This week, we've decided to take a diversion from our modern hellscape to think about something nicer: animals. We humans have gotten so skilled at observing them. I am not kidding.
Satellites capture the scene as great emperor penguins waddle across the Antarctic. Birders are logging sightings for the Great Backyard Bird Count—45,000 as of this writing! Techies have just figured out how to watch the entire migration of a monarch butterfly using radio technology. And you can too—on your phone!
Cuteness aside, we're learning stuff. “Birds tell us how the environment is doing, because they’re moving, they’re eating, they really rely on different areas and spaces, not just one specific place,” Brooklyn bird-counter Marie Alleva told Inside Climate News.
Not all the animal news is so hot. Or maybe it's too hot. Rising temperatures have led to a “staggering” loss of ocean life, the Guardian reports, while whales are having fewer calves, reports Inside Climate News. And protecting Earth's precious animals and habitats has only gotten harder thanks to Elon Musk's callous destruction of USAID, which had provided hundreds of millions of dollars in global conservation funding.
Not to say there isn't hope. We've got former federal scientists living on sailboats and tracking the coastal health of Alaska. And, call me a solarpunk if you like, but I find it inspiring that folks who still care are working to gather information we need to care for our planet.
—Henry Carnell
