Typically by the time a #species gets listed by USFWS or NOAA, it is on the brink of #extinction. There is a backlog of applications, and USFWS has been successfully sued by nonprofits such as the Center for Biological Diversity to clear up the backlog. When a species is listed, critical #habitat is also designated. And announcements about listings must be published in the Federal Register so the public can comment.
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Next Wednesday evening (1900 GMT+0) I'll be giving a free academic seminar on my soon-to-be-released book (The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife)! I'll be covering why Britain and Ireland's pre-industrial natural history data is so reliable, how I map historical records, and how you can tell the difference between when a species was unrecorded and when it was truly absent. Come nerd out with me! 😻 Register here - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ahg-seminar-introducing-the-atlas-of-early-modern-wildlife-tickets-422495384067
#histodons #archaeology #gis #EarlyModern #wildlife
Happy #SaveTheEaglesDay!
Where I live now, eagles seem impossibly mythic birds, but according to my research, just 250-500 years ago White-tailed Eagles (or Sea Eagles) were widespread around the coasts of Britain and Ireland. The last native White-tailed Eagle was only shot in 1918! 🌬
But this is not the end of the story. The eagles are reintroduced on Mull, Wester Ross and Fife in Scotland, Killarney NP in Co Kerry and now the Isle of Wight in England. Please post pics if you see one! 🦅💚
Yamaguchi Sekkei: Lions and Tigers in Peony and Bamboo
• Pair of six-panel folding screens
• Ink and color on gilded paper
• 149 × 330 cm (each screen)
• Edo period, 1668
• The Cleveland Museum of Art
#japan #japanese #art #artofmastodon #arthistory #japaneseart #japanesearthistory #artfromjapan #edo #japanesepainting
More on the limits of ChatGPT. One of the key points, which I also discovered when noodling around, is that the bot makes stuff up when it doesn't know something, so that anyone with detailed knowledge of a field is likely to notice immediately if a student submission is chatbot generated.
https://www.medievalists.net/2022/12/why-ai-wont-steal-medievalists-jobs/
🧪 #Science
🦕 #Naturalhistory
🦭 #Nature
'Londoner solves 20,000-year Ice Age drawings mystery - determines that cave paintings included lunar calendar information about the fertility of different animal species'
This is a remarkable discovery for a professional but for an amateur. Simply wow. Well done, Mr Bacon.
Ok, this is cool: a team of biologists worked out that turtles can talk. The hatchlings even talk to each other in the egg to coordinate their hatching. Turtle talk is at frequencies not very audible for humans and it can take hours for some species to reply to each other.
“Had we had a bit more expansive imaginations, we might have caught this earlier,” said Karen Bakker, a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/06/turtles-eat-south-america/
My 1st (unfiltered) pass in #mapping #English #PlaceNames taking the form ‘X-on/upon-river Y’ (e.g. Stratford-on-Avon). Data (158 names) incl. both surviving & ‘lost’ names, with dates of 1st reference ranging from 900-1983! The distribution is intriguing, espec. the absence of names in the S & E, as is the tendency for names to cluster. Only named rivers drawn. Now time to slice, dice, & play. Your thoughts welcomed. #Medieval #EarlyModern #Names #EnvHist #Histodon #HistGeog #Rivers #Maps
Hi, I do #naturewriting to highlight wonder & aliveness in the world. In a Nature-Spirit #podcast I use #history and #naturespirituality to make sense of current #ecocrises. My first book, Kissed by a Fox, won the WILLA Award in #creativenonfiction. It’s #memoir punctuated by cultural story—how Euro-world came to think of nature as lacking. My second book, Tamed by a Bear, is a journal of one year in a #spiritualpractice of #natureconnection. Centering more-than-human voices. #Introduction
New Year's is coming! Parties! Fun! Hangovers! And of course, you'll want to cure your hangover in the most medieval way!
The internet will tell you that eating raw eels was a traditional medieval cure. Sweet! To the store!
Hold on there, hos.
This was NOT a traditional medieval remedy. Eel blood is toxic to mammals. It causes very bad reactions in mucus membranes, & induces intestinal distress. Enough can prove fatal.
Curiously, otters don't seem bothered by this.
#Eels #Otters #History
My strange winter habit is to read something about #SlowWorms (they are hibernating right now and I miss them! 💚)
I found this paper today called 'Great capricorn beetle-created corridors as refuges for lizards' https://herpetozoa.pensoft.net/article/81190/download/pdf/
It describes how common lizards, sand lizards and slow worms use the holes (corridors) bored by gc beetles for predator evasion, as well as maybe hunting, thermoregulation and hibernating. Another reason to have a log pile! 🦎🎄 #herpetology
December's historical wildlife map is of the (harbour/grey) #seal! According to my research, seals were widespread around Britain and Ireland 250-500 years ago! 🐕🧜♀️
Interestingly, seals started to decline after the end of the #EarlyModern period due to increased hunting. Around 1900 they had become so rare that they had to be legally protected. They have recovered pretty well since, and it's now pupping season, so look out for them if you walk on the coast this winter! 🌊🔭 #histodons #mammals
If you traveled back 250-500 years what #wildlife could you see near you? After a four year research project, I can tell you the answer in Britain and Ireland and it is quite exciting! (🐺🐆🐰🦈🦐🐍)!
My Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife will be published in June, but I have special permission to share some of my findings before that, so I will be releasing one map each month here. Here is a list of previously released ones: https://historyandnature.wordpress.com/2022/12/21/atlas-maps/
#gis
Today the #mountain air is murky with fog. My footsteps are muffled as I walk and there is a ripple of quiet anticipation passing through the wood. A good lunchtime!
Thinking about the adaptability of #trees today. How ancient junipers like these have flowed so differently in their centuries of growth because of pressures faced long ago, from lightning strikes and buckling winds to storms lifting them partially out of the earth. The resilience needed to remake the arrangement, counterbalancing a suddenly altered centre of gravity or reshooting from a shattered, fire-scorched crown. The stories of endurance held by the heartwood.
Introduction 3. I'll follow you for...
I want to share #nature pics - especially of wild plants and amphibians and reptiles. I'd like to read toots on other kinds of #history too (queer history, Black history, Mughal India). I'm hoping to meet more people who are in the UK's University and College Union (#UCU). But I’d also love to see toots which have a trace of the mystery and queerness of faerie about them!🧚💜
#NewToMastodon #TwitterMigration
#Introduction 2. Follow me for...
I work as an Associate Lecturer. When not teaching or walking, I research the #history of #wildlife and #wildflowers and I'll post about that here. I've just finished writing my 'Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife', out in June and this month I have been working on a research project on pine trees and yew trees in #MedievalWales, and a translation of an #earlymodern Scottish natural history text out of #Latin. 🌲📚
#AmWriting #CelticStudies
Introduction 1 HELLO WORLD
In Glamorgan in #Wales there is a mountain which is cool and dim and damp and old. It has wizened old walls covered in moss, and tall, gnarled trees bristling with ivy. There are footpaths crisscrossing and circling about that mountain so that we can check on it; #mountains are not entirely trustworthy you see. I am one of the people living on that mountain and, of course, I walk across it as often as I can on my lunch breaks! ⛰️
Messy-haired hedge-doctor & friend to the local Slow Worms.
Special subject: the history of wildlife & wild plants in medieval and early modern Britain and Ireland.
Looking to follow people who talk about nature, history, unions and the secret moonlight magic that opens the gates to faerie.
#AnimalHistory #EnvHist #HistoricalEcology #medieval #EarlyModern #MoreThanHuman #CelticStudies #HGIS #extinction #histodons