From "Can You Save One Species by Annoying Another? In 'Eco-Hack!,' the filmmakers Brett Marty and Josh Izenberg document a conservation biologist’s novel strategy for rescuing the desert tortoise: booby traps" (The New Yorker). I'm quoting filmmaker Brett Marty in the post title and conservation biologist Tim Shields in the text of the post.
On behalf of the tortoises, they are tormenting the ravens. The "booby-traps" include "laser emitters on terrestrial rovers" and "3-D-printed fake tortoises laced with artificial grape flavoring." There are also drones that spray oil on the ravens' eggs, which I wouldn't call a "booby-trap." It's not a trap. The animal doesn't fall for it. It's a simple attack on the unborn. But it's okay — isn't it? — because ravens bad, tortoises good. And are we to have fun watching men having fun carrying out this anti-bird agenda? Does the pro-tortoise purpose give license?
I was interested in the term "booby-trap," especially with regard to a bird, because a booby is a type of bird. From Wikipedia:
The Spanish word bobo translates to "stupid, daft, naïve, simple, fool, idiot, clown, funny man, one who is easily cheated" and similar pejorative terms....
In approximately 1590, the word began appearing in the English language as booby, meaning "stupid person, slow bird". The seabird in question was the genus Sula, with their common name being boobies. These birds have large flat feet and wide wingspans for marine habitats but are clumsy and slow on shore making them easy to catch. The birds are also known for landing aboard seagoing vessels, whereupon they have been eaten by the crew....
The phrase booby trap originally applied to schoolboy pranks, but took on its more sinister connotation during World War I. The term "booby trap" gives rise to the idea that an individual with the misfortune to be caught in the trap does so because the individual is a "booby," or that an individual who is caught in the trap thereby becomes a "booby."
We're not just trapping the thing caught. We are regarding it as stupid for falling into the trap. But ravens aren't boobies. They are unusually smart. The tortoise protectors are trying to teach the ravens not to think of tortoises as easy prey. We'll see what the ravens figure out.
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I suspect they're going to be surprised at how quickly they are out-thought by the ravens. The ravens are going to learn that they are being attacked, not just distracted. People just don't seem to learn that when you fool with another's young, you are threatening the survival of their species and arousing atavistic instincts that may otherwise remain buried.
Progressives are so set on maximizing fascistic behavior that they are now using violence and intimidation against the natural world. Unsatisfied with meddling in the lives of other humans they are picking the winners and losers of the wild, heedless of the damage they do trying to “fix” the world. Fucking psychopathic narcissists.
"On behalf of the tortoises, they are tormenting the ravens."
More like attempting to manipulate. It's worked so well on people. I think they underestimate the ravens.
I have always liked the term booby hatch.
But it's okay — isn't it?
Just change ravens to Republicans and tortoises to Democrats and this fits with the rest of the news cycle.
Humans have selectively supported and exterminated various species for a very long time. We very nearly eliminated wolves and bison per support for domestic cows and sheep, nearly wiped out alligators, and did eliminate the Passenger Pigeon (by transforming habitats, hunting, and forcing small flocks on a species that required massive flocks for breeding).
The old and simple solution would be to put a bounty on each raven in the tortoise habitat and let hunters have at 'em. But guns, but hunting, but too direct and obvious...no research grant or new technology required...humans are superb hunters.
James Tate The Blue Booby, better than wiki
Yeah... No. I stand up with the turtles. Endangered species versus flying killers. Here's David Attenborough describing a baby sea turtle's plight at the beaks of seagulls. Flying rat bastards the lot of them.
https://youtu.be/MB5p2B3ytHw
I worked in the environmental field for much of my career. One thing I'm pretty confident of, we jut don't know enough about unintended consequences to go messing about in ecosystems - ESPECIALLY when idiots try to introduce a new specie.
I wonder if The New Yorker has any clue how ironic their title is ("Can You Save One Species by Annoying Another?")?
Booby trap is also slang for bra or titsling.
I
Hawks made a nest in one of our pines a few months ago. Every afternoon, one of the hawks would fly and stand watch atop another of our pines about 50 yards away. It would just sit there, motionless, unflinching, even when the ravens would strafe him/her multiple times before handing the baton to another raven. And so on. In a typical hour, I would watch three dozen strafing runs (that began from about 100 feet away), each missing the hawk by no more than a few inches. Were they just screwing with the hawks?
