Protect your feathered friend from silent killers in your home! Learn how to safeguard your bird from toxic fumes and create a safe haven. Read now and breathe easy!

A study that just came out demonstrates that outdoor cats are known to prey on over two thousands species of wild animal, from mammals to birds to insects. That includes 347 species that are endangered, threatened or otherwise of concern, and they've been a key factor of the permanent extinction of over 60 species. And while cats may not always bring home what they catch, chances are if your cat is allowed to roam unsupervised outside, they're killing your local wildlife.

Why is this so important? Worldwide, wild animal populations have decreased in number by 69% in the past fifty years; that means that in my lifetime (born in 1978), the sheer number of wild animals in the world has been decreased by over half. Even "common" wild species are less numerous than before. While habitat population is the single biggest cause of species endangerment and extinction overall, outdoor and indoor/outdoor cats are a significant cause as well. In fact, they are the single biggest cause of human-caused mortality in wild birds.

Most importantly, it's very, very simple to fix this problem: keep your cats indoors, and spay and neuter them. If your cat is bored, they need more enrichment, and there are plenty of ways to make your home more exciting for them, from bringing home cardboard boxes for them to explore, to playing with them more often. If you want your cat to get some outdoor enrichment, leash train them (yes, it can be done!) If you have the space and resources, build them a catio where they can be safe from outdoor dangers like predators and cars, while also keeping local wildlife safe from them.

If you just give into their whining and pawing at the door, then they know that that's what they have to do to get their way; I know it's a tough transition, but it's worth it in the end for everyone involved. Cats are domesticated, which means they are not native anywhere in the world; there are exactly zero ecosystems in which they belong, save for the safety of your home. It is your responsibility to give them an enriching environment without taking the shortcut of letting them go wreak havoc outside.

LA's environmentalist lawyers pulling up to Universal:

Update:

Well then, I guess:

Best types of birds for pet -Time Pet Owners - Find Your Perfect Match   

Welcome to our extensive aide on the best kinds of birds for pets. Claiming a bird can be a compensating experience, as they are clever, social, and engaging creatures that can give pleasure to your life. Be that as it may, picking the right bird for your family can be an overwhelming errand, as there are many elements to think about like size, personality, and care prerequisites. In this article, we will investigate the top sorts of birds for pets and furnish you with all the data you really want to settle on an educated choice.

i don’t share a lot of change.org petitions but the CSO (combined sewer overflow) problem that’s largely exclusive to New England is hugely detrimental both to the public and to the wildlife that lives there; the heavy pollution is a huge part of why so many fish species like the Atlantic salmon haven’t been able to successfully return to spawn. i hugely recommend you sign this petition, whether you live in New England or not, by going here!

Tiny Indian Ocean Island Shows How Quickly Seabirds Recover When Invasive Predators Are Removed https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tiny-indian-ocean-island-shows-how-quickly-seabirds-recover-when-invasive-predators-are-removed/

18 years after rats were eradicated, Tromelin Island off the coast of Madagascar is a thriving colony of seabirds once again.

The same story happened over and over during the age of exploration: Europeans brought rats or rabbits on board their ships and dumped them on delicate, pristine island ecosystems.

Hundreds of islands became desolate wastelands this way, damage that has for the most part been reversed, as GNN has reported, in one of the greatest conservation stories ever told.

Now, this small teardrop of sand, rock, and palm trees in the southern Indian Ocean, is the most recent example of conservationists being able to completely rewild a landscape back to a period before European contact.

Spanning just 1 square kilometer, Tromelin Island is now home to thousands of breeding pairs of 7 seabird species like the masked and red-footed boobies.

By 2013, these two species had doubled in number from the precarious, rat oppressed lows of just a handful in 2004. In the subsequent 9 years, white terns, brown noddies, sooty terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters, and lesser noddies all came back on their own initiative.

Matthieu Le Corre, an ecologist at the University of Reunion Island, told Hakkai Magazine how, in some cases, restoring seabird populations can be a tricky thing based on the particular species’ nesting habits.

On other islands where Le Corre has worked, they’ve had to install robotic bird calls and life-size replicas to convince the birds the island is a safe place to nest again. But Tromelin Island needed no such help, since these terns, noddies, and boobies are much more dispersed in their nesting patterns.

“In terms of conservation, it’s a wonderful success,” Le Corre says.

Recently there was a patch of trees felled without warning.

It's nesting season, so it's very dangerous for the birds to destroy their trees. I've already seen woodpigeons mating in the nearby area about a month ago. I've seen birds such as woodpigeons, magpies, great tits, blue tits and a sparrowhawk in the area that's been felled (as well as robins, long-tailed tits, coal tits, blackbirds, goldfinches and house sparrows nearby). I have also heard a Jay nearby before, and one Facebook commenter has said there are nesting Jays. Additionally, it looks horrible - there used to be beautiful trees, and now there's just a thin strip of trees along the footpath, as well as a horrid big hole next to the car park. Our green spaces need more protection.

According to two councillor's Facebook posts, the Forestry Commission are investigating due to no felling licence or planning permission. They have served a Stop Notice. The matter has been raised with the wildlife crime team due to disturbance to nesting birds. The area has been allocated for development, but the felling has had insufficient regard for the environmental impact.

Developers will often illegally fell trees, then take the fine and build houses since it's already been destroyed. However, they could now be issued a restocking order, and would have to replant the trees.

