#native species

[fieldsparrowstudio]

jewels of opar

traditional ink, digital color. 2024

[hope-for-the-planet]

Cook Islands’ atoll officially rat free

The Cook Islands’ Palmerston Atoll (500 km away from Rarotonga) is officially rat free following a tremendous eradication effort by the loca

As of December 2024, The Cook Islands' Palmerston Atoll was declared entirely rat free. This was after significant eradication efforts and monitoring to confirm the rats were gone, both of which involved the local community. Removing the rats has helped to improve food security and safety for residents, as well as increasing the prevalence and numbers of native wildlife.

Arthur Neale, the atoll’s Executive Officer, says Palmerston’s rat-free status means the world to him and everyone else who lives on the atoll. “Rats infested the atoll for over a century. They ate our crops, invaded our homes and harmed local wildlife. We saw the rat problem becoming worse, with the potential to seriously undermine our resilience in the face of climate change impacts. “Benefits from the rat eradication are already evident. Our food security has improved massively. Fruits like guava, mango and star fruit are now abundant and free from rat damage. Our nu mangaro (a coconut tree variety) are thriving. Vegetables, especially cucumbers, have seen an astonishing increase in yield. “We’re very excited to see more native species now rats are no longer eating them. Seedlings of tamanu and puka are increasing and we’re seeing and hearing more birds. Wood pigeons and red-tailed tropic birds have returned to Home Islet. Crabs and lizards appear to be more abundant.”

Here's a cool video from a few years ago covering the work to remove rats and inclusion with the local community (Just a heads up the video does show dead rats a couple of times).

[floridafishkeeper]

Feral shrimp aside, here's a bunch of photos of some of the natives I collected in Marine, brackish, and fresh conditions. I'll try to list all of them.

Sailfin molly,Naked goby, Marsh killifish (confluentus), southern puffer, frillfin goby's, Florida blenny, dwarf seahorse, gulf pipefish, southern hake, and a pair of plane head filefish.

[sirpuntine]

What’s your favorite bug? 🦗🐜🐛

Mine are Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers, especially the nymphs. They’re so cute and clumsy! I always know it’s springtime when I start seeing baby lubbers all over the yard.

Have a lubberly day :)

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Every time I hear of someone's dog killing a coyote, or that mule that killed a cougar, or a rooster kills a hawk, all I can think of is how an invasive, domesticated animal killed a native one just trying to survive in an ecosystem we've drastically changed. I say this as someone who, up until last September, had kept chickens for several years and never harmed the predators that occasionally got one.

[beyondtheegress]

👁👄👁

[ratbugs]

losing my mind a little at people acting like roaches are evil because less than like fifty of the four thousand something species were displaced into what is essentially their dream environment

this roach debacle didn’t come about just because roaches are great at being alive, or because they’ve been around a damn long time.

it’s a lot because, believe it or not, the kind of world that humans like to live in is. . . really really great for roaches [referring specifically to the highly invasive species like german roaches, etc. for: whole post]

we had a bit of a change in my household a few years ago that a think about a lot. we stopped using pest control. my mom is a bit obsessive about it, all natural everything - soaps, scents, cleaners, etc. . .

interestingly, these big colonies of spiders started popping up. under the bookshelves, the drawers. idk, they hang around. if you know what spiders find really really yummy, you’ll understand this next part.

i stopped seeing roaches. in the house, those big ol’ american or australian roaches - never. little itty bitty german roaches, sometimes (btw: i love these roaches obviously, but i’d like to love them from like. . . where they’re from)

with insects, the go to solution is just spray the fix out of everything // and most of the time isn’t for any conservation reasons //

so this is where the whole, culling invasive species thing gets sticky.

the problem with spraying the fuck out of everything with something that kills bugs is you end up killing a whole bunch of the already struggling native species, and do pretty much fuck all to the ones that can afford to lose a few (also what is happening with the whole dousing suburban neighborhoods with mosquito spray)

so here we are. . . imagining the devil in the face of a roach. . . as if we aren’t completely and wholly supporting their success.

i’d just like for people to think a little harder about invasive species. and maybe put a little of that aggressive passion more towards supporting the native species instead (because as @casperwyomingxer mentioned under a previous post: amazing reply btw please go read it), this usually ends up being a way a more helpful thing that you as an individual can do in the long run.

[bumblebeeappletree]

We’re helping to restore Australia's ancient landscape.

Before colonization, much of Australia was not “wild” in the way Europeans imagined it. With knowledge going back tens of thousands of years, First Nations people purposefully cultivated the land and lived in balance with nature.

Colonization shattered that balance. British colonists cleared the land and displaced the First Nations people as quickly and brutally as possible.

In Mission 40, we teamed up with the Forktree Project to transform the landscape back into the paradise it once was.

By combining Indigenous wisdom and contemporary climate science, we’re helping restore the landscape so it can function and thrive again the way it did for thousands of years.

Make sure to follow the Forktree Project:

IG:   / forktreeproject  

Website: https://www.theforktre...

We extend our gratitude to Mark Koolmatrie, the participating Ngarrindjeri Yarluwar-Ruwe Rangers, and the wider Ngarrindjeri community for generously sharing their traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property for Mission 40. We respectfully acknowledge the First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters across the Fleurieu Peninsula where this project was filmed, and we pay our respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

#naturerestoration #treeplanting #ancientecosystem

Chapters

0:00 Restoring a lost ecosystem

1:12 How Australia’s land was once managed

2:52 Firestick Farming

4:09 The benefits of Firestick Farming

5:43 The brutal clearing of the land

7:16 Meet our partner

8:35 How they’re bringing back this ecosystem

9:20 Our support

10:47 A pilot project