Pests have a sense of smell and peppermints, thymes and wormwoods are excellent players in keeping pests at bay.
Wormwood is the champion!
Basils and Dill deter the tomato horn worm.
Put in some trap crops or let a few of the trap crops grow. Poke weed, old mustards, cleome etc..
Plants, especially herbs, have essential oil’s which decimate viral infections, eliminate fungal and bacterial issues in humans as well as other plants. Rosemary and fennel can be dried and sprinkled to prevent slugs and snails.
Lavender, Oregano and Rosemary are particularly high in antibacterial and anti-fungal properties and act as strong remedies and preventives.
Tools and items to remove or treat the offending pests:
Dipel (Bt)
Dr Bronners peppermint soap in a 16oz. spray bottle. 3 teaspoons of soap per bottle and the rest water.
Spinosad
(Permethrin is synthetic and modeled after chrysanthemums which have insecticidal properties)
Neem oil
Diatomaceous earth
(DE)
Hand removing
Beneficial predators are:
Wasps
Lizards
Snakes
Spiders
Hornets
Ladybugs
Dragon flies
The program will provide an overview and what to do about the 4 basic pests in the garden or on the farm: sucking pests, chewing pests, boring pests, and human pests. Join farmer, trainer, soil alchemist, and worm whisperer Maurice Small as he digs deep on pest control and integrated pest management.
Davidson Seamount, located 80 miles southwest of Monterey, California, was first mapped in 1933 and was the first undersea feature to be characterized as a “seamount.“ Roughly 200,000 seamounts exist throughout the world, but relatively few have been explored and protected. Since the first biological expedition to Davidson Seamount in 2002, it has been globally recognized as one of the best studied and most protected seamounts.
Learn about some of the cool findings made in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and how this protected seamount teaches us about unique geologic formations deep in the ocean that contribute to ecological quality and ocean productivity.
New species of limu (algae) were recently discovered in the coral reef twilight zone of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Martensia lauhiekoeloa (first image) and Martensia abbottiae (second image) received Hawaiian names as their formal scientific species descriptions.
Happy #EarthDay! Our Planet gives us so much: Fresh air! Farmable soil! Food! Fresh water! And countless other irreplaceable natural benefits. Let’s protect our planet and the resources that make it a place we can all call home. ❤️ Illustrations from my book What’s Inside a Flower? . . . . . #scicomm #scicommunity #scienceclass #scienceforkids #ecology #biodiversity #garden #botanicalillustration #botanicalart https://www.instagram.com/p/CcqcNEBpQMi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
illustration from my book: What’s Inside a Flower? I talk about all of a plants life stages- from seed to bloom to food! . . . . #rachelignotofsky #whatsinsideaflower #childrensbookillustration #scicomm #scienceforkids #scienceclass #botanicalart #botanicalillustration #biodiversity #ecology #botany #sciart #gardening #gardeningforkids #gardenlife #easterbasket #easterbasketideas https://www.instagram.com/p/CbvUmh4PdZc/?utm_medium=tumblr
Ecosystem of the Siberian Taiga❄️ A taiga is a snowy coniferous forest found near tundras of Asia and North America. This illustration is from my book The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth . . . #rachelignotofsky #ecosystems #biodiversity #ecology #taiga #snowforest https://www.instagram.com/rachelignotofsky/p/CYcnxUmP_kk/?utm_medium=tumblr
Just the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem in a fish bowl to calm your nerves . ❤️ Illustration from my book The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth art print for sale in my shop! Link in bio ❤️ . . . . #ecosystems #planetearth #rachelignotofsky #ecology #biodiversity
Our lab group recently published a paper on the patterns of Philippine reef fish assemblages, and its implications towards management.
We found that surveyed reef sites may hold a number of rare or restricted-ranged species, but were mostly dominated by a few highly abundant species. In addition, most of these dominant species were small-bodied fishes (unlike the school of large-bodied bigeye trevally (Caranx sexfasciatus) you see in the photo above; a rare sight in our surveyed reefs)—an indication of the intense fishing pressure (which typically targets and depletes populations of large-bodied fishes) throughout most coastal areas of the country.
Read more about Philippine reef fish assemblages and their management implications on my other, wordier blog!
Recently, our lab group published a paper on the current status of reef fish species diversity in the Philippines, based on field data collected from 2012-2013.
Our main findings were that: (1) many places throughout the Philippines were still had a lot of reef fish species, but exhibited low fish abundance and biomass; (2) most reef fish species throughout the country exhibited low abundances and/or restricted distributions; (3) the few species that exhibited high abundance and wide distributions were small-bodied generalists; and (4) most large-bodied, carnivorous(and commercially-important!) species had low abundances and restricted distributions.
