View allAll Photos Tagged OVERPOPULATION
In the old city of Oxenfurt, the central square once gleamed with perfect stonework, but years of heavy trade had left it scarred. Deep holes now marked the plaza where once polished stones lay, worn down by carts, feet, and time.
This year's harvest had been generous. Fields outside the city offered up golden grain in abundance, and workers hauled the crops back into town, storing them in large wooden boxes. A new supervisor, eager to impress, rushed the process. Without care or planning, he pushed the workers to move faster, stacking the boxes hastily and unevenly.
The result was a dangerous mess — tall, unstable piles, ready to fall with the slightest shift.
Life continued around them. Locals still filled the square daily, selling fruit, bread, and goods from makeshift markets set up at their doorsteps. Children played, elders shuffled carefully.
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This is made for the "pick your poison" Category for the Summer Joust 2025.
The 3 Crits I used, are Overpopulation (15 or more minifigs), Unstable load, the boxes on the right that are about to collaps, and the weathered townsquare.
after more than a year inactive(due my father passing away) I can finally say I have finished a build.
Red-backed Shrike male Spring_w_1142
We had the coldest April on record, which held up a lot of the spring migrants, including our local Red-backed Shrikes or Neuntöter as they are called in German. I'm pleased that both male & female from last year arrived safely back from southern Africa at the weekend.
I managed a few snaps of them on the edge of the forest, close to where we live. This is the adult male, his colourful breeding plumage showing up well against the vibrant Spring foliage.
Red-backed Shrike male_w_7399
The genus name, Lanius , is derived from the Latin word for " butcher ", and some shrikes are also known as "butcher birds" because of their feeding habits.
The Red-backed Shrike bird (Lanius collurio) is a member of the shrike family Laniidae. The general colour of the males upper parts is reddish. It has a grey head and a typical shrike black stripe through the eye. Underparts are tinged pink and the tail has a black and white pattern similar to that of a wheatear. In the female and young Red-backed Shrikes, the upperparts are brown and vermiculated (wavy lines or markings). Underparts are buff and also vermiculated.
This 16 – 18 centimetres long migratory passerine eats large insects, small birds, voles and lizards. Like other shrikes the Red-backed Shrike hunts from prominent perches and impales corpses on thorns or barbed wire as a ‘larder’.
The Red-backed Shrike breeds in most of Europe and western Asia and winters in tropical Africa.
The Red-backed Shrikes range is decreasing and it is now probably extinct in Great Britain as a breeding bird, although it is frequent on migration.
The Red-backed Shrike is named as a protected bird in Britain under a Biodiversity Action Plan. The Red-backed Shrikes’ decline is due to overuse of pesticides and scrub clearance due to human overpopulation.
The Red-backed Shrike breeds in open cultivated country with hawthorn and dog rose.
Riverboat home with Pedalo.
Alternate living in East London. Overpopulation and lack of affordable housing in the capital.
LR2695
Ned Harris says "This one is an older adult. The red eye is the key to aging this individual."
It is perched on the rim of my birdbath In Tucson, Arizona, USA.
I’ve been wondering why all the new White-Winged Doves had disappeared. If this Adult Cooper’s Hawk eats one a day, that could explain it. It's part of the natural order of things. Predators keep the population of the prey animals in check. That enables more diversity and prevents starvation of unlimited over-population of the predator's prey.
All animals have their purpose in the natural order. That's why returning wolves to Yellowstone Park in Colorado and protecting them has brought back plants including trees that had been overgrazed by the uncontrolled deer overpopulation. That brought back animals such as beavers and the resulting aquatic habitats for aquarian flora and fauna.
The unnatural overpopulation by humans of the Tucson Valley and the concomitant overuse of subterranean water has unnaturally lowered the subterranean aquifer that was near the surface. That and the planet earth's warming climate have eliminated the year-round surface water in certain streams in the valley.
I fear the planet Earth's climate change and the current pandemic or another even more virulent pandemic may be the way the overpopulation of the planet Earth by humans will be brought under control. As a Father, Grandfather, and Great-Grandfather, I find that extremely depressing!
Humans wipe out forever entire species of other fauna on land and in the oceans every single day! And that is also very depressing!
IMG_0141.JPG
Asheville, North Carolina, on a rainy misty late afternoon.
The portion of rock wall on the far side of the creek (in the lower left quadrant of the photo) appears to be a remnant of an older bridge. The arched bridge apparently was built later, and then, in due course, abandoned but not demolished. Instead, a newer bridge was built over it (the one with the T-shaped supports visible at the right.) And, in the distance at the left, is yet another bridge over Hominy Creek. There's so much water here, that there's an overpopulation of bridges, lol.
An urban cityscape of Metro Manila in high contrast black and white.
My photographic images, and photo-transformed graphics are free to download under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs. Some Rights Reserved. Thank you for your continued fellowship in photographic imagery.
The Viking Age (793–1066 AD) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest and trading throughout Europe, and reached North America.
It followed the Migration Period and the Germanic Iron Age. The Viking Age applies not only to their homeland of Scandinavia, but to any place significantly settled by Scandinavians during the period.
