil's Afro-influenced faiths were running for office in the November 15th municipal elections, demanding their worshippers be respected and protected amid a wave of harassment.

(AP Photo/Bruna Prado)