Grad school is lonely

My first grad school selfie, taken after spending 6 hours at the hippo exhibit for a research project.

Grad school is lonely. Yeah you meet a bunch of new people all doing similar things and you think you have this awesome community (which you do) but you’re all grad students with lives and jobs and homework and no one has time to hang out. You don’t have time to hang out. You can’t even make it to the once a year happy hour because it’s at an inconvenient time or place and it’s your only Saturday off.

I'm not gonna lie - the last two years brought some hard times. It wasn’t just having to turn down social events because all my time and money was going to class. I left my well-paying job (which allowed me to pay for grad school) because I couldn’t handle the stress. I was in a car accident that left me without a car. I had 0 dollars thanks to a lower stress but much lower paying job and didn’t work for the month I was in Africa. We got kicked out of our house because our landlady wasn’t paying her mortgage and the investment company that bought the house wanted to flip it. After weeks of searching and either finding crap options, too expensive options, or being turned down due to pets, we’re in a small but nice apartment and paying an extra couple hundred a month. I took on an extra class and had one month where I was technically taking 11 units. There were multiple months where I didn’t run even once (forget yoga).

And that was just in 2018.

Me most Friday and Saturday nights. Happy here because animals.

It’s like having a kid. Your whole life changes, but everyone else goes on without you. My relationship changed, I was back on a school schedule, I’m perpetually exhausted, barely see friends and had no impromptu get togethers, and my grad school friends were either just as busy and broke or both those things in addition to being actual parents (how did they manage that???). Hearing “I don’t know how you do it” for working and schooling full time didn’t help, because I didn’t know. The Boyfriend makes dinner and cleans up and I spend 22 minutes with him a day (the amount of time it takes to watch an episode of Parks and Rec while we ate dinner). I get jealous when he has a lazy weekend napping with the animals or going out with friends.

But it's all coming to an end. In a month from today I'll be in Ohio with my classmates, walking across the stage to get our diplomas. I'm looking forward to it, especially to getting my social life back, to being a more present girlfriend, and to focusing on wellness and mental health. But I also know that despite feeling lonely and stressed AF for 2.5 years I’ll miss it. I’ve loved every minute of learning and reading and talking with my cohort members about conservation. Even the long, boring, technical articles contributed to my understanding of what people around the world were doing. Not to mention, it led me to Africa, where I finally saw wild, healthy elephants. Lots of them. (I touched some. Seriously, I almost died of happiness.) I know that in January when the holidays are over and life returns to normal that I’ll feel this emptiness.

I have truly found my people.

In addition to planning a bunch of trips for next year, I have another new way I'll fill my time and hopefully continue learning about conservation: I just started a new job with The Nature Conservancy! I'm so proud and excited to have reached my goal of working in conservation before even graduating. I also hope that I can keep the connection to my cohort and surround myself with those who share a mission-driven purpose and believe in the importance of conservation. The biggest thing I learned has been that conservation isn't for the animals - it's for us. Our very survival depends on what we do in the next 10 years, and I'll be working hard to do my part.

Of Goats and Cheetahs

It’s weird to think that my favorite memory of my time at Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia is the model farm. It’s not like I’ve never been to a farm or that this farm was particularly spectacular. It was really just a big dirt pen, a couple of ranch hands, a dog, and a lot of goats and sheep. But it was a beautiful, clear day and we got to spend it outside, and who doesn’t love farm animals?

I love farm animals but they don't always love me.

Though it might seem odd that a cheetah conservation organization has a farm in the first place, the farm has an incredibly important function. Without a working farm, any recommendations made by CCF staff to Namibian farmers would not come from a place of experience (and would sound downright preachy) and would likely be ignored. How would you react if some foreigner came to your house and told you to change your way of life to protect a pest animal they seem to care too much about?

Fortunately, the CCF team, led by Dr. Laurie Marker, figured that wasn’t going to work. Their model farm is the solution, allowing the organization to show farmers that predator-friendly livestock management techniques work - a farmer that isn’t losing livestock is less likely to kill cheetahs either in retaliation or as a preventative measure.