The Scandinavians of the Viking Age are often referred to as Vikings as well as Norsemen, although few of them were Vikings in the technical sense.
Voyaging by sea from their homelands in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the Norse people settled in the British Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, the Baltic coast, and along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes in eastern Europe (where they were known as Varangians). They also briefly settled in Newfoundland, becoming the first Europeans to reach North America. The Norse-Gaels, Normans, Rus' people, Faroese and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies. The Vikings founded several kingdoms and earldoms in Europe: the kingdom of the Isles (Suðreyjar), Orkney (Norðreyjar), York (Jórvík) and the Danelaw (Danalǫg), Dublin (Dyflin), Normandy, and Kievan Rus' (Garðaríki).
The Norse homelands were also unified into larger kingdoms during the Viking Age, and the short-lived North Sea Empire included large swathes of Scandinavia and Britain.
Several things drove this expansion. The Vikings were drawn by the growth of wealthy towns and monasteries overseas, and weak kingdoms. They may also have been pushed to leave their homeland by overpopulation, lack of good farmland, and political strife arising from the unification of Norway.
The aggressive expansion of the Carolingian Empire and forced conversion of the neighboring Saxons to Christianity may also have been a factor.
Sailing innovations had allowed the Vikings to sail further and longer to begin with.
Information about the Viking Age is drawn largely from primary sources written by those the Vikings encountered, as well as archaeology, supplemented with secondary sources such as the Icelandic Sagas. wikipedia
Welcome to NEW HASHIMA (端島), an urban landscape born from the ashes of the once-thriving Hashima Island mining colony. In a world teetering on the edge of cybernetic revolution and rampant overpopulation, this neon-lit megalopolis emerges as a gritty testament to society’s desperate pursuit of innovative development.
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New Hashima at World of Lights Brickworld Chicago 2023. Enjoy and stay tuned for more Cyberpsychos!!!
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by Blake Foster(@blakefosterafol)
Sculpture in steel with mirrors called "Omega Centauri 3.9", made in 2018 by Tomás Saraceno (b. 1973) from Argentine. Omega Centauri is the name of the biggest star cluster in the Milky Way visible to the naked eye. The figure 3.9 denotes how much light the astronomical object emits from the Earth’s perspective.
Saraceno often introduce fabulous architectural utopias and questions the lifestyle of modern man. He is inspired by nature’s geometric shapes such as cobwebs, soap bubbles, and cloud formations. He is originally trained as an architect, and his biospheres can be viewed as models for alternative types of social spaces and habitats for people. Taking a metaphorical and poetic approach to serious issues such as Earth´s overpopulation, environment, and migration, Saraceno wishes to point to new potential relationships between culture and nature.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomás_Saraceno
A part of the Open-air Art exhibition at Ordrupgaard Art Museum.
ordrupgaard.dk/en/ (website also in English)
The diademed sifaka is an endangered species of sifaka endemic to certain rainforests in eastern Madagascar. Along with the indri, this species is one of the two largest living lemurs. It is often described as one of the most colorful and attractive of all the lemurs, having a long and silky coat.
This beautiful creature is readily distinguished from all the other lemur species by its characteristic markings and large physical size. The word ‘ diademed' in its name refers to the long white fur encircling its muzzle and covering its cheeks, forehead, and chin.
For a large lemur, the diademed sifaka is rather athletic, being capable of lateral aerial propulsion of up to 30 kilometers per hour, a result of muscular leg thrusting action pushing off from a vertical tree trunk. Don’t try that at home.
Its habitats are the eastern Madagascar lowland forests and parts of the Madagascar sub-humid forests. These two biomes have been designated as a Global 200 ecoregion, one of the world's most significant regions for conservation.
Unfortunately, the diademed sifaka is classified as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List and is listed in CITES Appendix I. Population estimates for the species range between 6,000 and 10,000 individuals.
The primary threat is - yep, you guessed that right - habitat reduction due to shifting cultivation by native peoples. This threat is also present even within designated national parks, which are sufficiently distant from the center of government, that enforcement of existing national laws protecting this species is problematic. Pressures of overpopulation in central and eastern Madagascar are causing many of the rural poor to seek subsistence by seizing whatever forest lands are available and undertaking slash-and-burn tactics as their initial step in a shifting cultivation system.
I love photographing wildlife, but unfortunately so often the back story is quite depressing.
Those eyes looking at me actually make me feel guilty of being a human. Like it’s saying: ‘Hey you, wtf are you doing? Stop messing with my home! Do I need to come down from this branch?!’
Marsel | squiver.com
The silhouette of a dead tree in the foreground can be thought as an ominous sign: the lifeless tree coexists in the very same frame with a wind turbine. There are a whole lot more of them (wind turbines) on the mountain peak “Katara” in Epirus, Greece. The most picturesque and unspoiled autumnal scenery could once be admired in lovely Epirus. Then, the wind turbines grew on the mountains…
One had earlier thought that renewable technologies would be environmentally-friendly, but we now comprehend that wind farms cause more environmenal impact than previously thought. The insatiable demand for energy is only a symptom of the disease: us, humans (there are almost eight billion of us).
