Thinking about America

Hello! I have recently finished writing a paper about sheep welfare assessment. :)

My last post included a link to a lovely livestream of manatees in Florida, USA. I hope you enjoyed that because wildlife camera livestreams are my favorite way to relax at the moment.

I just found a really nice livestream of beautiful bald eagles in Washington DC:

http://www.eagles.org/dceaglecam/

I assume that a lot of people reading my blog are my friends and family members in the USA. If so, you might not be very excited about all this American footage, but I am enjoying it as I plan my trip home to the USA.

I think that the US does a very good job working on wildlife conservation. (Shout out to anyone who worked on saving the California Condors!!) I am really looking forward to hiking on beautiful trails in the many wonderful American national and state parks.

I really love hill-walking here, but there is something special about old-growth hardwood forests that have never been felled for farming.

Scotland is unbelievably, incredibly beautiful, but it is shocking how much men have changed the landscape here. I like the move to "re-wild" Scotland by reintroducing plants and animals that were here centuries ago but have gone extinct in the wild. I think the Scottish did a great job reintroducing the beaver, but as someone who has a beaver living literally in her own back yard in the USA, I have a new appreciation of how many native species still live in the US.

I have heard encouraging news about mountain lions making a comeback on the East Coast. (They are stunning animals and will help control the deer population and help our ecosystems.) I really hope that more Americans will realize how lucky we are to have native species of plants and animals and continue to work to preserve them. I know that I have a new appreciation for animals such as beavers and skunks that are often considered to be "pests" in the USA after seeing them displayed in the Edinburgh Zoo and hearing zoo visitors excitedly exclaim about these amazing creatures. Beavers help the forests and broader environment. Every species of plant and animal plays an important role in the ecosystem. Animals like the Mountain Lion, Bobcat, Wolf and Bald Eagle are awesomely gorgeous and majestic.

We honour animals like bald eagles by using them as symbols of the US. Unfortunately, we need to remember that we almost killed all of the bald eagles in the USA and they are only just starting to make a comeback after lots of work and dedication from American wildlife conservationists and rehabilitators. Extremely tragically, thirteen bald eagles were recently found dead in Maryland .Work still needs to be done to protect even this iconic species.

 I hope to become a licensed wildlife rehabilitator at some point in the future, and for now, I am doing my part to conserve American species by owning and preserving 10 acres of pristine hardwood forest. I have "liked" a lot of parks and conservation groups on social media and I sign petitions and write to legislators to protect threatened species.

I have always loved the beautiful forests in the USA and felt patriotic about 'America the beautiful'. The trees, streams, grasslands and wildlife are what I most look forward to seeing again when I leave the UK. I really look forward to visiting national and state parks. I think that the incredibly diversity of our natural environments is the most wonderful thing about the USA. (Although, I admit that the main reason I travel to the UK is because I find it so incredibly beautiful here, too!)

I worry about our ecosystems, especially the smallest and most important parts of the ecosystems upon which everything else relies. We need to protect and value our insects. Wild animals, especially amphibians, are extremely threatened, and they need insects to eat. Larger animals eat smaller ones, so it could be catastrophic if amphibians actually became extinct.

We also need little creatures like bees and worms so that we can have food to eat (although we could actually eat these, I mean that they provide us with food indirectly by pollinating our crops and fertilizing our soil). Students from my MSc course will be doing important research with bees in America.

Even though there are many challenges to protecting wildlife which can make our work feel incredibly overwhelming at times, we can always start in our own smaller, local environments. I plan to work in my own country after I go home because I believe that bio-diversity makes America beautiful.

I believe that human diversity makes America beautiful too!

There are always rainbows...

Sometimes life is tough. Some mornings you wake up in the dark with high winds pummeling rain against your kitchen windows while you try to cook breakfast. Some days you wake, get yourself ready, and move your body outside only to be pelted in the face with horizontal ice-rain. Raindrops cover your glasses and you must remove them to be able to see. You finally get to your lectures which are spent arguing about the meaning of life and death or learning to quantify vast quantities of suffering. You learn the ways in which the problems that you are trying to solve are connected to larger global issues that are totally overwhelming. January has been a difficult and dark month, but it is now over.

Today is a beautiful, sunny day! I am getting work done on my assignments, including that manatee enclosure design one that I mentioned in a previous blog.
Manatees are vulnerable. Despite the fact that they have no natural predators, they are very threatened by habitat loss by people building developments in Florida which drain water from this beautiful river. They are also frequently injured by boats (cut by propellers) and ingest fishing hooks, lines and rubbish. Some people are working hard to save the manatees and conserve this species, and manatees are making a come-back. It is so nice to see so many wild manatees in this live webcam stream from Blue Spring State Park, but it is important to remember that there are very few total manatees alive in the wild. We need to continue to work to protect them.

It is all too easy to see these manatees and think, "Look how many there are! Everything is good! We don't need to worry about them anymore." It is also all to easy to read about the mass extinction of animal and plant species that is happening right now and feel completely depressed and unable to appreciate any good news. In order to work on challenging issues and help make the world a better place, it is important to have a balanced view and try to avoid black and white (all good or all bad) thinking.

Icy rain might pelt you in the face, but there are always rainbows. There are beautiful rainbows, but there is also rain. I think it's important to remember that suffering and happiness are both natural parts of life.

This is my opinion, and I'm not sure how it fits into Animal Welfare Ethics frameworks, but I will be discussing that during our final week of classes.