These had very thick tails that provided extra fat reserves.

Farmers vs cheetahs
At CCF we learned that there’s often a lack of education among farmers regarding proper livestock management and cheetah behavior. This is especially important because 90% of Namibia’s cheetahs live on farmland (Marker, Mills, & MacDonald, 2003). Cheetahs also hunt during the day, so they’re more visible and blamed for livestock deaths more often. If a farmer is losing livestock to predators and all he sees are cheetahs, killing them seems the most obvious way to protect his flock and investment (Nattrass & Conradie, 2018).

With the model farm, CCF can physically show why that’s not a viable long-term solution. Further, they provide in-person farmer training and education on predator-friendly livestock management techniques and cheetah behavior. Cheetahs, it turns out, prefer to eat wild game than livestock (Boast et al., 2016). It’s more likely that livestock were killed by other predators, but farmers don’t see this because it happens at night when livestock are free to roam.

Part of farmer education: Who killed my goat? Fake dead goats demonstrate what predation by different species looks like.

Predator-friendly livestock management techniques
So what does the CCF farm do differently? First, they bring their livestock in at night. Leaving goats and sheep out in the field overnight is an invitation to an easy meal for any predator on the property. Second, pregnant, sick, injured, and young livestock are left in the kraal (fenced area) during the day. Any member of the flock that can’t keep up is a prime target for a predator, so keeping them protected lets them live to see another day. Third, a rancher is with the flock during the day. Having a rancher physically present in the field reduces the number of livestock lost to predators (Nattrass & Conradie, 2018). Fourth, the flock is accompanied by a guard dog - usually an Anatolian shepherd that was raised with the flock. This big dog is a big deterrent for predators (I’ve heard that booming bark and it is to be feared), especially for smaller livestock like goats (van Eeden et al., 2017). 

A rancher, a dog, and a flock of sheep and goats out grazing on a Namibian farm.

But why would farmers want cheetahs on their properties anyway? It goes back to cheetahs having a preference for wild game. A healthy cheetah population means wild game numbers are kept in check, ensuring enough grazing for everyone. Overgrazing leads to a lack of food for both livestock and wild game: if there isn’t enough wild prey the predators may turn to livestock. Overgrazing also allows an aggressive thorny bush to take over - reducing the amount of usable space on the farm. Plus, many farmers are turning towards eco-tourism activities to make extra money, and wild cheetahs are a huge draw.

All of these activities directly increase the amount of money a farmer can make from his property, ensuring survival of cheetahs. If farmers aren’t killing cheetahs on their properties, cheetah populations can grow and the ecosystem can maintain its balance. A major theme of my time at CCF (succinctly stated by CCF Farms Manager Johan Britz) was “if it pays it stays” and that holds true for any animal on Namibian farmland.

Citations:

Boast, L., Houser, A., Horgan, J., Reeves, H., Phale, P., & Klein, R. (2016). Prey preferences of free-ranging cheetah on farmland: Scat analysis versus farmers’ perceptions. African Journal of Ecology, 54, 424-433.

Marker, L., Mills, M., & MacDonald, D. (2003). Factors influencing perceptions of conflict and tolerance toward cheetahs on Namibian farmlands. Conservation Biology, 17(5), 1,290-1,298.

Nattrass, N., & Conradie, B. (2018). Predators, livestock losses, and poison in the South African Karoo. Journal of Cleaner Production, 194, 777-785. 

van Eeden, L., Crowther, M., Dickman, C., Macdonald, D., Ripple, W., Ritchie, E., & Newsome, T. (2017). Managing conflict between large carnivores and livestock. Conservation Biology, 32(1), 26-34.

Sex and the City Saves Elephants

Actress Kristin Davis, co-star of the show Sex and the City, traveled to Kenya a few years ago for a safari. A ranger approached her vehicle and asked if they'd seen a baby elephant, so the whole truck stayed with the rangers for two days helping look for the baby. They finally found her among lava rocks, scared and angry, and had to cover her eyes and practically tackle her to get her safe. They gave her water, moistened her skin and transported her back to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, where she'd be cared for.