The planet is facing a serious Overpopulation issue because he Earth's resources are finite. If our planet dies, how can mankind carry on with surviving? Should population control be thought as a blessing rather than curse…?!
The journey between connecting to the MRT lines and the LRT lines in Pasay, Manila, is a maze full of people competing for limited space both in the trains and moving between stations.
Manana Island, or Rabbit Island as it is more commonly known, is nicknamed not for it's shape, but because it was once used as a rabbit farm. Unfortunately, rabbits did what rabbits do best, and the overpopulation of the island began to destroy the ecosystem. Since this island is an important nesting ground for several Pacific Shore Birds, the DLNR had the rabbits removed, but the name has stuck.
Fishes are a symbol of prosperity, but dead fish means precisely the opposite. It results in environmental disasters. It is alarming that these events have become unusually frequent. Although many reasons contribute to this catastrophe, most of them are Man-made. The most common reasons are reduced oxygen in the water, which may be due to drought, high algae growth due to water vessel's fuel, overpopulation, or a sustained increase in water temperature, which is due to the Greenhouse effect. We must save our environment before it is too late. It is high time that we took action.
Welcome to NEW HASHIMA(端島) - Sector 08. Built on the remnants of the old Hashima Island mining colony after overpopulation forced consideration of innovative development options. Sector 08 is home to middle through upper-class citizens of NewHashima and holds many of the more beautiful structures found in the island mega-city.
Photo taken by: @GeneralJJ
I thought I'd try and identify the insects this recently fledged Red-Backed Shrike was hunting. I suspect it's one of the commonest Bumblebees here in SW Germany or probably in Europe, the Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris). Please correct me if I'm mistaken.
Learning to hunt is especially important particularly that very soon, perhaps in less that one week these first year shrikes will have to look for food all the way to their wintering grounds in South Africa!
The genus name, Lanius , is derived from the Latin word for " butcher ", and some shrikes are also known as "butcher birds" because of their feeding habits.
The Red-backed Shrike bird (Lanius collurio) is a member of the shrike family Laniidae. The general colour of the males upper parts is reddish. It has a grey head and a typical shrike black stripe through the eye. Underparts are tinged pink and the tail has a black and white pattern similar to that of a wheatear. In the female and young Red-backed Shrikes, the upperparts are brown and vermiculated (wavy lines or markings). Underparts are buff and also vermiculated.
This 16 – 18 centimetres long migratory passerine eats large insects, small birds, voles and lizards. Like other shrikes the Red-backed Shrike hunts from prominent perches and impales corpses on thorns or barbed wire as a ‘larder’.
The Red-backed Shrike breeds in most of Europe and western Asia and winters in tropical Africa.
The Red-backed Shrikes range is decreasing and it is now probably extinct in Great Britain as a breeding bird, although it is frequent on migration.
The Red-backed Shrike is named as a protected bird in Britain under a Biodiversity Action Plan. The Red-backed Shrikes’ decline is due to overuse of pesticides and scrub clearance due to human overpopulation.
The Red-backed Shrike breeds in open cultivated country with hawthorn and dog rose.
THE SIXTH EXTINCTION
Exerpts by Niles Eldredge
There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year — which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis — this “Sixth Extinction” — is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed.
Extinction in the past
The major global biotic turnovers were all caused by physical events that lay outside the normal climatic and other physical disturbances which species, and entire ecosystems, experience and survive. What caused them?
The previous mass extinctions were due to natural causes.
First major extinction (c. 440 mya): Climate change (relatively severe and sudden global cooling) seems to have been at work at the first of these-the end-Ordovician mass extinction that caused such pronounced change in marine life (little or no life existed on land at that time). 25% of families lost (a family may consist of a few to thousands of species).
Second major extinction (c. 370 mya): The next such event, near the end of the Devonian Period, may or may not have been the result of global climate change. 19% of families lost.
Third major Extinction (c. 245 mya): Scenarios explaining what happened at the greatest mass extinction event of them all (so far, at least!) at the end of the Permian Period have been complex amalgams of climate change perhaps rooted in plate tectonics movements. Very recently, however, evidence suggests that a bolide impact similar to the end-Cretaceous event may have been the cause. 54% of families lost.
Fourth major extinction (c. 210 mya): The event at the end of the Triassic Period, shortly after dinosaurs and mammals had first evolved, also remains difficult to pin down in terms of precise causes. 23% of families lost.
Fifth major extinction (c. 65 mya): Most famous, perhaps, was the most recent of these events at the end-Cretaceous. It wiped out the remaining terrestrial dinosaurs and marine ammonites, as well as many other species across the phylogenetic spectrum, in all habitats sampled from the fossil record. Consensus has emerged in the past decade that this event was caused by one (possibly multiple) collisions between Earth and an extraterrestrial bolide (probably cometary). Some geologists, however, point to the great volcanic event that produced the Deccan traps of India as part of the chain of physical events that disrupted ecosystems so severely that many species on land and sea rapidly succumbed to extinction. 17% of families lost.
