The Little Things

allthingseurope:

Pistyll Rhaeadr, Wales (by Nick Livesey Mountain Images)

rhamphotheca:

Mini Wildcats: The Pocket-Sized Predators of the African Cape

These miniature wildcats face the same dangers from habitat loss as their larger cousins.

by Joanna M. Foster

You don’t have to be a crazy cat lady—or man—to love leopards, get choked up over cheetahs or long to see a lion up-close. There’s something transformative about watching a big cat’s muscles ripple under its sleek, high-fashion coat, and even the cockiest modern man draped in technology is reminded of his proper place when a lion roars.

But there aren’t only three magnificent African cats, there are actually ten, although some weigh as little as three pounds and eat more insects than impalas. 

They are just as beautiful and wild as their lime-light hogging big cousins. But in much of their ranges, they’re still being persecuted by farmers who view them as livestock-killing vermin, and they’re ignored by conservationists who can’t get the funding to study them. 

Fortunately, for the four species of little cats that call South Africa home, the caracal, serval, african wild cat and black-footed cat, there’s the Cat Conservation Trust, a non-profit group that breeds cats in order to release them back into the wild…

(read more: TakePart.org)           

(Black-footed Cat, photo by Dave Hamman/Getty Images)

estimfalos:

Gabriel Lakey

antarctics:

In the canion by Sverrir Thorolfsson on Flickr.

malformalady:

A reservoir that has turned blood-red as a result of mining pollution in Sháoguān, China.

rhamphotheca:

 A Hard Look at 3 Myths about Genetically Modified Crops

Superweeds? Suicides? Stealthy genes? The true, the false and the still unknown about transgenic crops

by Natasha Gilbert and Nature magazine

In the pitched debate over genetically modified (GM) foods and crops, it can be hard to see where scientific evidence ends and dogma and speculation begin. In the nearly 20 years since they were first commercialized, GM crop technologies have seen dramatic uptake. Advocates say that they have increased agricultural production by more than US$98 billion and saved an estimated 473 million kilograms of pesticides from being sprayed. But critics question their environmental, social and economic impacts.

Researchers, farmers, activists and GM seed companies all stridently promote their views, but the scientific data are often inconclusive or contradictory. Complicated truths have long been obscured by the fierce rhetoric. “I find it frustrating that the debate has not moved on,” says Dominic Glover, an agricultural socioeconomist at Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands. “The two sides speak different languages and have different opinions on what evidence and issues matter,” he says.

Here, Nature takes a look at three pressing questions: are GM crops fuelling the rise of herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds’? Are they driving farmers in India to suicide? And are the foreign transgenes in GM crops spreading into other plants? These controversial case studies show how blame shifts, myths are spread and cultural insensitivities can inflame debate…

(read more: Scientific American)      

(photo: Flickr/Delaware Agriculture)

dendroica:

Delights of golden light by Jesus Bravo on Flickr.