@a8354057 There should be a hashtag for #AccidentalScienceArt. I’d follow that. 😃 

 @7872ae09 #doggles 😄 

 Here's the #iNaturalist observation that one of our first-year ecology undergrads made. This was part of a #LincolnUniversityNZ field trip for our first year ecology and conservation course.

https://inaturalist.nz/observations/186251171 

 @360b357e Cool! Echidna snuffles! 

 @fee8392b Nice. I like Steve Sailer's comment on that post:

If A correlates with B, then

A could cause B
or B could cause A
or C could cause both A and B
or it’s just a random fluke
or it’s due to incompetence
or it’s due to fraud or bias
or maybe a few other reasons. 

 @b629324d Fascinating. I’d not heard of “beaver bombing” and “rogue rewilding”. 

“The rewilding fringe believes that something more radical than scientific reintroduction and conservation programs that are implemented at a sloth-like pace is necessary.“

I’m wary of “illegal anonymous rogue rewilding,” as we like to rush in with quick fixes instead of giving natural areas the space and time to heal wildly.  Still, with the climate warming fast, lots of species translocations will be needed. 

 @883cae6f I’m not sure whether to say “yes” or “no” to that. 😄 

 @5a6df59d Interesting history and perspective. I like their conclusion: "creatures have a right to exist in accordance with their nature, even if it is their nature to make trouble for humankind." 

 @4dfae064 @1653012b Yes, Raoulia mostly grows in the mountains but they are also found in the gravels on braided rivers, and also on parts of old coastal dunes like Kaitorete. 

 @4dfae064 @1653012b Yes, it’s a daisy, in the genus Raoulia. Those are the vegetable sheep. Some are less poetically called scabweeds.

https://inaturalist.nz/taxa/147226 

 @c84b6fdf You’re welcome. Thanks for commenting. 😀 

 @4dfae064 Nice! You didn’t mention it early that your 55 mm was a macro lens. Handy. 

 @4dfae064 Thanks. I was in a rush to get out the door to get to work, so just did it hand-held at 1600 ISO. I now wish I'd used my tripod.

I recently switched from a ~40-year old manual-focus 300 m  telephoto to a modern 300 mm with autofocus and image stabilisation.  I can confirm that a lot of progress in lens design has been made in 40 years. (Still not cheap though.) 😄 

 @4dfae064 Yeah, birding with a 55 mm lens sounds like a challenge. 😮 

 @9b0cdcd0 Yes, exactly!! It's ridiculous. The risks to the climate of burning fossil fuels have been clear for over a century, and yet we're *still* doing it.  I would have figured that we'd get brought down by a mega-volcano or meteorite impact or some novel chemical with delayed toxicity, or, in the future, some rogue AI. Even nuclear war, as awful as it would be, would make for a better epitaph than death by knowingly turning up the planet's thermostat until we cooked ourselves. It's so dumb! 

 @b92dcc07 Great thread. David Pope did a great cartoon based on this same net-zero murders idea. 

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/carbon-credits-and-offsets-explained/

https://mastodon.nz/system/media_attachments/files/111/079/274/244/554/646/original/2a1f3a21f2ce868f.jpg 

 @54f74c48 Yes, I've thought about this too. Slowing down is good. 

Our massively unsustainable environmental impacts stem from how we put an equivalent dollar value on time and resources. For example, it would cost a lot in time for an employee to take a bus to a job in the next city. In our economic system, it's much cheaper to fly. Yet the Earth doesn't care whether that journey takes half an hour or a day, just the carbon emitted.

We shouldn't be able to trade our time for burning resources. 

 @f6ddecc9 @3660532c Fantastic! :partyparrot: :partyparrot: :partyparrot: 

 @d1654d98 I stopped using headphones years ago, as I wanted to better hear cars approaching from behind. Yes, cars are loud, but I bike on country roads where cars move dangerously fast. I now count birds and butterflies (and other species) while I bike. I've been similarly asked whether that's safe, with the intimation that I should just concentrate on biking.

There's this double-standard that only cyclists should compromise to be safe, when it's car driving that kills people, not biking. 

 @558194b4 Magic! 

 @5b6411ac yes, there’s quite a bit of LIDAR data from across Canterbury: https://koordinates.com/data/?q=Lidar+Canterbury. 

If you’re interested in having a go at this in R, perhaps we can get together and share code, I’ve got quite a bit of ground-based biodiversity data form across wider Christchurch, that I expect could be explained by the cover and height of vegetation that could be extracted from LIDAR data. I haven’t got around to trying that yet but it’s on my to-do list. 

 @5b6411ac That looks helpful. I haven’t tried to wrangle LIDAR data in R yet. Thanks for sharing. 

 @de42726d Cool. That's one top-notch poster of a gannet. 

 @36b56b19 What amazing looking birds these are! https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/117070-Prionops-plumatus 

 @58db300d @3660532c 

b) reforestation gets some carbon back where we want it (in biomass, soils etc), and reduces emissions from degraded areas. So even where it's viable, we don't have the luxury of time to wait for natural regeneration.

For the same amount of a money, you can regenerate *much* more land into native forest than plant it, in landscapes that still have some native forest to act as seed sources. Still, yes, it’s all very case and context dependent. 

 @4dfae064 Absolutely. If a weed is new to and area and rare, take the time to pull it out there and then. 

 @98af7d33 😕 Tricky! I only know how old the oldest kahikatea trees are in Pūtaringamotu-Riccarton Bush. I'd have to guess the rest. I don't pay much attention to exactly how old are the city's heritage buildings. I do like having them around though.