I can clearly remember the moment I first realised my mother and I were living on completely different planes of existence. I was 7 years old and I came home from my school’s first track and field day having placed second or third in every event. the teachers had been making jokes all afternoon about how many times they had to call my name. my friends thought I was cool as shit. my enemies thought I was cool as shit too, come to think of it. I was proud as hell. so I get home with the entire front of my shirt covered in ribbons like I was a military dictator who’d awarded himself every medal, I walk into the kitchen and tell my mum all about my day, and she goes “oh, that must be disappointing not getting any firsts.” and I’m like no?? first of all the first place ribbons are red and I don’t like red. second of all look at me. there’s literally nowhere left on my body for accolades. I am fucking Jacked of All Trades. how could this possibly be a disappointment.
This is a very interesting article which highlights not only the existential threat that chytrid fungus poses to amphibians (it has wiped out 90 species already), but also the ethical dilemma around synthetic biology, in which organisms have genetic material introduced or deleted, for example in the hope of increasing disease resistance.
Also, I would be remiss if I did not say that there is an incredibly cute picture of two frogs sharing one of the ‘mini-saunas’, an intervention which has already helped Australian green and golden bell frogs face off the chytrid fungus threat.
“If you look only at the trend of species declines, it would be easy to think that we’re failing to protect biodiversity, but you would not be looking at the full picture,” said Penny Langhammer, lead author of the study and Executive Vice President of Re:wild. “What we show with this paper is that conservation is, in fact, working to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. It is clear that conservation must be prioritized and receive significant additional resources and political support globally, while we simultaneously address the systemic drivers of biodiversity loss, such as unsustainable consumption and production.”
This massive meta analysis (for those not familiar, a study analyzing the results of many studies on similar topics) found that the vast majority of conservation efforts show much much better results than doing nothing. In many cases, biodiversity loss was not only stopped but reversed.
This shows that conservation efforts really work and money invested is put to very good use. Legally protecting endangered species really works, restoring habitat really works, removing invasive species really works, returning land to Indigenous communities works. All of the blood, sweat, and tears being poured into protecting the natural world has been making a real, big, tangible, difference on a global scale.
in actual uncontrollable sobbing fits of laughter over my mom’s “EW ORK CITY” tshirt like i don’t think enough oxygen is reaching my brain rn i’m laughing so hard
