I had a goal for 2020 - which I didn’t meet at all and bumped to 2021 - and now I’m extending it into 2022. That was to try to explore as many nature areas as I could, especially lesser used ones, and write journal posts about them.
I do a lot of research before I go, visit and make mental notes, then write up a journal post giving information I think might be useful for someone else wanting to visit.
I’m hopeful (but not really expectant) that someone else might find them useful. And I’ve learned a lot about the areas I’ve researched (like - as I mentioned elsewhere - the impact of silica mining on natural areas).
I do use iNat to some extent but I also check lots of other sources to find various wildlife areas/refuges/natural areas, etc. I think we might actually be lucky to have so many here in Minnesota (and Wisconsin) so maybe that’s not possible in a lot of places. But by my doing that, I’ve kind of ticked off a lot of the really helpful suggestions you’ve made @karen5lund . So maybe that could be a way to frame a day-trip out to natural areas. You get to enjoy the day. You add observations to iNat. And you pay forward what you’ve learned about an area (parking, bathroom facilities, trail conditions, etc) to the next person.
But there are about 300 cruise ships in the world, and an estimated 1.4 billion cars in the world. And if you figure a cruise ship can have over 7000 people, including the crew.
I appreciate your concern – thank you for being a citizen who cares, and does the best he/she can. We should pay attention to these small decisions. Over a lifetime of such decisions, they certainly do matter.
It always drove me crazy that the National Butterfly Center in Mission TX hosts their annual convention in October during the monarch migration. The festival organizers boast of the hundreds of participants driving in from 24 states, with butterflies splattered all over their radiators. Sigh.
I’ve heard it said that nature study nowadays is analogous to what’s called salvage (or rescue) archaeology – we’re documenting things as quickly as we can before we lose them to development or other human-caused environmental impacts. In regards to nature, we’re each contributors to the catastrophe even while we’re studying and trying to conserve its victims. Kind of a bleak view but probably not too inaccurate.
Maybe you’ve never hit a bird on the highway while driving to a site to study birds or other organisms. I have, and not just birds. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
I haven’t heard that specifically, but I have long believed that the life that will survive us are the ones we don’t like - all the organisms that feed on our garbage. Can you imagine the selective pressure on the gulls etc. that live in our landfills? Living on those toxins? Climate change has added another wrinkle, but it is likely that many of the life forms will learn to compensate.
in my case birds hit me on my head when I travel for observation, I probably go too near to nest, I can take a blow of sparrow but blow of crow or kites is painful. So I watch out for them.
A wildlife refuge I often visit has a driving tour road. Over the years, I’ve collected or observed quite a few roadkills on this tour route, mostly snakes and turtles. Visitors are required to drive fairly slowly but most are looking up or outward (for birds) and not down, so they miss seeing the slow-moving creatures hugging the ground.
Culverts but no tunnels specifically designed for wildlife passage. Would be rather useless since it’s almost all suitable habitat for various wildlife.
I confess that I have. On a study/camp trip, two of my naturalist friends showed me the charred corpse of a bird on my radiator. For months, I had been searching for the source of that burning smell i noticed each time I pulled into the garage.