I've seen two messages on the gate to the site protesting this, so I made this piece. If there's public uproar it could hopefully make them think twice next time, even if it doesn't save this one.

Well this was an unexpected visitor to the state of Michigan! Western Tananger

This Gray Catbird looks concerned for the environment. But on the plus side, this Pier 1 marsh at Brooklyn Bridge Park "traps" a lot of trash, removing it from the East River. 😃

#TheRaven

...who just chased a Turkey Vulture out of his territory.

@BenAdrienProulx April 23th, 2024.

Also I'm not saying the Amazon Rainforest isn't EXTREMELY important. I'm pointing out my governments hypocrisy.

Also if the Amazon Rainforest is equivalent to the lungs of the the earth, weatlands are the kidneys! Wetlands are where tons of the fish we,along with other animals eat go to lay their eggs. Also Prairie lands have near to the amount of life diversity as the Amazon Rainforest and only 1% of Prairie lands remain in Texas today!

Welcome to my Tuesday morning PSA about plastics!

So--I was walking along the Bolstadt beach approach sidewalk here in Long Beach, WA yesterday afternoon, and I started seeing these little orange pellets on the ground that looked a little bit like salmon roe (but probably weren't). So I picked one up, and it was most definitely rubber. I went around picking up every one I could find, and while I didn't keep exact count I probably amassed 50-60 of them. I took this picture before depositing them in the nearest trash can.

These are airsoft gun pellets, and you can buy them in big jars containing thousands of them. That means that someone who decided that the beach was a great place to shoot their airsoft guns could easily litter the place with countless little bits of plastic rubber in less than an hour. We already have a huge problem here with people leaving trash, including tiny bits of plastic, all over the beach (you should see the gigantic mess after 4th of July fireworks when thousands of people come in from out of town, blow things up, and then leave again without picking up after themselves.)

But these airsoft pellets have a particularly nasty side effect. You know how my first thought was "wow, those look kind of like salmon roe?" Well, we have a number of opportunistic omnivore birds like crows, ravens, and several species of gull that commonly scavenge on the beach, especially along the approaches because people often feed them there. If I can catch the resemblance of an orange airsoft pellet to a fish egg, then chances are there are wildlife that will assume they're edible.

Since birds don't chew their food, they probably won't notice that the taste or texture is wrong--it'll just go down the hatch. And since they can't digest the pellets, there's a good chance they might just build up in the bird's digestive system, especially if the bird eats a large number of them--say, fifty or sixty of them dropped on the ground along the same fifty foot stretch of sidewalk. The bird might die of starvation if there's not enough capacity for food in their stomach--or they might just die painfully of an impacted gut, and no way to get help for it. If the pellets end up washed into the ocean, you get the same issue with fish and other marine wildlife eating them, and then of course the pellets eventually breaking up into microplastic particles.

You can get biodegradable airsoft pellets; they appear to mainly be gray or white in color rather than bright screaming orange and green. But "biodegradable" doesn't mean "instantly dissolves the next time it rains." An Amazon listing for Aim Green biodegradable airsoft pellets advertise them as "Our biodegradable BBs are engineered to degrade only with long-term exposure to water and sun and will degrade 180 days after being used." That's half a year for them to be eaten by wildlife.

I don't know, y'all. That handful of carelessly dropped rubber pellets just encapsulates how much people don't factor in the rest of nature when making decisions, even on something that is purely for entertainment like an airsoft gun. We could have had a lot of the same technological advances we have today, but with much less environmental impact, if we had considered the long-term effects on both other people and other living beings, as well as our habitats. We could have found ways from the beginning to make these things in ways that benefited us but also mitigated any harm as much as possible. Instead we're now having to reverse-engineer things we've been using for decades, and sometimes--like the "biodegradable" airsoft pellets--they still have a significant negative impact.

But--at least there are people trying to do things better, thinking ahead instead of just on immediate profit. We're stuck in a heck of a mess here, figuratively and literally, and changing an entire system can't be done in a day. Maybe we can at least keep pushing for a cultural shift that emphasizes planning far into the future--if not the often-cited "seven generations ahead", then at least throughout the potential lifespan of a given product.

"Until recently, a visit to the Colorado River’s delta, below Morelos Dam, would be met with a mostly dry barren desert sprinkled with salt cedar and other undesirable invasive plant species. Today, that arid landscape is broken up with large areas of healthy riparian habitat filled with cottonwood, willow, and mesquite trees. These are restoration sites which are stewarded through binational agreements between the United States and Mexico, and implemented by Raise the River—a coalition of NGOs including Audubon"

Thanks to @aersidhe for sending this in!

The trade in feathers for women's hats was incredibly destructive as hunters killed millions of birds in the wetlands of Florida and other states:

Eventually, there was a backlash. Here's a cartoon mocking Coco Chanel for killing birds:

Criticism of the plumage trade -- especially by women's conservation groups -- led to the passage of some of the first environmental laws in American history. You can read the whole story here:

{Buy me a coffee} {WHF} {Medium} {Looking Through the Past}

Posting this for Australians, mainly.

"In a country as vast as Australia, the public plays an important role too.

We’re being asked to immediately report any unusual bird deaths to the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on 1800 675 888.

Health authorities have also warned against handling sick or dead birds."

anybody here who farms insects for human consumption and would be willing to participate in a interview for a (positive) article around insect farming? please dm me with your email and i’ll reach out!