Hello from Redmond, Western Australia. It's rural, close to the South Coast of WA. We live in a straw-bale house on a farm where we run a small number of cattle, horses and donkeys, and we grow a lot (but not yet all) of our own fruit and vegetables. We steward of 50ha area of pretty pristine Australian bush in a biodiversity hotspot, and we've replanted the roadside and house area and put in some windbreaks with native trees and understory.
I split my attention in far too many directions, but I'm writing audio-description for film and television as a hobby; biodiversity and conservation and hiking (we live in a biodiversity hotspot); and tinkering with code (roguelikes!). I also irrationally love HTML as a markup language.
But I am terrified of the increasingly bleak looking future, and despite putting a lot of effort into conservation and living with as small a footprint as possible, I don't see much hope for our broken civilisation, much less our species.
> But I am terrified of the increasingly bleak looking future, and despite putting a lot of effort into conservation and living with as small a footprint as possible, I don't see much hope for our broken civilisation, much less our species
Yeah, I struggle with that too. At the same time, there is a huge amount of opportunity for average people to make an impact in whatever small sphere of influence we may have.
If I always frame my efforts in relation to the entirety of the world's social and environmental problems, of course those efforts are going to seem insignificant; but I think that's as misleading as, say, viewing my personal spending habits as inconsequential based on how much they impact the global economy. Small changes in your local community or social circle really do matter!
That's one reason I like platforms like iNaturalist: it's a good tool to encourage others to simply learn more about the living things around them, which is a significant step in nudging someone from indifference toward being an advocate for nature.
Sorry if that's not helpful, but I'd really like to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing, because it probably matters a lot more than you think it does (especially to all the creatures that live in and around your larger-than-average backyard!)
I know some people will be upset because they think saying that might mean we don't get emissions under control. I don't think people here on HN have much control over emissions, but in any case I encourage you to get emissions under control to the extent you can!
Everyone can affect their emissions to some extent.
* Don't have children is a big one, or limit the number you have. One child is equivalent to 24 people people not driving, someone quoted to me the other day. It's not a popular idea though.
* Drive a small car not a big car. Drive about 90kph, it's more fuel efficient than driving faster.
* Buy local - It might be more expensive in money, but milk shipped 4,000 kilometers is more expensive in emissions than milk from a supplier in your region.
This sounds amazing. I'd be interested to hear more details about what "stewarding 50ha of Australian bush" entails. Do you work with a local conservation organization, and do you have any particular goals for restoration or management? Do you work on documenting the biodiveristy there? Is it home to any endemic or threatened species you're espeially interested in? Any photos you could share?
My wife throws up our photos on Flickr, which includes a great many of our efforts at sustainable farming and replanting, an album documenting our house-build, as well as our hiking, and far, far too many of our dog.
It's basically a sex-doll for wasps. The female wasps can't fly, they live on the ground and climb up to the top of a stalk of grass, and the male, attracted by pheromones, would swoop in and carry her off. This orchid presents a rough approximation of the shape, and a convincing approximation of the pheromones that the male wasps are confused and try to fly off with it, catapaulting them into the pollen resevoir. If they get tricked twice: viola! Pollen exchange.
If you ever have the desire to put together some data visualizations, stats, automation, or anything else fun or useful with your iNat data, you're more than welcome to ping me for help on GitHub (jwcook) or on the iNat forums (jcook).
Thanks @Starcruch! That's pretty cool yourself. I don't think I'm in the market for doing much with my iNaturalist data - I'm content for it to just passively be part of the larger picture, though one day I suspect I will collate it all into some kind of PDF/ebook. I wish I had more time for it to be honest.
It's lovely to live in, but it was a lot of hard, hard work. I have a sort of traumatic amnesia about it and don't have strong recollections of doing some of the work.
I joke that we outsourced it to a pair of gullible young people who did all the hard work so us older people can enjoy living in it. :-)
50ha is an amazing sized property and the south coast is an incredible part of the world.
My wife and I have recently bought some land near Margaret River/Augusta region and are planning out how we can plant local species and invite as many native critters as possible to come by.
Best of luck with your replanting and conservation projects.
I lived in Perth for 6 years but had only been to Margaret River once in all that time. The thing I remember most from that trip was the air. I remember getting out of the car on the side of a road for the first time after entering the region and there was something so different, fresh, and perfect about the air. I know what "fresh air" smells like and of course it's going to be different when you're in the city vs out in nature, but this was somehow different. I'm not sure if my memory just skewed and exaggerated the effect after all these years, but I distinctly remember thinking that the air in Margaret River was very distinct (in a wonderful way).
I split my attention in far too many directions, but I'm writing audio-description for film and television as a hobby; biodiversity and conservation and hiking (we live in a biodiversity hotspot); and tinkering with code (roguelikes!). I also irrationally love HTML as a markup language.
But I am terrified of the increasingly bleak looking future, and despite putting a lot of effort into conservation and living with as small a footprint as possible, I don't see much hope for our broken civilisation, much less our species.