How is The Sixth Extinction different from previous events?
The current mass extinction is caused by humans.
At first glance, the physically caused extinction events of the past might seem to have little or nothing to tell us about the current Sixth Extinction, which is a patently human-caused event. For there is little doubt that humans are the direct cause of ecosystem stress and species destruction in the modern world through such activities as:
-transformation of the landscape
-overexploitation of species
-pollution
-the introduction of alien species
And, because Homo sapiens is clearly a species of animal (however behaviorally and ecologically peculiar an animal), the Sixth Extinction would seem to be the first recorded global extinction event that has a biotic, rather than a physical, cause.
We are bringing about massive changes in the environment.
Yet, upon further reflection, human impact on the planet is a direct analogue of the Cretaceous cometary collision. Sixty-five million years ago that extraterrestrial impact — through its sheer explosive power, followed immediately by its injections of so much debris into the upper reaches of the atmosphere that global temperatures plummeted and, most critically, photosynthesis was severely inhibited — wreaked havoc on the living systems of Earth. That is precisely what human beings are doing to the planet right now: humans are causing vast physical changes on the planet.
What is the Sixth Extinction?
We can divide the Sixth Extinction into two discrete phases:
-Phase One began when the first modern humans began to disperse to different parts of the world about 100,000 years ago.
-Phase Two began about 10,000 years ago when humans turned to agriculture.
Humans began disrupting the environment as soon as they appeared on Earth.
The first phase began shortly after Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and the anatomically modern humans began migrating out of Africa and spreading throughout the world. Humans reached the middle east 90,000 years ago. They were in Europe starting around 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals, who had long lived in Europe, survived our arrival for less than 10,000 years, but then abruptly disappeared — victims, according to many paleoanthropologists, of our arrival through outright warfare or the more subtle, though potentially no less devastating effects, of being on the losing side of ecological competition.
Everywhere, shortly after modern humans arrived, many (especially, though by no means exclusively, the larger) native species typically became extinct. Humans were like bulls in a China shop:
-They disrupted ecosystems by overhunting game species, which never experienced contact with humans before.
-And perhaps they spread microbial disease-causing organisms as well.
The fossil record attests to human destruction of ecosystems:
-Wherever early humans migrated, other species became extinct.
-Humans arrived in large numbers in North America roughly 12,500 years ago-and sites revealing the butchering of mammoths, mastodons and extinct buffalo are well documented throughout the continent. The demise of the bulk of the La Brea tar pit Pleistocene fauna coincided with our arrival.
-The Caribbean lost several of its larger species when humans arrived some 8000 years ago.
-Extinction struck elements of the Australian megafauna much earlier-when humans arrived some 40,000 years ago. Madagascar-something of an anomaly, as humans only arrived there two thousand years ago-also fits the pattern well: the larger species (elephant birds, a species of hippo, plus larger lemurs) rapidly disappeared soon after humans arrived.
Indeed, only in places where earlier hominid species had lived (Africa, of course, but also most of Europe and Asia) did the fauna, already adapted to hominid presence, survive the first wave of the Sixth Extinction pretty much intact. The rest of the world’s species, which had never before encountered hominids in their local ecosystems, were as naively unwary as all but the most recently arrived species (such as Vermilion Flycatchers) of the Galapagos Islands remain to this day.
Why does the Sixth Extinction continue?
The invention of agriculture accelerated the pace of the Sixth Extinction.
Phase two of the Sixth Extinction began around 10,000 years ago with the invention of agriculture-perhaps first in the Natufian culture of the Middle East. Agriculture appears to have been invented several different times in various different places, and has, in the intervening years, spread around the entire globe.
Agriculture represents the single most profound ecological change in the entire 3.5 billion-year history of life. With its invention:
-Humans did not have to interact with other species for survival, and so could manipulate other species for their own use
-Humans did not have to adhere to the ecosystem’s carrying capacity, and so could overpopulate
-Humans do not live with nature but outside it.
Homo sapiens became the first species to stop living inside local ecosystems. All other species, including our ancestral hominid ancestors, all pre-agricultural humans, and remnant hunter-gatherer societies still extant exist as semi-isolated populations playing specific roles (i.e., have “niches”) in local ecosystems. This is not so with post-agricultural revolution humans, who in effect have stepped outside local ecosystems. Indeed, to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems - converting land to produce one or two food crops, with all other native plant species all now classified as unwanted “weeds” — and all but a few domesticated species of animals now considered as pests.
The total number of organisms within a species is limited by many factors-most crucial of which is the “carrying capacity” of the local ecosystem: given the energetic needs and energy-procuring adaptations of a given species, there are only so many squirrels, oak trees and hawks that can inhabit a given stretch of habitat. Agriculture had the effect of removing the natural local-ecosystem upper limit of the size of human populations. Though crops still fail regularly, and famine and disease still stalk the land, there is no doubt that agriculture in the main has had an enormous impact on human population size:
-Earth can’t sustain the trend in human population growth. It is reaching its limit in carrying capacity.
