Paddles are clearly the least damaging, but they come at the cost of practicality.
On one hand, props are physically sharp blades that can cause damage to animals, such as manatees. They also sit physically deeper in the water
Jet propulsion on the other hand hits the habitat really hard from what I can tell, dislodging plants and animals.
Oddly specific question I know, but I was just having a conversation with some of my friends about the impact of entitled dog owners on a number of things including other animals and the environment. I remember at one point seeing an article or a photo of a beach somewhere with signs that told people to keep their dogs on a leash because there was some kind of sensitive conservation effort, maybe a breeding program or it could have just been that off-leash dogs are incredibly disruptive, does that ring a bell for anyone?
Also open to any specific examples of this kind of thing. Thanks!
I live never to an area that was just clear cut for paper, it is miles of just nothing now. I used to have deer at my back door almost every day but now it's so quiet it's scary. About a month after they stopped cutting they flew over in a plane and sprayed some kind of chemical I'm guessing to inhibit the growth of specific kinds of trees since they want to encourage the kind that they can profit off of. Some small shrubs are coming back now but I was curious if you guys had any recommendations of things that I could do help encourage biodiversity in the area and help to support the ecosystem?
This is an interesting blog from a hunter (I’m not the author) and conservationist. He points out the ways hunters and anglers do and don’t fund conservation with licenses and fees and fuel, etc. but also the idea that state Fish & Game agencies = conservation is not accurate and that MOST “conservation funding” doesn’t come from hunters and anglers - though some folks like to say it does. Most conservation work is carried out not by state Fish & Game but by federal agencies, tribal governments, nonprofit organizations, universities, private landowners, conservation groups, and local governments. Most conservation funding isn’t from fishing and hunting, it comes from public funding. This is from multiple studies analyzing costs.
Thoughts? Read beyond my summary and the whole argument and let me know what you think.
I trust what I’m building comes from a genuine place.
I’ve been in the nature tech space for around a year. I haven’t got a background in ecology, conservation, data science or building technology companies. My own background is in fashion.
I’m currently co-founding a nature tech startup with two other commercial founders. Between us we have experience in areas like infrastructure, commercial strategy and ESG but none of us would claim to be ecologists or remote sensing experts.
Over the last year I’ve spent time trying to understand biodiversity monitoring, Earth observation, ground-truthing, corporate nature risk and the conservation landscape. The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don’t know…
The companies I admire have strong technical and scientific founding teams like NatureMetrics, Pivotal Earth etc…
Can three commercially minded founders build something meaningful in the space? Or is deep ecological or technical expertise something that has to exist in the founding team?
Is the right approach to partner with specialists, universities and other technology providers while focusing on solving the commercial problem?
I’d appreciate honest opinions. I’d much rather hear uncomfortable truths…
Hey so little background. I’m from western Canada. I have experience working for national parks, environment canada, environmental consulting etc and I also have experience as a wrangler/hunting guide
I have long thought it’s sad that horses aren’t used as more as I’ve come across many situations where it would have been better then a quad.
As such I’ve been looking how to merge the 2 worlds I love (conservation and pack horses). I’ve looked a bit into using pack horses to replace helicopters for tree planting, and I think it would be viable for spring trees, so that’s one avenue. My sales pitch for conservation/research would be that a) can help you pack equipment for field work and camp into remote areas either too rough or not allowed to drive quads and vehicles into (willmore wilderness, Muskwa Kechika, Spatizi, etc.). With horses we could pack in a healthy amount of field gear and comforts for camp into super rough country that would not be possible without a helicopter.
B) outfitters already in the area are also an option but they make more money using those horses for hunters and often want to keep their horses fresh.
C) As someone with experience doing wildlife surveys for things ranging from birds to ungulates to amphibians etc I could also help as a field technician.
D) in my opinion you get a much better feel for the land on a horse then you do on a quad or flying. It’s a much more intimate experience and I feel for me I’ve been able to observe much more.
I should add too when I asked forestry folks about it I got a lot of good intentioned advice to do with horses. The horses are not the part I’m looking for tips on. I have a good handle on their capability. I am wondering specifically about how this would appeal to you, how would this affect your survey
Had anyone taken part in one of their programs? If so, do you have particular memories to share?
