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Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Conservationist not conservative, though maybe we could confuse trump and trick him into helping?

We're a rag tag bunch anyway, so wouldn't be that odd really.
-The tree huggers. Hippie obstructionists.
-The sportsmen. Stetson wearing trophie hunters.
-The capitalists. Comodifying wildlife and mountain tops. For example patagonia trying to be spokesman for the bear ears fight.
-The soccer moms. Save the wales! Cute fuzzies! :3 :(
-The natives. Despite your belief that it was a past event, colonial encroachment is still going on and Capital is still corrupting.
-etc.

The opposition
The drill-baby-drills love to fein outrage at the obstructionist's hypocracy: Driving a car to the pipeline protest? That's a fail. We need to extract more so that the third world can enjoy modernity too. *guzzles

The reason
Human rights. DBD claims this too. We have to let others burn down the forest to farm.
Climate change, genetic and behavioral library, harmonizing with the spirit. This isn't just about keeping parks for primium selfie backdrops. Biodiversity and cultural diversity are insurance against catastrophy. Being excellent to one another is god's will.

The means
Sierra club, government, private land trusts. Earth Liberation Front. Internet forums?

What's your angle?

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Levitate
Sep 30, 2005

randy newman voice

YOU'VE GOT A LAFRENIÈRE IN ME
I like to have places to go away from other people and that aren't full of poo poo left by other people and that also aren't privately owned by other people so they can hoard their wealth and land/property etc.

I feel like most of the resource harvesting people want to do these days from public areas probably isn't necessary from a "we need the products" perspective and is more about making money and paying lip service to providing jobs (though lol if you think the companies involved in resource harvesting give a poo poo about their employees and would gladly have robots do all the work if it was possible).

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
I just donated to Trout Unlimited. http://www.tu.org Teaming up with sportsmen against mineral development. Is this hypocritical since I used a computer device made out of mined minerals to do so? Probably! Who cares! Honor is reserved for dealing with other humans, not for the cold machinations of money.

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

I'm going to create a clothing and accessory line featuring photos I took during my time working at a wildlife rehabilitation center in Belize and all profits from sales will go to that particular organization. I don't have a projected launch date at this time, however.

Belize is super awesome in that it has over 30% of it's land set aside as parks or protected areas. But it's also really small, you can drive the longest distance of the country in about 6 hours, so all that protected forest is pretty piddly in the global scheme of things. But just imagine how much of the world would be pristine if every country did that. It doesn't even need to be the North American Model, either. There's other ways of conserving landscapes without completely banning human use. Often forcing the NAM in developing countries creates local conflict and giving up on traditionally sustainable practices, resulting in unrest and illegal activities when desperate people are trying to support their families and some rich Westerners come in and tell them to knock it off because the land is pretty and they're all just stupid savages wrecking their favourite vacation spot.

You can't just go in and tell people making a living off the land that they have to stop and find something else when there is nothing else, there needs to be a balance struck. I did some studies in school about successful alternative park models, I think it's possible to sometimes find a balance between conservation and human use, but it takes really careful planning. I'll go digging through old files and find some good examples.

megalodong
Mar 11, 2008

I live in New Zealand, known for having more sheep than people, hobbits, rugby and probably other things too?

We also market ourselves as being clean and green despite being anything but.

72% of our freshwater fish are at risk of, or threatened with extinction, 30% of our plants and invertebrates as well.

Most of our rivers aren't swimmable any more due to pollution from high intensity dairy farming. Our government announced they would fix this, by simply changing the standards so that what was once "wadeable" is now "swimmable" and what was once a "B" rank is now an "A".

30% of our country is classed as conservation land, with varying levels of protection. One of these classifications is what's known as "stewardship land", which is basically held by the government but not really actively looked after. It lacks the management plans and legal status of things like national parks, and most importantly, it can be "swapped" for private land if there's a "net benefit".

In practice this means private developers are constantly trying to get bits of pristine but less-protected conservation land swapped with land that they either own or lease from the public under various nebulous claims of "net benefit". To quote Forest and Bird about a recent swap:

quote:

The proposed swap could not be described as a land exchange. A foreign-controlled company would be given a freehold on publicly owned land with high conservation value in return for giving up a lease on land under no conservation threat and which is already owned by the New Zealand public.

