article thumbnail

Thoughts for the Day

10,000 Birds

Last night I lay awake from 4 am til almost 5, worrying about the black-footed ferrets I met in Montana and the humans who had devoted their lives to helping them. As my fellow blogger Meredith Mann pointed out last summer, the Endangered Species Act in particular has been a massive success for birds.

article thumbnail

Acclimatisation Societies of New Zealand

10,000 Birds

There are the endemics, which are odd in their own way, and then there introduced species, which are so varied in their type and origin that you get the feeling you’ve arrived at the aftermath of a small zoo that escaped. What is surprising is quite how many species did end up here, and how economically unimportant they were.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

Are there so many birds that cats don’t matter?

10,000 Birds

So, 5% of all birds might mean 10% of all song birds and really, it might be 20% or more of all the birds that die in a given year for specific species, with the species involved being those that are common to a specific habitat in which the cats are found. Is this a problem? 3) Some of these birds were going to die anyway.

Cats 185
article thumbnail

Dance Me to the End of Love

10,000 Birds

It’s one thing to decide that among humans, the most successful relationships are those that end in a mortality event, although even then it’s a little morbid. The males swagger and boom while the females watch; eventually the gaudiest males and the most impressed females creep off into the bushes and propogate the species.

Ferrets 191
article thumbnail

When conservation and animal rights collide

10,000 Birds

Animal rights is concerned with preventing the suffering or even use of animals by humans. Wildlife conservation is concerned with protecting wildlife at the level of species or perhaps population. A more problematic conflict is that fought over what to do with damaging introduced species. It’s only natural.