The rangers who approached Kristin's truck did so not because they thought approaching a celebrity would help, but because they simply needed more eyes. In fact, they didn't know she was a celebrity. It took DSWT a few weeks to realize who she was. Kristin Davis adopted the baby elephant she helped find, who was named for the area they found her, for $50, getting her email updates as to the elephant's health.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust takes in orphaned elephants, most of whom are orphans because their mothers were slaughtered for their ivory tusks, and raises them to be released back into the wild. Some of the adult elephants actually come back to the reserve on occasion for a visit.

Oh, and Kristin Davis is also an advocate of women's rights. While her character in the TV series would get into the gritty details of her sex life, the actress laments that there are so few shows on TV that star women that each one still gets compared to Sex and the City, which ended 8 years ago. She does Broadway now, has adopted a baby girl, and has become the public face of the Wildlife Trust. She feels strongly about women's health issues and women's rights; she wants to raise her daughter to grow up in a world where there are not only elephants but complete freedom for women. Surely having played such a liberal, confident woman for so many years has helped shape her own beliefs and ideals (or did her beliefs and ideals shape the character?), but to have a show that starred and focused almost entirely on women be as popular as it was encouraged the teens and young women watching it to pursue their dreams.

Kristin Davis has done a lot to educate herself on the plight of elephants over the last few years and has compared buying ivory to buying blood diamonds, bringing something people widely regard as into the spotlight, using terms they recognize and understand. She's trying to bring attention to the severity of the problem (elephants could be gone in less than 10 years), describing the scenes she herself has witnessed (an elephant's head hacked off after it had been chained to a tree and left to die, with another not a half mile away).

"You want gritty details?" She asks, fully prepared to give journalists the shock they're looking for.

Oh yeah, and she's also passionate about women's issues and laments that there aren't enough shows about women. I don't think I could like a celebrity any more.

Why I Can Never Be Republican

I don't affiliate myself with any of the political parties and every time I've taken a political party test I've ended up very near the middle. I agree with some Democrat issues and some Republican issues (and green party and libertarian) and have never felt comfortable siding with one side or the other.

My leaning.

That being said, I can never call myself Republican.

There are too many causes I support that get no support from major Republicans. Women's issues, climate change, the environment, gay rights, and energy are all things that I feel very passionate about and major Republicans don't agree with, don't believe in, don't support and won't pursue. In fact, some of these causes are openly mocked, called wrong or called unimportant.

Republicans think women's issues are silly girl complaints. We already work, we already vote, we already drive, we already hold major positions at major companies... what more do we want? Wanting better access to birth control just makes us sluts and wanting to keep abortion legal makes us all future murderers. If we're raped it's because we dressed provocatively, had been drinking, had flirted, had been out late at night, had not fought off hard enough, had basically asked for it, and if it was traumatic enough we won't get pregnant (or, if we get pregnant it was because we secretly enjoyed it and wanted a baby). Even though 95% of Americans have sex before they're married (if they get married at all), half the country believes sex should only be for procreating in between married couples, which means almost half the country are hypocrites.

Republicans don't believe climate change is real. The ones that do admit the science and data behind climate change is legitimate deny that we have anything to do with it. All those coal plants in the 40s that we shut down and cleaned up? If that were to happen today Republicans would lament all those coal jobs and ignore the improvements to the environment and human health. In fact, it kind of is happening today: Republicans are working hard to save the coal industry, claiming those few thousand jobs are critical to the health of the economy, while completely ignoring that people who work with coal all end up very sick, often with cancer. But those jobs, man, those jobs are all they got. (Which is true... people in coal mines don't know how to do anything else...)