As a bona fide lover of ravens, heritage and observation, it's pretty clear that ravens can be real jerks and their population is fairly robust again. Irritating them is a great approach since much of what they do involves intentionally irritating others.
That said they are really smart and amazing aerial acrobatics, smart enough to know it too. Watching them in a dogfight with a hawk is amazing. Keeping them from the tortoises is like protecting the nerds from the bullies.
Another enviro-hack is to use wind turbines to kill off migratory birds. Bonus, wind farms also displace agricultural land.
"We just have to change the cost-benefit ratio inside the bird’s head, so that it chooses somewhere different, away from tortoise habitat...."
"Tortoise habitat"? You mean where the climate change zealots are tearing up the land to put in solar panels?
So this is just about abortion for ravens, right? And it’s OK because it’s just a clump of cell, right?
Don't fuck with Mother Nature.
Somewhere more than one-hundred miles north of the Coachella Valley in a dusty high-desert plain where the nearest neighbor is a bombing range on an ancient dry lake, a large handsome desert tortoise pushed his way out of his burrow. Small cracks opened in the baked and brittle desert floor, then joined and grew larger as the tortoise pushed farther up, claws breaking the surface, swiping sideways through the rocky soil in a slow-motion breast stroke. His paddle-like paws easily rolled huge boulders aside and they tumbled down with rocks and sand, burying creosote plants and sending their pungent petrol scent into the dusty air. The two enormous front paws swept out again, revealing part of a half-moon shaped burrow, maybe fifteen-hundred yards across or more. And as the surrounding arroyos filled up with displaced dirt the enormous head of the giant tortoise thrust confidently into the still and stifling Mojave air, blinking and sniffing, turning and stretching. He paused and gracefully scanned the horizon, taking in the smells and sounds, eyes adjusting to the blinding sunlight coming straight down. He gently pulled back his six-ton head and immediately returned to moving cubic yards of soil, swiping and pushing, raking and climbing, and his shell began to lift a no-name hill almost a mile to the east as he pawed his way out of the Earth and pushed to his feet. The hill and the cinder cone atop it slid off his shell as if shoveled onto the desert floor, where it dammed a seasonal dry creek and set off seismometers around the world.
from Giant Desert Tortoise
Extinction is a part of nature, and essential to evolution.
How does the Left determine which animals are supposed to go extinct and which ones aren't?
Want to save those turtles? Have a celebrity chef come up with a tasty recipe using them and people will begin raising them on farms. Does anybody think that cows will ever become extinct?
Thanks RHH, enjoyed the poem.
Technological gizmos can produce a temporal impact, but in the long run my money is on the ravens.
Ravens are a destructive lot. They ravage other species of birds. I'll save my tears.
Paint the tortoises with the words:
"Never more"
Ravens and crows are super-smart and will soon figure out whether ts worth the effort.
The ravens aren't endangered and are an invasive species in the turtles' environment. Why not just kill the ravens?
Ravens and Tortoises LIVING TOGETHER!!!!1!!11!!!!111111!!
"Ravens and crows are super-smart and will soon figure out whether it's worth the effort."
Birds are using anti-bird spikes to protect their nests, a Netherlands team has found. A research team has found birds' nests around Europe that contain strips of anti-bird metal spikes. They say birds seem to be protecting their nests with devices people use to shoo birds away.
Source: NPR
"On behalf of the tortoises, they are tormenting the ravens."
As a Bengals fan, tormenting the Ravens is a good thing.
How many decades can they keep this up?
"It's a simple attack on the unborn. But it's okay — isn't it?"
Sure. They're just birds.
They have taken the role of God here on Earth. They know what's best for every living thing, just ask them.
Why can't people leave the wildlife alone? They've been here a lot longer than us. Let them work it out between themselves.
Besides. Ravens are a lot smarter than environmental activists.
The Marines, who like to drive big machines and blow stuff up in the US deserts, in 2016 started trying to save desert tortoises by moving 1000 or more of them out of a field exercise zone, to a safer area just a short plane flight away. They stopped after moving only about 550, because the more numerous coyotes in the tortoise release area ate 90 of them. The mortality rate was too high. The Marines since then, IIRC, just have a tortoise hunt before their exercises, and corral the beasts under guard until the practice fighting is over. Then they let the tortoises get back to doing whatever they do.
And as an aside, Peter Sellers starred in a wonderfully sad movie called "The Bobo." Worth a watch.
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