-Estimates vary, but range between 1 and 10 million people on earth 10,000 years ago.
-There are now over 6 billion people.
-The numbers continue to increase logarithmically — so that there will be 8 billion by 2020.
-There is presumably an upper limit to the carrying capacity of humans on earth — of the numbers that agriculture can support — and that number is usually estimated at between 13-15 billion, though some people think the ultimate numbers might be much higher.
This explosion of human population, especially in the post-Industrial Revolution years of the past two centuries, coupled with the unequal distribution and consumption of wealth on the planet, is the underlying cause of the Sixth Extinction. There is a vicious cycle:
-Overpopulation, invasive species, and overexploitation are fueling the extinction.
-More lands are cleared and more efficient production techniques (most recently engendered largely through genetic engineering) to feed the growing number of humans — and in response, the human population continues to expand.
-Higher fossil energy use is helping agriculture spread, further modifying the environment.
-Humans continue to fish (12 of the 13 major fisheries on the planet are now considered severely depleted) and harvest timber for building materials and just plain fuel, pollution, and soil erosion from agriculture creates dead zones in fisheries (as in the Gulf of Mexico)
-While the human Diaspora has meant the spread, as well, of alien species that more often than not thrive at the detriment of native species. For example, invasive species have contributed to 42% of all threatened and endangered species in the U.S.
Can conservation measures stop the Sixth Extinction?
Only 10% of the world’s species survived the third mass extinction. Will any survive this one?
The world’s ecosystems have been plunged into chaos, with some conservation biologists thinking that no system, not even the vast oceans, remains untouched by human presence. Conservation measures, sustainable development, and, ultimately, stabilization of human population numbers and consumption patterns seem to offer some hope that the Sixth Extinction will not develop to the extent of the third global extinction, some 245 mya, when 90% of the world’s species were lost.
Though it is true that life, so incredibly resilient, has always recovered (though after long lags) after major extinction spasms, it is only after whatever has caused the extinction event has dissipated. That cause, in the case of the Sixth Extinction, is ourselves — Homo sapiens. This means we can continue on the path to our own extinction, or, preferably, we modify our behavior toward the global ecosystem of which we are still very much a part. The latter must happen before the Sixth Extinction can be declared over, and life can once again rebound.
© 2005, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Educators have permission to reprint articles for classroom use; other users, please contact editor@actionbioscience.org for reprint permission. See reprint policy.
Paleontologist Dr. Niles Eldredge is the Curator-in-Chief of the permanent exhibition “Hall of Biodiversity” at the American Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor at the City University of New York. He has devoted his career to examining evolutionary theory through the fossil record, publishing his views in more than 160 scientific articles, reviews, and books. Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisisis his most recent book.
www.gc.cuny.edu/directories/faculty/E.htm
Articles and Resources on The Sixth Extinction
Consequences of the Sixth Extinction
The article “How Will Sixth Extinction Affect Evolution of Species?,” on our site, describes how the current loss of biodiversity will affect evolution in the long run.
www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/myers_knoll.html
BioScience Article
“Global Conservation of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.”
Habitat destruction has driven much of the current biodiversity extinction crisis, and it compromises the essential benefits, or ecosystem services that humans derive from functioning ecosystems. Securing both species and ecosystem services might be accomplished with common solutions. Yet it is unknown whether these two major conservation objectives coincide broadly enough worldwide to enable global strategies for both goals to gain synergy. In this November 2007, BioScience article, Will Turner and his colleagues assess the concordance between these two objectives, explore how the concordance varies across different regions, and examine the global potential for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services simultaneously. Read the abstract, or log in to purchase the full article.
caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1641/B571009
Biodiversity in the next millennium
American Museum of Natural History’s nationwide survey (undated) “reveals biodiversity crisis — the fastest mass extinction in Earth’s history.”
cbc.amnh.org/crisis/mncntnt.html
National Geographic
A 2/99 article about the Sixth Extinction, with views from several leading scientists.
www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/9902/fngm/index.html
Extinction through time
Find out about cycles of life and death and extinction patterns through time.
www.carleton.ca/Museum/extinction/tablecont.html
Is Humanity Suicidal?
Edward O. Wilson asks us why we stay on the course to our own self-destruction.
www.well.com/user/davidu/suicidal.html
A Field Guide to the Sixth Extinction
Niles Eldredge writes in 1999 about a few of the millions of plants and animals that won’t make it to the next millennium. The second link takes you to the site’s main page, entitled “Mass Extinction Underway — The World Wide Web’s most comprehensive source of information on the current mass extinction,” which provides links to numerous other resources.
www.well.com/user/davidu/fieldguide.html
www.well.com/user/davidu/extinction.html
Global Environment Outlook 3
The United Nations Environment Programme released this major report in May 2002. The report collated the thoughts of more than 1,000 contributors to assess the environmental impact of the last 30 years and outline policy ideas for the next three decades. It concluded that without action, the world may experience severe environmental problems within 30 years. The entire report can be read online or purchased online.
