#ecosystems

[wachinyeya]

Bison Return to Illinois Prairie to the Sounds of Drumming After 200 Years of Absence

Bison Return to Illinois Prairie to the Sounds of Drumming After 200 Years of Absence

The 6 animals were released from a large trailer into a cattle enclosure to allow them to get used to the idea of the frozen prairie again.

A herd of 6 American bison—3 males and 3 females—have been released onto native Illinois prairie. There, to the sound of drumming, songs, and cheers, they began to acclimate to their new surroundings—surroundings that had missed them for 200 years. A large crowd of Santee Sioux, herded together in their woven blankets and synthetic down jackets, had arrived at sunrise on Burlington Prairie Forest Preserve in Kane County, 60 miles northwest of Chicago, to witness something of a homecoming. “It’s different when you’re welcoming them back home. That’s their home, not mine,” tribal elder Robert Wapahi told CBS News Chicago. The 6 animals were released from a large trailer into a cattle enclosure to allow them to get used to the idea of the frozen prairie again, and come the spring, they’ll be moved onto a larger area, still fenced, where it’s anticipated they will improve native grasslands. “It’s really important and awesome to see another herd that is hitting the ground in a good way,” one man said at the event, where drummers sang a song as the trailer arrived. The American Indian Center, the oldest urban Native American cultural establishment in the United States, will look after the animals in partnership with Kane County Forests Persevere staff, and a designated herd manager. The reduction in bison from 35 million to several thousand had a profound effect on the North American prairie even without the conversion of so much of it to farmland. Bison engineer grassland ecosystems with much the same impact as beavers on a stream. The millions of hooves stamped the grasslands flat, preventing any one species from over colonizing an area. Their wooly coats acted as an excellent seed dispersal vehicle. Their dung helped fertilized the plains and their digging of wallowing pits increased the landscape’s ability to resist drought and retain water. In bits and pieces, fits and starts, bison are being reintroduced to native prairie when it can be found, and though 6 is a far cry from 35 million, all good things have to start somewhere. Judging by the smiles and the cheers of the Santee Sioux—when the shaggy beasts rumbled out of the trailer—this is a very, very good thing.

By Andy Corbley -Jan 26, 2026

[snekdood]

but have you ever even heard of the fynbos biome ?!!?!?!?!

a biome so unique in south africa that it's earned an entirely new biome classification for itself. so many plants are endemic to this area, and ofc it's under threat of extinction.

[headspace-hotel]

So much of the uniformity and barrenness that people associate with human interaction with ecosystems results from very specific, intentional patterns of land use and management, not something inherent to human land use and management.

What I mean by that is: we observe "human-dominated" ecosystems having very flat, hostile characteristics, but we see this specific pattern because there are specific things we are doing in uniform ways across large areas.

The thing is, human interaction could create a virtually infinite amount of ecosystems.

Sites with unique, non-typical, or chaotic histories of human use and management often have extremely novel assemblages of species. This would be an interesting thing to formally research.

My best friend and I were exploring an area of land where there was a stone chimney and the remnants of a well, piles of rocks marking where the foundation of a small house had collapsed. It was close to a river, the slope was steep and there was a powerline cut through it.

It was easy to tell that approximately fifty or sixty years ago, the land had been bare and pretty much treeless, and most likely had been highly eroded, because the composition of trees was almost entirely eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) with a couple of impressive honeylocust (Gleditsia tricanthos). These trees typically grow on areas that are rocky and barren with too little soil for other species to survive.

The lower part of the forest was taken up with an enormous (by modern standards) canebrake, stretching hundreds of feet on each side, with canes that were almost 15 feet tall. This was immediately confusing because cane enjoys incredibly deep soil (sometimes growing roots 10 feet deep in the ground).

In the powerline cut, there were big patches of black raspberry. (Black raspberry is easily identified in wintertime because of the smooth pinkish-purple canes they have in winter, with a chalky-looking white bloom on them. They are delicious, and if you take really good care of a patch and pamper it, it can give you gallons of raspberries.) Bits of slag were eroding out of the steep slope, and my best friend found a railroad spike. There was a collapsed railroad bridge not too far from the location, so we guessed that a railroad might have passed through at some point in the past. Invasive species were prevalent, wintercreeper, honeysuckle, and some species of privet I was unfamiliar with, but they didn't completely overtake everything.

Red cedar and rivercane are very interesting to see together. Theoretically, they prefer opposite habitat types, and have opposite fire tolerances: rivercane LOVES fire, whereas redcedar hates it and easily dies to fire. They also have the strange distinction, in some areas of Kentucky, of being almost the only native evergreen woody plants.

Further up into the cedar-rivercane forest, away from the road, the forest floor was carpeted in an absolutely sumptuous layer of moss. There was moss coating the tree trunks and dripping off the branches.

There were even bits of moss growing from the joints of the rivercane, either snagged there somehow or growing there as epiphytes, which I had NEVER seen or heard of before (epiphytic moss on rivercane!!!!! imagine!!!!) but it seemed unlikely that moss would somehow get caught accidentally on the rivercanes. (Old rivercane stems are, anyway, theoretically a good habitat for epiphytes: the new twigs that grow each year slowly build up into thickety bundles that gather fallen leaves and debris. That's why birds love to nest in there.)

On the ground there were large patches of Climacium moss, which is known as tree-moss because it is very bushy and stands up a couple inches, rather than clinging to the surface it's on. This seemed extraordinary, because Climacium is a rather conservative moss, typically only found in very moist interiors of mature forests, and here it was growing in luxurious bounty in this crappy, marginal patch of land that had been abused and razed over in diverse ways over the past century.