Republicans think the environment is something we should care about only when times are good and we have the time and resources to devise ways of living that do not involve destroying the only place we can live. Since the planet will live far longer than any generation conceivable now, they kind of have a point. We will all die long before the planet starts to really hurt. So it kind of doesn't matter to us as a species. But for some generations it will matter, for the other groups of people and species that share out planet it already matters, and the things we're doing now will play a major role in the destruction of the environment.

Republicans think that giving gays more rights, namely the right to marry, is an "assault on the foundations of our society." To Republicans, gays are all that is wrong with our great country. Since God says their actions are punishable by death Republicans can't fathom why we'd want to condone their behavior. They've said we should round them up and put them in cages until they die off (since they can't reproduce the gays will stop existing). One even said the government should kill them all, an idea certain idealists took to heart. So at the very least, Republicans are saying they should just be happy that we aren't doing that to them and accept the separate-but-equal "registered domestic partnership" status, where we more or less arbitrarily decide whether or not that means a gay person's partner gets to be included on end of life decisions, get to visit in the hospital, and gets custody of the children.

Republicans do believe that we should be energy independent (or they're at least publicly saying so), but all that means is more drilling on our lands. Wind energy and solar energy are scams that don't create jobs and don't create energy, and since the environment isn't something they're concerned with they see no downside to drilling in Alaska or the Gulf (even though the poor Gulf is just barely hanging on as it is). Fuck the polar bears, the tuna, the shrimp, the moose, the ground water. We don't need them anyway.*

I'm a big supporter of all those things and say so publicly any chance I get (still waiting for my Human Rights Campaign equality sticker to come...), so identifying with a party that is vehemently against all those things means I can never side with that party. I don't see myself identifying with any of the other parties, either, but hell would pretty much have to freeze over before I called myself Republican.

PS- If I've made too many generalizations in this post and the links don't satisfy you, please leave a comment with some of your own links or other support for why I'm wrong. I'd really love to not believe that there are people in positions of such great power (one of whom is trying real hard to be the leader of the country), but I so far haven't heard anything to the contrary.

*Incidentally, during my research I clicked on a link that took me to the GOP.gov energy website and got a 404 error. Telling.

Dumb Animals

I'm not the only one disgusted.

Spoiler alert: the dumb animals are us.

Thanks to poaching for a completely made up reason, there are now 7 Northern white rhinos left in the world. One captive Northern white rhino died recently in a zoo in the Czech Republic, leaving the captive count to 3. And two of them are what some call reproductively challenged. Also, old. So there's no captive breeding, period. Those 4 that were shipped of to Africa a 18 months ago better be making babies STAT.

Angalifu likely represents exactly 1/3 of his species.

It's long been known that rhino horn is used as a traditional Chinese medicine, supposedly curing everything from fevers to AIDS. First, we can ignore the obvious logic that if rhino horn did cure anything, we'd be raising rhinos for the exact purpose of harvesting their horns. Now that all reason is removed, let's look at China, one of the biggest players in the rhino horn black market. One man, the retired head of the National Traditional Chinese Medicine Strategy Research Project, believes it's only a matter of time until rhinos are bred for their horn, and is actively trying to re-legalize the use of rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine. At least this guy (Jia Qian) is 70 and doesn't have his whole life left to see his goal realized, and if he does rely on rhino horn for his medicine he should be dead pretty darn soon. So that's good.

But in the meantime, Jia believes

"the reason the Chinese government hasn't used rhino horn for these diseases is because some people were Western trained and tainted by Western thought. Other people were weak and gave in to foreign pressure."

Fuck you, Jia. Western scientists have intensely scrutinized rhino horn to see if there is anything even remotely worth using for the benefit of our own species and there's absolutely nothing. It's just hair. Simple hair formed in an unusual way (no other animal has a horn made entirely of hair), but not miraculous and certainly not medicinal. But he, and others, believe strongly in its use and advocate breeding "endangered medicinal-use animals" to deal with the increase in demand.