www.unep.org/geo/geo3/index.htm
Test your environmental knowledge
A 1999 survey showed that only one in three adult Americans had a passing understanding of the most pressing environmental issues. How do you measure up? Explanatory answers provided.
www.youthactionnet.org/quizzes/global_environment.cfm
World Atlas of Biodiversity — interactive map
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released the firstWorld Atlas of Biodiversityin August 2002. This link takes you to their online interactive map that helps you search for data about species/land/water loss, extinction over time, and human global development. Click on the “?” for a help page that explains how to interact with this map.
stort.unep-wcmc.org/imaps/gb2002/book/viewer.htm
The Sixth Great Extinction: A Status Report
Earth Policy Institute’s 2004 update on the status of loss of biodiversity.
www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update35.htm
Books
» The Biodiversity Crisis: Losing What Countsby The American Museum of Natural History (New Press, 2001).
» The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of of Life and the Future of Humankindby Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (Doubleday and Company, 1996).
Get Involved
The Biodiversity Project
You can choose a way to get involved in protecting biodiversity — from educational resources to community outreach.
www.biodiversityproject.org/html/resources/introduction.htm
The Nature Conservancy
Select a state from the menu and find out how you can become an environmental volunteer in that state.
Information for Action
“This website explains the environmental problems & offers solutions to fix them. There are many valuable resources available” including lobbying info, contacts database, & news updates.
Harmony
“Harmony Foundation is all about education for the environment. We offer publications and programs… ‘Building Sustainable Societies’ offers innovative training for educators and community group leaders to support local action on important environmental issues.”
Earth Talk: Environmental advocacy for professionals
This discussion community and learning network seeks to contribute to global ecological sustainability by enabling communication connections between those working on behalf of forests, water, and climate.
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Tiger Illustration by Dorothy Lathrop from
"Fierce-Face: The story of a tiger" by Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1936)
reflections @ Business District
Beware of Social Injustice!
The top 1.5% (58 million adults) own 47.5% of global capital.
No Musk!
For a few days in early June there is an overpopulation of mites on wild meadow flowers. Here I found a moth (Geometridae) trying to feed on the nectar of the flower so that it is not invaded by these arachnids (Trombidium) which I know in some cases are parasites of certain species of butterflies. You can see how the moth introduces its proboscis from one side of the flower. Madrid, June 2021
“The deeper the white man went into Africa, the faster the life flowed out of it, off the plains and out of the bush...vanishing in acres of trophies and hides and carcasses.” — Peter Beard
A landmark publication on Africa, The End of the Game combines Peter Beard’s salient text and remarkable photographs to document the overpopulation and starvation of tens of thousands of elephants, rhinos, and hippos in Kenya’s Tsavo lowlands and Uganda parklands in the 1960s and ’70s.
Researched and compiled over two decades, and updated several times since with new material, this is Beard’s essential book—a powerful and poignant testimony to the damage done by human intervention in Africa. His own images and writings are supplemented by historical photographs of, and quotations from, the enterprisers, explorers, missionaries, and big-game hunters whose quest for adventure and “progress” were to change the face of a continent: Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick Courteney Selous, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Philip Percival, J. A. Hunter, Ernest Hemingway, and J. H. Patterson.
This new edition includes an interview with conservationist Dr. Esmond Bradley Martin, as well as essays from previous editions by renowned writer Paul Theroux and ecologist Dr. Richard M. Laws, and contributions to the afterword by agronomist Dr. Norman Borlaug. Touching on such themes as distance from nature, density and stress, and loss of common sense, this seminal portrait is as resonant today, amid growing environmental crises, as it was a half century ago.
"Più l'uomo bianco si addentrava nell'Africa, più velocemente la vita scorreva fuori da esso, dalle pianure e dalla boscaglia... svanendo in acri di trofei, pelli e carcasse." — Peter Beard
Una pubblicazione fondamentale sull’Africa, The End of the Game combina il testo saliente di Peter Beard e le straordinarie fotografie per documentare la sovrappopolazione e la fame di decine di migliaia di elefanti, rinoceronti e ippopotami nelle pianure dello Tsavo in Kenya e nei parchi dell’Uganda negli anni ’60 e ’70.
Ricercato e compilato nel corso di due decenni, e aggiornato più volte da allora con nuovo materiale, questo è il libro essenziale di Beard: una testimonianza potente e toccante del danno arrecato dall’intervento umano in Africa. Le sue immagini e i suoi scritti sono integrati da fotografie storiche e citazioni di imprenditori, esploratori, missionari e cacciatori di grossa selvaggina la cui ricerca di avventura e "progresso" avrebbe cambiato il volto di un continente: Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick Courteney Selous, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Philip Percival, J. A. Hunter, Ernest Hemingway e J. H. Patterson.
Questa nuova edizione include un'intervista con l'ambientalista Dr. Esmond Bradley Martin, nonché saggi delle edizioni precedenti del famoso scrittore Paul Theroux e dell'ecologo Dr. Richard M. Laws, e contributi alla postfazione dell'agronomo Dr. Norman Borlaug. Toccando temi come la distanza dalla natura, la densità, lo stress e la perdita del buon senso, questo ritratto fondamentale è altrettanto risonante oggi, in mezzo alle crescenti crisi ambientali, quanto lo era mezzo secolo fa.