A huge portion of our water that isn't used up on farm irrigation is instead bottled up and sold overseas by companies that don't pay anything to take it, instead simply buying water permits from farmers that sell them for in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Tourism is near breaking point. 100000+ people walk the tongariro alpine crossing per year now. An average day has more than 600 people go over it, with all the wonderful rubbish left behind that you'd expect. Tourism operators keep trying to get more concessions to helicoptor people into remote areas, build private lodges (turning public land into private land that no one else can use) and just get more and more people using their services despite the cost to the environment from things like fragile alpine moss being trampled and such.


On the plus side, we still have a strong conservation community here, due to a long tradition of trampers and hunters and a general public attraction to the whole "100% pure NZ" ideal. Federated Mountain Clubs and Forest and Bird campaign constantly and have had a number of wins in the courts, and famously got called "hysterical" by our ex-PM when they released leaked documents showed the government was going to allow mining in a number of national parks that contained endangered trees, native frogs and so on. Then it turned out that oh yes, that was actually true, and the government had to drop the whole thing due to public outcry.

We, unfortunately, don't have a strong protest culture here. Lots of the usual "they're all bums, why aren't they looking for a job instead of pissing off people all day" rhetoric. Our national indigenous population, the Maori, are much better at it, with Hikois about lots of things. They also have a number of rights under the Treaty of Waitangi which help to strengthen conservation stuff, as they need to be consulted for many things, and their culture has a spiritual link to the land which means they tend to oppose mining etc. as from their point of view you're drilling into their ancestor.

DOC (department of conservation) is severely under-funded, but at least we don't have a prime minister who flatout killed funding to it. Or whatever exactly it is Trump did.

And Peter Thiel is a NZ citizen because he donated some money to local startups which is just loving lol.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Many thanks for the excellent posts. Good to hear about non US efforts.

For the US folks- We've only got a few days left to submit a public comment related to bears ears, deadline is May 26th. The other national monuments we have until July 10th

https://www.federalregister.gov/doc...-public-comment

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

Okay, I totally forgot I was going to find some cool examples of conservation using a different model than the North American model of shutting down all human use. Here's a couple a found during my research.

Alimentos Nutrinaturales Sociedad Anónima
A group of women in Guatemala fighting to protect the rainforest where Maya Nuts grow. The Maya Nut tree requires mature forest to grow and the nuts are harvested after falling from the tree. No damage done and an important local food source, but was at serious risk of being wiped out due to logging and agricultural land conversion. The original team has since expanded their operation to more communities and also work with the Guatemalan government to provide a school lunch program and teach kids about the nutritional value of the nut compared to crops, hoping to inspire future community leaders to carry on their work.
http://www.equatorinitiative.org/images/stories/com_winners/casestudy/case_1348067785.pdf

Bunaken Concerned Citizen’s Forum
This is a group working with the National Park Advisory Board that represents 30,000 residents in 22 communities located within the park. They have collectively partitioned the park into different land use participatory regions. Nature conservation zones are completely protected from resource use and only scientific pursuits and conservation initiatives are permitted. Utilization zones allow for tourism only. Support zones allow traditional livelihoods and natural resources use by local communities, which facilitates the ongoing protection of the other zones. Defying zone usage rules results in heavy fines and jail time, and high impact intrusive fishing practices such as cyanide and dynamite are completely banned.
http://www.dive-the-world.com/reefs-and-parks-indonesia-bunaken-national-park.php

Wechiau Community Hippo Sanctuary
Similar to the Maya Nut operations, this is a Shea Nut operation in Ghana. Also requiring mature forests, the nut is also harvested with no need for habitat destruction. The women in the community prepare the shea nuts into shea butter which then gets sold on an international market, generating income for the community. The resulting habitat protection has ensured that the nearby hippo population, which is only one of two remaining in Ghana, can thrive and there is also a thriving ecotourism industry for the community. They have recently been able to open an ecolodge for tourists and build a school for the kids in the community. Supplemental funding for infrastructure projects is raised by the Calgary Zoo, which I happen to work at so this place is kind of special to me. We sell the shea butter in our gift shops and it sells crazy well. It feels good to support Wechiau like that. :3:
http://www.ghanahippos.com/

distortion park
Apr 25, 2011


I'm from the UK, where we have almost zero real wilderness but some vary nice national parks. The main issues imo are overuse in some areas, access to the countryside for the less well off, and some urban areas continued refusal to build densely. Also the vast number of golf courses which somehow count as non-developed land.


