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Quote by Dan Egan

“Sandy beaches still rim the lakes, but if Lake Michigan, for example, were drained it would now be possible to walk almost the entire 100 miles between Wisconsin and Michigan on a bed of trillions upon trillions of filter-feeding quagga mussels.”

Quote by Dan Egan

Book:The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
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The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

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Dan Egan

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“Most big freshwater fish, in most parts of the world, have all but disappeared from most places where they used to live. As with arapaima, the main reason is over-harvesting, but there are other factors too. Dams block the migration routes of many fish, so they disappear from the water above the dam — or even altogether, if breeding grounds are cut off. Draining of floodplains, cutting off backwaters, competition from invasive species and pollution also play a part. And sometimes it's just willful slaughter, as was the case with the North American alligator gar in the early 1900s, thanks to the incorrect assumption that killing these predators would boost populations of ‘game’ fish.”

FishingPollutionConservationExtinctionAmazonBrazilFishDamsSportfishingInvasive Species
Book:How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling
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“To make good environmental decision, we must stop focusing on trying to remove or undo human influence, on turning back time or freezing the non-human world in amber. We must instead acknowledge the extent to which we have influenced our current world and take some responsibility for its future trajectory…We should not seek to carefully control every plant and animal on the planet. We couldn’t even if we wanted to.”

NatureConservationWildFeralInvasive Species
Book:Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World
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“When non-human animals are killed simply because they 'don't belong' and not because they are clearly causing some measurable harm, we have decided that erasing the taint of th ehuman is more important than the lives of animals (who, lest we forget, have no conception that they are in the 'wrong' place). This does not feel like humility in action. It is often the case that we hurt and kill animals because they are having effects we don't like, perhaps by predating on rare animals or eating rare plants. That's a trickier question--one we will tackle in due course.”

WildernessConservationInvasive Species
Book:Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World
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“To me, this suggests that our thinking around 'invasive species' needs to be fine-tuned. Instead of a paradigm where we see all 'foreign' species as malevolent invaders that should be considered threats to ecological integrity unless proven otherwise, maybe we should instead see islands species as particularly vulnerable to newly arriving species. Indeed, the over concept of the 'native' has some fundamental problems. It derives from precisely that frozen-in-time idea of 'ecosystem integrity' that, as we've seen, is riddled with conceptual shortcomings. Ecologists have spent decades assigning 'native ranges' to species, usually based on where they were when the first white scientist showed up to take notes. These ranges are pegged to an arbitrary point in time, a moment in the long evolutionary and geographical journey of a particular lineage.”

ConservationEnvironmentalismInvasive Species
Author:Emma Marris
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“In addition, they say, not everyone in New Zealand is okay with strewing poison all over the land, or even support of the goals of the [invasive-species removal] project. 'The eradication of some introduced species is also contentious because some Maori regard them as culturally important,' they write. "the Pacific rat, for example, while targeted by Predator Free 2050, is protected on some Maori lands.”

ConservationRatsEnvironmentalismInvasive SpeciesWildernesMaori People
Book:Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World
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“Most comb jellies have little direct effect on humans, except through a minor role in marine food webs. One species, however, stands apart as the villain of the basal invertebrates. In the 1980s, the Atlantic comb jelly Mnemiopsis was accidentally introduced into the Black Sea, probably in ballast water carried by commercial shipping. Once in its new environment, away from natural competitors and predators, it reproduced rapidly – all the while consuming vast quantities of larval fish and crustaceans. Some (controversial) estimates placed the total seething mass of diminutive comb jellies in the Black Sea at over half a billion tonnes. The local anchovy fishery, already under heavy fishing pressure, was decimated. While ecologists debated what to do, a possible solution arrived, unplanned, in the shape of another accidental introduction. The newcomer was a second comb jelly, this time the voracious Beroe. Fortuitously, Beroe does not eat fish or crustaceans, but is instead a specialist predator of other comb jellies and nothing else. As the invading Beroe now feast on the Mnemiopsis, the fish stocks are showing gradual and welcome signs of recovery.”

Invasive Species
Book:The Animal Kingdom: A Very Short Introduction
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“Microplasticosis will be result of an invasive entity residing within all living things. What is this entity? Micro-plastics! They're here right now in all food chains, within all life and beyond. Will there be a cure? Sadly, no because it will be in everything and everywhere. We breathe them in. We ingest them. We cook with them. We drink them. We sleep with them & work with them each and every day. Sadly, in our race to embrace technology and a life of laziness & indifference we have created our own demise. They will change us and everything else in a way that we never thought possible. Microplasticosis...Remember the name because you, your family, your friends, and even your pets will have it in some form or another.”

EnvironmentQuote Of The DayAnthony T HincksPlasticPollutionHincksMicroplasticsMicroplasticosisInvasive Species
Author:Anthony T. Hincks
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“One final note on the biogeographic divisions of the world. The very feature that stunned Buffon and his contemporaries, and eventually led to the revolutionary insights that would define the field of biogeography—the evolutionary distinctiveness of different regions—is now waning in the face of the geographic and ecological advance of one species: our own. Few taxa and regions across the globe have escaped the biotic homogenization caused by humanity. Regional biotas are becoming increasingly similar as a result of two pervasive, anthropogenic activities—extinctions of endemic species and species introductions. In fact, these two homogenizing effects of humanity are interrelated, with species introductions being one of the major causes of extinctions of endemic species. Recall Gertrude Stein’s lament over the loss in distinctiveness of place—that “there is no there, there.” Tragically, this is becoming the sobering reality for the increasingly homogenized biosphere. While we may not be suffering from the muted, “ Silent Spring ” that Rachel Carson warned us about in 1962, the monotonous cacophony of coquís (frogs native to Puerto Rico) and cicada in exotic lands as isolated as Hawaii now drown out the euphonious, more subtle calls of honeycreepers and other birds native to the islands.”

ExtinctionRachel CarsonInvasive SpeciesGertrude SteinBiogeography
Book:Biogeography: A Very Short Introduction
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