Road is closed, guards secured area, investigation is ongoing. Onlookers gathered to check the reason for all of this.
With my second entry in this year Summer Joust decided to go for "Pick your Poison" category.
Out of five criteria of this category I managed to fullfil all five. :D
- Overpopulation - there are fifteen gnomes in the scene;
- Beaten Track - the whole scene focus on track on the road left by some mysterious, giant monster;
- Going Alternative - no plant parts were used in the diorama;
- Unstable Load - there is a stack of packages on the beetle;
- Technically Useful - various Technic parts were used to create plants and mushrooms;
Who doesn't love a cute, cuddly kitten? That's why July 10 is National Kitten Day. Kittens are little balls of energy and love, but unfortunately, there is an issue of cat overpopulation, and many kittens never find loving homes and end up in shelters or on the streets. National Kitten Day raises awareness about the benefits of having kittens and encourages people to adopt them.
The painted lady is an irruptive migrant, meaning that it migrates independent of any seasonal or geographic patterns. Some evidence suggests that painted lady migrations may be linked to the El Niño climate pattern. In Mexico and some other regions, it appears that migration is sometimes related to overpopulation. The migrating populations that move from North Africa to Europe may include millions of butterflies, and migrating populations numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals are common. In spring, painted ladies fly low when migrating, usually only 6 to 12 feet above the ground. This makes them highly visible to butterfly watchers, but also rather susceptible to colliding with cars. At other times, evidence suggests that painted ladies migrate at such high altitudes that they are not observed at all, simply appearing in a new region unexpectedly.
A pair of street gatitos keep an eye on me as a Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec (FIT) northbound freight rolls into the small town of Hecelchakán, CAM. The Yucatán peninsula suffers from widespread stray cat and dog overpopulation problems, and you will come across many a furry friend whilst railfanning the FIT. Do not worry, these little ones vacated the ROW shortly after this photo was taken.
Kay Hassan’s work is unified by a continuous interest in themes of migration, dispossession, trade, overpopulation, waste and urban life. Throughout his work Hassan has sourced from his immediate urban environment, taking discarded and second-hand items and repositioning them through figurative representation, in order to highlight social, political, environmental and economic issues. He mines contemporary subjects within South Africa to speak to the realities of globalization that move far beyond the local.
Un macho adulto de Enallagma cyathigerum ha capturado a una hembra teneral de la misma especie y se la va a comer.
Hace tiempo, cuando publiqué por primera vez esta foto se originó el debate: ¿Depredación o canibalismo?
Surgieron dos posturas, hay quien consideró canibalismo porque eran la misma especie y quien, como yo, mantenía que era depredación porque el atacante no reconoce (por el color) a la víctima como de su misma especie.
Lo cierto es que la superpoblación de Enallagmas en esos dias era exagerada y faltaba alimento.
En la balsa del Puerto. Villena (Alicante) España.
An adult male of Enallagma cyathigerum has captured a teneral female of the same species and is going to eat it.
Some time ago, when I published this photo for the first time, the debate started: Predation or cannibalism?
Two positions emerged, some considered cannibalism because they were the same species and who, like me, maintained that it was predation because the attacker does not recognize (by color) the victim as being of the same species.
The truth is that the overpopulation of Enallagmas in those days was exaggerated and lacked food.
In the raft of the Port. Villena (Alicante) Spain.
Three fawns are all ears as they alert for their old Doe's 'hoof stamp' to signal that it's time to scram...
Common and abundant (unfortunately). Overpopulation in their herd probably means many will not survive next Winter. Habitat succession and changes no longer sustain...
The construction of high rise/high density housing on the 2012 Stratford Olympic Games site. So much for the provision of affordable housing for the locals, . . promises, promises !.
Viewed from Hackney Marsh, one of London's largest remaining open spaces.
*There are now plans from the labour council to build on the adjacent Leyton Marshes, a place dear to my heart.
LR2824
The owners of this eclectic café are great supporters of our attempts of combat animal overpopulation in Houston's East End, and they allow us to host many of our events there. The café has a stage for live music performances and a lovely outside patio and garden.
Singapore Skyline 360 degree Panoramic view.
My first attempt in creating a 360 and it turned out well.
Shot with Nikon D810 and 16mm f2.8 fisheye lens.
La superpoblació de coloms, com és el cas de la ciutat de Barcelona, segons els últims censos, amb uns 85.000 exemplars a l’àrea urbana, pot arribar a ser un problema de salut pública, ja que algunes aus poden patir malalties o ser portadores d’agents patògens que es transmeten a les persones (zoonosi).
Així mateix, els coloms degraden el patrimoni arquitectònic, el mobiliari urbà i la vegetació.
Hem de tenir en compte que els coloms, quan el seu control és correcte (població adequada, ubicació idònia i estat de salut bo) constitueixen un valor afegit a la bellesa de qualsevol ciutat.
