goodcopbearcop: Whooping Crane (Grus americana) The whooping…
Saturday, June 18th, 2016Whooping Crane (Grus americana)
The whooping crane is currently trying to make a comeback. In the 1940s there were 21 birds left in a single flock. Thanks to recovery efforts and wetlands restorations, there are currently around 600 whooping cranes today with over 400 individuals in the wild, though their futures remains uncertain.
Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park, FL
I remember as a kid when I first got into birds how sad it made me to read about the horrifically low numbers of whooping cranes. I was grief-stricken by the apparently certain knowledge that they were doomed, that their extinction was something I was powerless to avert.
It’s only now looking back that I realize how my own sense of personal loss was wrapped up in my response. How the birds I encountered while tramping around the chaparral functioned as a surrogate family at a time when my own family was coming apart.
I’m glad the cranes are doing better. I hope they make it.
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“[W]e know of 2 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms, and we can give them each a…”
Sunday, May 3rd, 2015“
[W]e know of 2 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms, and we can give them each a scientific name and a diagnostic description. We know, perhaps generously, more than just a little bit of the anatomy in no more than 10 per cent. We have done thorough studies in fewer than one-tenth of 1 per cent. And the total number of species on Earth is unknown to the nearest order of magnitude.
The invertebrates, including the insects, are clearly undescribed. And now that we’re approaching the microbial world – and we at last have the tools for the rapid identification of species – we could find ourselves in a world of tens of millions of species. That’s a big question that we haven’t even begun to get an answer for: how many species of microorganisms are there?
Now, this is not stamp collecting. What we need is experts totally devoting their research to everything they can find out about every species, in a community of scientists who appreciate that every fact counts…everything new you learn about any species in any group is worth publishing somewhere. It might be a clue down the line for anybody, whether it’s for a molecular geneticist or a developmental biologist or a toxicologist…
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– Edward O. Wilson, The next step in saving the planet: E O Wilson and Sean Carroll in conversation
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