Read more about the current status of Philippine reef fish on my other, wordier blog!
We’re proud to share an historic announcement - the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) have assumed full management of the Bison Range!
Formerly known as the National Bison Range, the land was restored to the Tribes by the Montana Water Rights Protection Act when signed into law on December 27, 2020.
After a two-year period of transition and continued partnerships with USFWS, the Bison Range is now under full management of CSKT as of January 2, 2022.
“Returning the Bison Range to its people is a momentous occasion, honoring lands, relationships, and conservation successes of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes,” said USFWS Director Martha Williams. “We’ve worked collaboratively with CSKT for many years and look forward to continuing to work together to conserve wildlife. I can’t wait to visit the CSKT’s Bison Range in the future.”
Teetering over an arid cliff race above the sprawling Chilean capital, Bernardo Segura reviews the footage from the camera trap and lets out a yell of excitement as the images reveal a flickering striped tail. On the screen displaying the conservationist’s latest video capture is an Andean cat – the most endangered feline in the Americas. Looking a little like a miniature snow leopard, the 4kg (9lb) male enters the frame […]. Segura is excited for many reasons. With a shrinking population of fewer than 1,400 mature Andean cats left, any sighting is good. But this one heralds a signal of hope in a different way for the species and the conservationists battling against the cats’ extinction because it confirms a new population living close to humans – on the very edge of Santiago, a city of eight million people. “We have never found a population so close to a large city before,” says Segura. […]
Until now, Andean cats were believed to live only in extremely remote rocky terrain far from cities. But after seeing high numbers of the cats’ favourite prey – rodents from the chinchilla family called mountain vizcachas – around the popular Parque Mahuida nature reserve on the edge of Santiago, Segura trusted a hunch and in February placed camera traps on a terraced precipice above the neighbourhood of La Reina, about 2.5km, or 1.5 miles, from Santiago. In July, he had his first images of an Andean cat. Since then, his camera has taken about 40 more. “So far, we have identified at least three individual adults passing continually, suggesting this is the core of their territory and not just a chance encounter,” says Segura, who volunteers for the non-profit organisation Andean Cat Alliance (AGA), a coalition of conservationists who coordinate their efforts across Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia. […]
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This is hard to find in their other known habitats – huge territories that span the higher Andean peaks, and on the northern part of the Patagonian steppe in Argentina. Previous research had identified five highly fragmented populations between the four countries, stretching north to south between Peru and Argentina. […]
Some of the greatest threats to the cats come from extractive industries around the Andes, such as mining, quarrying and fracking, which destroy their habitat and consume massive amounts of water, draining the animals’ sources dry. Segura published a paper in May on another discovery of Andean cats, in Valparaíso, a mountainous coastal region north of Santiago city. In the paper he warns of the threat posed by plans for a large-scale open pit mine called the Vizcachitas mining project, which is being developed in the area. […] The Andean cat has also suffered from its low profile, even among experts, says Palacios. “The Andean cat has been a very unknown species for a long time. A lot of our work has focused on pushing for them to be more considered in the global conservation agenda. “It was a species that was disappearing through our fingers,” she adds. “Even people who know a lot about cats didn’t know about them, but if feels like that is changing.”
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Headline, text, images, map, and captions published by: Liam Miller. “Most endangered cat in Americas found living on outskirts of Chilean capital.” The Guardian. 10 December 2021.
i learned about Tim Wong who successfully and singlehandedly repopulated the rare California Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly in San Francisco. In the past few years, he’s cultivated more than 200 pipevine plants (their only food source) and gives thousands of caterpillars to his local Botanical Garden (x)
Sometimes, people are really great.
This is also an example of picking One Thing and putting most of your Better The World efforts there. We have so many different important issues to care about and act toward, and it’s tempting to try and do a Little for Many Things - and I’m not saying that little bits of effort don’t add up! They do. But often you’ll make a bigger impact (and possibly have less compassion/activist fatigue) if you direct the majority of your efforts toward one or two things.
Gone, but not forgotten! The dodo went extinct in the 1600s, when people and other predators invaded its island home. Mauritius, east of Madagascar, is the only place dodos ever lived.
While the birds died out before photography, their skeletons offer clues to what they were like. For example, this bird couldn’t fly—it had small wings for a bird of its size, its sternum has no keel (the support birds need for flight muscles), and it had thick leg bones made for walking. See this specimen up close in the Hall of Biodiversity!
