“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.
I live by the motto, “if you can’t buy what you want, make it.” And this motto came to life recently in the form of a floral mosaic dining table for my back deck.
Our deck table had been showing its age already when the wind caught the umbrella and cracked it. I wanted to replace it with a mosaic table because I’d been enjoying that art form recently. But I couldn’t get one the size I wanted so I got creative.
I spent a few weeks looking for tile and figuring out a very loose design concept. I started by picking a limited set of tile shapes and a color palette.
Once the tiles arrived I had a piece of particle board cut to size for the base and I experimented with different motifs until I settled on a selection of floral shapes that gave me plenty of variety to fill space without locking me into one repeating pattern.
And then I was off! I basically doodled my way around the table, attaching tiles with Weld Bond (I went through 4 full bottles!) and rocking out to the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack.
Once the florals were done it was time for the background…
Over 3,800 1cm glass tiles make up the not-design part of the design. It went pretty quickly though because I just had to fill the space, leaving room for grout.
Once I had the tile done, my husband assisted with disassembly and reassembly. We used the legs off the original table for this one (waste not).
One huge bucket of black grout later…
She is finished.
I enjoyed making it and just looking at it makes me so happy - I can’t wait for all the dinners we’ll have around this table 🌼❤️
After the hell of the past two days, this reminded me of what America could and should be about. It’s a little pocket of hope when our administration is trying to extinguish diversity and community and basic human decency and replace them with fear and hate and division.
— fatima aamer bilal, from being unwanted is a language
[Text ID: “The world is happening in a room that i can’t enter, life is happening in a gathering i am not invited to. being unwanted is a language i am fluent in.” /End ID]
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