Have Australia’s massive wildfires turned all it’s iconic koalas into crispy critters? An ecologist explains in this Vox video.
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The National Park Service has resumed its seasonal “Deer Management Program,” deploying sharpshooters in Rock Creek Park in the middle of the Nation’s capital to shoot whitetail deer dead. The noctural slaughter will continue until March 30th and recommence next winter. Last winter’s cull cut deer density in half, from 80 to 40 deer per square mile. The Park Service is shooting for a goal of 15 to 20 deer per square mile.
Venison harvested by the program is donated to food programs for the homeless.
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Image (“Rock Creek Deer Hunt, after Atelier de Walt Disney”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Forest policy, climate change, and real estate development combine to create deadly fires.
“Today’s monster fires result largely from three human forces: taxpayer-funded fire suppression that has made the forest a tinderbox; policies that encourage construction in places that are clearly prone to burning; and climate change, which has worsened everything.”
“Society masks the costs of building on the edges of the forest, a zone that planners call the “wildland-urban interface,” or the WUI. With its vast forests and penchant for sprawl, California is the epicenter of WUI wildfire damage. Between 2000 and 2013, fire destroyed more buildings in California’s WUI than in all similar areas in the United States combined, and more than 75 percent of all buildings destroyed by fire in California were in the WUI, according to a University of Wisconsin–Madison study.”
— “Burn. Build. Repeat: Why Our Wildfire Policy Is So Deadly.” Jeffrey Ball, Mother Jones
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“All I Want is Truth (for Christmas),” written and performed by Laura Burhenn with her band The Mynabirds.
Laura Burhenn @ TEDx
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Like many Eastern suburbs, Virginia’s Fairfax County has way too many whitetail deer munching on backyard greenery and blundering in front of moving minivans. The county’s parks department has a chosen technology to control the antlered population boom: bows and arrows. Registered bow hunters climb into tree stand blinds and shoot down at the critters, so there’s little chance of stray shots perforating the neighbors.
Yum, venison steaks!
More:
“Deer control hunt begins in Fairfax County,” Madeleine Simon, WTOP News
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Image (“Fairfax County Deer Hunt, after Atelier Disney”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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“All I Want is Truth (for Christmas),” written and performed by Laura Burhenn with her band The Mynabirds.
Laura Burhenn @ TEDx
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“Scientists at the cutting edge of ecological research … argue that the century-old American practice of suppressing wildfires has been nothing less than a calamity. They are calling for a new approach that basically involves letting backcountry fires burn across millions of acres.
In principle, the federal government accepted a version of this argument years ago, but in practice, fires are still routinely stamped out across much of the country. To the biologists, that has imperiled the plants and animals — hundreds of them, it turns out — that prefer to live in recently burned forests.”
“Scientists are still trying to figure out how regularly forests burned in what is now the United States in the centuries before European settlement, but reams of evidence suggest the acreage that burned was more than is allowed to burn today — possibly 20 million or 30 million acres in a typical year. Today, closer to four million or five million acres burn every year.
‘From an ecological standpoint, everything I’ve learned teaches me this is a good idea: Stop putting out fires,’ said Jennifer R. Marlon, a geographer at Yale who was among the first to use the term “fire deficit” to describe the situation. ‘These forests are made to have fire.’
Human lives are at stake, too. Firefighters die, more than a dozen in some years, putting out fires that many scientists think should be allowed to burn.”
— Let Forest Fires Burn? What the Black-Backed Woodpecker Knows,” Justin Gillis, New York Times
More:
“The Future of Fighting Wildfires in the Era of Climate Change,” Bob Berwyn, Pacific Standard
“Benefits of Fire,” SmokeyBear.com
“Adapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes,” Tania Schoennagela, Jennifer K. Balcha, Hannah Brenkert-Smith et al., PNAS
“Fire Ecology,” Pacific Biodiversity Institute
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“Some Days There Just Ain’t No Fish.” Produced and directed by Miki Cash and Tom Gasek of Wonky Films. Song written by Carl Sigman and Bob Russell; sung by Hoagy Carmichael.
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“Mni Wiconi: The Standing at Standing Rock,” a short film by Lucian Read about the Native American people of the Standing Rock community who oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline project. “Mni Wiconi” means “Water is Life” in the Sioux language.
This week, some people are choosing to join them for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Updates:
“Medics Describe How Police Sprayed Standing Rock Demonstrators With Tear Gas and Water Cannons,” Alleen Brown, The Intercept
“Police defend use of water cannons on Dakota Access protesters in freezing weather,” Derek Hawkins, Washington Post
“Trump owns stock in Dakota Access parent company,” Harper Neidig, The Hill
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In the spirit of the holiday season and the U.N. Climate Change Conference.
“All I Want is Truth (for Christmas),” written and performed by Laura Burhenn with her band The Mynabirds.
You can order donloads here
Laura Burhenn @ TEDx
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