Hello, I'm 19 right now, I'm living on my own in LA, I've been thinking very hard about a career in conservation and just need a little guidance.
A little context about me; I love art, music the most, I've never had much of an interest in being "famous", I just wanted to make enough money to live, but living in LA for a few months I've grown even more hatred for the commodification of art, and honestly now just want to make art for myself and never make a dime from it. I've always been passionate about paleo and evolutionary biology, but decided not to go to school for that because there wasn't really a career path I found worth the time and money.
Right now, I think I want to do extinction prevention in some way, the 2 ways of doing that that come to mind are habitat conservation, and breeding and releasing. I'm not sure what either of those paths look like in any way, I'm not sure what other related jobs exist, or what specific jobs in those 2 paths exist. I've never loved the idea of going to school, especially for a degree, I would rather just go and learn about the things i find interesting, but beggars can't be choosers, I'm well aware there is likely no world I could get into this field without a degree of some sort. I'm willing to go to school, I just don't know what degrees I should look at depending on what I want to do. I think doing field work is probably what I would want to do right now, maybe not when I'm like 50, but I would like to get outside and break my back while I can.
I'm starting at LA Corps soon doing composting, I'm not sure how long I can stay in the program for but I know they can help pay for classes so I want to take advantage of that while I can, and they can also help me get on the right path, so having a better idea of what I want to do will help a lot, any guidance will be very helpful for me.
I'm well aware money in this field is pretty shit overall, jobs are hard to get, blah blah blah, idk I don't have a big interest in staying still until i'm in my mid to late 30s/early 40s probably, if I cared about money and stability I wouldn't be doing any of the things I am, I'll figure that all out when I'm old or dead.
So I’m in my second seasonal job working in natural resource. I jumped from the National Park Service where I found everyone was really passionate about preservation and we would compared Inaturalists to the BLM where I’m doing range work in a place where we probably should not be grazing. The more I learn about range the less and less I feel it’s right for me. I’m not saying that my coworkers don’t care but they just have a priority that doesn’t align with mine. I won’t go any farther into the weeds cause of how small this field is.
While the skills I’m gaining and practicing are great at the end of the day I’m just not happy. The one thing that been keeping me going is that I only have two months left with a follow up job at home with an organization I actually know and respect. And that I can travel to a lot of special spaces within only a few hours.
But yet I’m still working 40 hours a week trying to survive. How do you guys handle such situations during the seasonal roulettes?
I am a paleontology, ecology and evolution enthusiast and after reading quite a lot on these, I learnt the fact that species going extinct is not something new, it has happened since life came to exist and will continue to happen in the future. I also learnt about the concept of 'keystone species' where very few species actually are important for stability and maintenance of ecosystem and removal of the other 'less important species' does to matter much to ecosystem as the other species fill in their niches. With many threatened species I also assume that most of them are not ecologically very important due to their diminished/diminishing numbers and/or range. Also, given the resources allocated for environmental causes are very limited and needing to support many other causes which are seemingly much more urgent in my opinion like pollution control and restoration of degraded landscapes in the same limited resources, I also argue that maybe putting too many resources in saving species which are not ecologically very important and bound to go extinct should be allowed to do so by letting the 'nature run its course' with the same obviously implying that humans must also not actively try to destroy other species and at the same time put more efforts to identify and conserve the species which have a larger 'ecological impact'.
Although, I also believe that we have some reasons to invest in saving all the threatened species, three of those reasons being conserving biodiversity for 'future use' in case we can find some practical use for these species which we currently don't have, for studying them for better understanding their member and related taxa and finally, because my view up until now was very anthropocentric and 'selfish', saving the threatened species as a 'moral obligation' just because we humans have significantly altered the biosphere and our activities have lead to the threatening and even extinction of many species, and along the same lines we also have a responsibility to save biodiversity as being the only species which is intelligent and aware enough and has the means to assess the current state of biosphere and their impact on it along with having the means to actually help the threatened species.
So what do you guys think? Should we actually invest our limited resources and efforts in saving all the threatened species regardless of their 'perceived importance' or should we focus on the 'important species' and divert the other resources for more pressing causes?
Where can I find good places to volunteer? I’m living in Europe, but can travel pretty much anywhere (I’d just prefer not to to Oceania because of how expensive a flight would be).