However, and this is a big point, the only reason there's an increase in demand is because Jia and the Chinese government are encouraging its citizens to use rhino horn. There's already a rhino farm where 60 or so white rhinos are kept in concrete pens (under the guise of creating an African safari-type park for tourism, despite the fact that plans for this park halted over two years ago) and are used in horn harvesting experiments (under another guise of reintroducing the animals into the wild through breeding centers) which is 100% against CITES and definitely not why South Africa gave them to China. What does China gain by doing something the vast majority of the world disagrees with? Why does China eat dogs?

Nola, the sweetest girl to live out most of her species. She's 1/7 her population.

But here's some good news: South Africa just sentenced 2 poachers to 16 years in prison after catching them red handed - literally - with a freshly cut rhino horn that they later matched with DNA analysis to a dead rhino. And then in Kenya some poachers shot an elephant with poison arrows, killed it, roasted its meat, and then died from eating poisoned elephant. Serves you all right, you fucking assholes.

Keeping Our Planet Alive

Best idea ever.

For the first time I'm watching the last disk of the Planet Earth series, the disk that discusses how the planet has changed in recent years (recent being the last decade or so), how human habits have changed, and how animal populations have been affected by all this change.

This worst thing someone could tell me is that he believes global climate change is either nonexistent or not a big deal. It's incomprehensible how a person can be presented with the facts and still believe it's normal or scientists are making up figures. People who claim that climate change is normal and species are expected to go extinct as a natural occurrence do have a point, but they're incredibly uneducated about the natural occurrence of the earth's movements. Yes, Earth's climate will change and yes, species will inevitably go extinct naturally. What these people choose to ignore is the rate at which the climate and terrain is changing and the rate at which species, especially top predators and species which live in precarious environments, are going extinct. Sure, frogs will go the way of the dodo. But 1/3 of all amphibians have become endangered within the last decade. Not just a species here and there. One whole third of an entire fucking class of animals. That seems a bit extreme, doesn't it?

What also seems a bit extreme is the story of the saiga antelope. Please, click that link and look at the picture. Have you ever seen anything like it before? It's got the body of an antelope but the face of a tapir. Incredible. These creatures once formed one of the planets best migratory phenomenon, as many as 2 million individuals birthing and roaming in Eurasia. Within 3 years there were 40 times fewer antelope (50 thousand individuals) thanks to horn poaching for traditional Asian medicine. Sounds like the rhino*...

For a moment I will excuse the argument that we should be protecting animals and ecosystems for their own sakes. Unfortunately, the majority of people won't feel compelled to protect something they either can't relate to or can't care about, and the rest of the people won't feel compelled to protect something if doing so will negatively impact their livelihoods- anyone faced with the choice of protecting wildlife and feeding their children will choose their children. So the answer seems obvious, if nearly impossible: we must improve the world as a whole, not species by species or even ecosystem by ecosystem. Too many aspects of human life correlate to the planet's well being: population increases the world over are a huge cause of ecosystem decline, third world countries unable to help their citizens cannot help their animals, and humans needing space to grow food come into competition with wildlife, and wildlife always loses.

So we get charismatic animal ambassadors to change people's minds.

We could ignore all the damage we're doing to our planet because chances are by the time our generation and our grandchildren's generations have passed the planet will still be plugging along. But if we continue turning forests into pastures, continue poaching to extinction, continue fighting with wildlife rather than working with it like we're doing now, sooner rather than later there will be nothing left to keep the atmosphere from protecting us, nothing left to pollinate our crops, nothing left to flow into the oceans from the rivers, and the earth itself will die.

When I was born there were less than 5 billion people on the planet. Before my 26th birthday there could be 7 billion people. That's over 2 billion people in a quarter of a century. Is it just a coincidence that this extreme rate of reproduction in the one species that can so wholly affect the planet is inversely proportional to the extreme rate of destruction of animal and plant species and whole ecosystems? I doubt it. We've turned our habits around many times before and watched species come back from the brink of extinction and watched the atmosphere rebuild itself. It's time to take it to the next level and conserve the whole planet.

*When I looked at the key image for this page I thought, "Hey, that looks just like Angolifu!" It is Angolifu. That's awesome.