The railroad, the slag, the powerline cut, the ruins of the old house, the rocky and eroded soil...a strange convergence of land use histories. Likewise, a strange convergence of species.

I'm intrigued by the possibility that humans could create novel ecosystems, because we seem to do it accidentally quite a lot.

But there seems to be very little formal academic interest in the bizarre, unique plant communities that emerge from the seethe of human activity as it uses, abandons, re-appropriates, and disturbs land.

[reasonsforhope]

Before and After Photos of World's Largest Dam Removal in Calif. Will Have You Cheering for Team Salmon (LOOK)

The last two dams, Ion Gate and Copco 1, that were built to divert water for the construction of larger dams, were just removed.

"For years, California was slated to undertake the world’s largest dam removal project in order to free the Klamath River to flow as it had done for thousands of years.

Now, as the project nears completion, imagery is percolating out of Klamath showing the waterway’s dramatic transformation, and they are breathtaking to behold.

Pictured: Klamath River flows freely, after Copco-2 dam was removed in California.

Incredibly, the project has been nearly completed on schedule and under budget, and recently concluded with the removal of two dams, Iron Gate and Copco 1. Small “cofferdams” which helped divert water for the main dams’ construction, still need to be removed.

The river, along which salmon and trout had migrated and bred for centuries, can flow freely between Lake Ewauna in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to the Pacific Ocean for the first time since the dams were constructed between 1903 and 1962.

“This is a monumental achievement—not just for the Klamath River but for our entire state, nation, and planet,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “By taking down these outdated dams, we are giving salmon and other species a chance to thrive once again, while also restoring an essential lifeline for tribal communities who have long depended on the health of the river.”

“We had a really incredible moment to share with tribes as we watched the final cofferdams be broken,” Ren Brownell, Klamath River Renewal Corp. public information officer, told SFGATE. “So we’ve officially returned the river to its historic channel at all the dam sites. But the work continues.”

Pictured: Iron Gate Dam, before and after.

“The dams that have divided the basin are now gone and the river is free,” Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe, said in a tribal news release from late August. “Our sacred duty to our children, our ancestors, and for ourselves, is to take care of the river, and today’s events represent a fulfillment of that obligation.”

The Yurok Tribe has lived along the Klamath River forever, and it was they who led the decades-long campaign to dismantle the dams.

At first the water was turbid, brown, murky, and filled with dead algae—discharges from riverside sediment deposits and reservoir drainage. However, Brownell said the water quality will improve over a short time span as the river normalizes.

“I think in September, we may have some Chinook salmon and steelhead moseying upstream and checking things out for the first time in over 60 years,” said Bob Pagliuco, a marine habitat resource specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in July.

Pictured: JC Boyle Dam, before and after.

“Based on what I’ve seen and what I know these fish can do, I think they will start occupying these habitats immediately. There won’t be any great numbers at first, but within several generations—10 to 15 years—new populations will be established.”

Ironically, a news release from the NOAA states that the simplification of the Klamath River by way of the dams actually made it harder for salmon and steelhead to survive and adapt to climate change.

“When you simplify the habitat as we did with the dams, salmon can’t express the full range of their life-history diversity,” said NOAA Research Fisheries Biologist Tommy Williams.

“The Klamath watershed is very prone to disturbance. The environment throughout the historical range of Pacific salmon and steelhead is very dynamic. We have fires, floods, earthquakes, you name it. These fish not only deal with it well, it’s required for their survival by allowing the expression of the full range of their diversity. It challenges them. Through this, they develop this capacity to deal with environmental changes.”

-via Good News Network, October 9, 2024

[protectoursharks]

Helloo, I just found your blog and it brings me great joy. Have you done a post on epaulette shark facts yet? They are my favourite 🥺

Hemiscyllium ocellatum // Epaulette Shark

Thank you so much! Epaulette sharks are one of my favorite sharks too, it's been a while since I did a post on them, so here we go!

Probably the most interesting fact about Epaulette sharks is that they can walk on land.

That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but they can move and survive on land for up to an hour!

These sharks have evolved the ability to undulate their pectoral and pelvic fins in a way that allows them to "walk" across surfaces. Their musculature and skeletal system is different from most other sharks, allowing them to lift and move their body even without the help of buoyancy underwater. They can regulate their breathing and heart rate to survive in these low oxygen conditions.

You might be wondering why these sharks do this. When the tide lowers, there are small pockets of water that larger predators cannot access. During these periods, they have less competition when hunting and additionally don't have to worry about their own predators such as other sharks and groupers. Hunting prey also becomes easier when the prey has nowhere to go.

There are nine species of this "walking shark" and they can be found in Indonesia, Australia, and Papa New Guinea. These sharks can grow up to 107 cm (42.1 in) long and eat primarily small fish, crustaceans, and polychaete worms.

[aquatic-dusk]

i teleport you into the ocean! spin the wheel to find out what environment/ecosystem you end up in (you can look it up if you don't know what it is). assuming you can survive there,

how do you feel about this?

this is everything i've ever wanted! i am finally home!

this is lovely! can i stay a while?

it's pretty nice

i'm indifferent

it's rather unpleasant

horrible. get me out

*incoherent screaming*

Voting ended onApr 4, 2025

[rubiscodisco]

tumblr used to be a high throughput reef ecosystem but then they banned titties and now we’re like an ecosystem in the abyssal sea floor just quietly chugging along, cycling through nutrients at a much slower rate.

then every once in a while a some huge news comes along like queendeath and it’s like a whale fall, we come crawling out of the woodwork like isopods, hagfish, and burrowing worms to feast on the memes for years

it’s been almost two years since destiel-putin-election and we still linger around those bones like limpets