Els seus vols i amanyacs adornen les places i els jardins i són motiu de distracció per a la canalla i d’assossec per a les persones grans.
Plaça de Catalunya de Barcelona (Barcelonès) CAT.
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Overpopulation of pigeons.
The overpopulation of pigeons, as is the case of the city of Barcelona, according to the latest censuses, with about 85,000 specimens in the urban area, can become a public health problem, as some birds can suffer from diseases or be carriers. of pathogens transmitted to humans (zoonosis).
Pigeons also degrade architectural heritage, street furniture and vegetation.
We must keep in mind that pigeons, when their control is correct (proper population, ideal location and good health) constitute an added value to the beauty of any city.
Their flights and trinkets adorn the squares and gardens and are a source of distraction for the kids and soothing for the elderly.
Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona (Barcelonès) CAT.
I’m thinking to myself, but not as mere thought. It’s more like I’m imagining my thoughts being written onto the paper, just like I’m doing now, except the pen and the paper are internal and they are usually aborted before they make it this far out into the external world (generally due to overpopulation). It’s a way for me to trick myself a little bit. A way to circumvent my ghosts. They are omnipotent, omnipresent, and they tell me things I cannot bear to tell myself. The problem is, the act of thinking in written words feels very insufficient. I’m editing and manipulating the words as they flow out of my consciousness, just as I am while writing them down. I try not to afford them too much attention as each sliver of thought glides one-by-one down the parallel pathways of the almighty cerebellum. The pen and paper that I create in my mind are still serving the same purpose as my ghosts - always there to guide me when I think a thought into existence. The feeling is the same, it’s just the representation of the feeling that changes. Maybe this is why I’ve always written so compulsively and so often. The watchful gaze of the watchers. The haunting of my unwritten thoughts. I’m always tricking myself into believing I am free when I spill all of this out into existence.
The Viking Age (793–1066 AD) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe, and reached North America.
It followed the Migration Period and the Germanic Iron Age.[7] The Viking Age applies not only to their homeland of Scandinavia, but to any place significantly settled by Scandinavians during the period.[3] The Scandinavians of the Viking Age are often referred to as Vikings as well as Norsemen, although few of them were Vikings in the technical sense.
Voyaging by sea from their homelands in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the Norse people settled in the British Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, the Baltic coast, and along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes in eastern Europe, where they were also known as Varangians. They also briefly settled in Newfoundland, becoming the first Europeans to reach North America. The Norse-Gaels, Normans, Rus' people, Faroese and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies.
The Vikings founded several kingdoms and earldoms in Europe: the kingdom of the Isles (Suðreyjar), Orkney (Norðreyjar), York (Jórvík) and the Danelaw (Danalǫg), Dublin (Dyflin), Normandy, and Kievan Rus' (Garðaríki). The Norse homelands were also unified into larger kingdoms during the Viking Age, and the short-lived North Sea Empire included large swathes of Scandinavia and Britain.
Several things drove this expansion. The Vikings were drawn by the growth of wealthy towns and monasteries overseas, and weak kingdoms. They may also have been pushed to leave their homeland by overpopulation, lack of good farmland, and political strife arising from the unification of Norway. The aggressive expansion of the Carolingian Empire and forced conversion of the neighboring Saxons to Christianity may also have been a factor.
Sailing innovations had allowed the Vikings to sail further and longer to begin with.
Information about the Viking Age is drawn largely from primary sources written by those the Vikings encountered, as well as archaeology, supplemented with secondary sources such as the Icelandic Sagas.
For the stranded witch or wizard... or your average everyday serf.
Built for the medieval transportation "Pick Your Poison" category of the Summer Joust. Poisons include: Overpopulation (15 minifigures in and around), Unstable Load (wine bottles, various figs, really the whole wagon is unstable) and Beaten Track (a rocky detour that has now halted the wagon in its tracks)
Thanks to Oshi for the edit.
I had this idea early on, but I opted for something simple. I wasn't in the mood for a big landscape, and I've been enjoying the classic castle aesthetic.
Additionally, first time using a real camera instead of smartphone, I see why people use them. :)
Thanks to @Syrdarian for the help on the photo editing !
Jaylon Clawthorne, the eldest son of Duke Clawthorne and Hand of the Queen of Valmirion, made frequent journeys between Roncenoire and Ashkelon. To save time, he chose to take a more perilous route that led through a canyon in the territory of House Valor. This canyon was infamous for being filled with the failed results of human reincarnation experiments… undead creatures forever wandering in search of fresh meat.
The only way through was a series of unstable wooden boardwalks suspended above the chasm. The convoy was escorted by a patrol from House Valor, familiar with the terrain, yet the crossing remained dangerously unpredictable. The wood groaned under the weight of the horses, and every step felt like a gamble.
Was choosing the quicker path truly the wisest decision ?
This MOC was built for the “Pick Your Poison” category.
Here are the three constraints I chose:
Overpopulation – more than 15 minifigures
Beaten Track – footprints and signs of passage scattered throughout
Unstable Load – the wooden boards beneath the wagon have just given way under its weight