If I run for a political position my sole policy will be reclassifying golf courses as brownfield land. Protects the countryside and solves the housing crisis in one go!

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

Wildlife conservation has been a local hot topic here this summer due to one single bear known as Bear 148. She likes the wildlife corridor between Canmore and Banff, but seeing as how this is surrounded by heavy traffic due to thousands of people living recreational lifestyles in the area, she's been having daily encounters with people on foot, pushing strollers, riding bikes, walking dogs. She's charged at people, chased people, and has been shown to be really aggressive around people with dogs. In early July she was trapped and released in Banff National Park but showed up back in Canmore about a week later. A couple of days ago she was trapped again and relocated 450km away, north of Kakwa Provincial Wildland Park.

A lot of people who never cared about anything like this have been frothing at the mouth in anger over this decision. And I can see their point, people are intruding on bear habitat, and Canmore is famous for people using wildlife corridors for recreation even though it's prohibited. It would be great if we didn't have to 'manage' wildlife in the interest of public safety. But in order to ensure this bear isn't euthanized because it killed someone's baby or something, she's been relocated to a place where human interaction will be at a minimum. If it saves her life, I support it. Grizzlies in Alberta are a threatened population, and don't often mix with the BC population due to geographic barriers such as the continental divide which is pretty much a solid chain of impassable mountains stretching thousands of kilometers. There are some passes and valleys but these are often occupied by highways and such. So saving as many female bears as possible on this side of the divide is critical.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Bless you, Bear 148

distortion park
Apr 25, 2011


Are the Alberta grizzlies genetically distinct from other ones, or is it a recent divide?

SulfurMonoxideCute
Feb 9, 2008

I was under direct orders not to die
🐵❌💀

pointsofdata posted:

Are the Alberta grizzlies genetically distinct from other ones, or is it a recent divide?

I looked into it and I was slightly mistaken, it appears that it's the Rocky Mountain Trench that splits the populations, not the Continental Divide. So the Rocky Mountain grizzly population includes southeastern BC, southwestern Alberta, and northern Montana. The different populations is quite a recent thing, when European settlers decimated the grizzly population.




Even more recently there was loss of connectivity with the building of highways, and some of this was reversed with the building of wildlife overpasses and underpasses in national and provincial parks, but these don't exist on every highway and populations that have been recently fragmented in BC, such as the Purcell population, are in steady decline now. Highway 3 which runs east/west has fragmented several populations and there's no over/underpasses on it because it's mostly out of park territory.



Epitope posted:

Bless you, Bear 148

She's a cutie and she might be pregnant! Hopefully we'll find out next spring if she's still being closely monitored and not dead.



While looking for a good photo of her I found this map of her movements in one week last June. She is collared so they can track her.



It's neat to see it because I've been on foot in so many of those locations, day and night. I was on the same trail as the points around the blue 1 west of Banff on June 4th, there was a bear warning, it was likely her. Didn't see her though.

If you saw my "Look at this awesome bear" thread from a while back, you might be interested to know that her father is Bear 122 aka The Boss.

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distortion park
Apr 25, 2011


I did the seven sisters walk yesterday from exceat (overrated, don't bother), but did read something interesting on the noticeboard. After the south downs society or whatever acquired the land at first they just let it grow wild. Within a few decades it was covered in thick scrub and bush despite the exposed position and they decided they didn't like it. So now they conserve the land by grazing and mowing it. I knew they did that Un the peak district but was surprised it happened here. Tbh the route would be improved by some thick coastal bush, that sort of thing is rare in England unlike an open mowed strip of grass.

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