Mike Cove

A fisher standing outside of a fisher den box in a red pine forest during the day in winter.

💡 What if monitoring wildlife was automatic and could even differentiate among species?

New research in @StacksJournal.bsky.social shows a novel idea: using the rate of temperature change in den boxes to track martens, fishers, and even sometimes squirrels. 🌍🧪🦊

A 🧵

#WildlifeConservation

Florida Cat Named Pepper Brings Home Never-Before-Seen Virus—for the Second Time Pepper the pet cat has made yet another contribution to virology.

Kudos to Pepper for her hunting skills & her contribution to science, and if you find a dead animal you should always see if your county or other local scientists are looking for study subjects, but also JUST KEEP YOUR CATS THE FUCK INSIDE.

gizmodo.com/florida-cat-...

The title of the paper: "A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance" - and an example data table

NEW! 🎉 We need wildlife disease surveillance to predict epidemics, but data sharing is rare - we found that only 2-3% of studies share raw data. So, we spent three years developing a data standard and R package to help get wildlife disease data into FAIR repositories. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If we choose not to act,
Or fail to adapt,
Then suffer we will.

#ShowYourStripes

It's like evil Gifford Pinchot drew a map. That's a lot of national forest land in the Lower 48 and a massive amount of BLM land in Alaska. Some of the best public lands we have will be available for purchase, but not by people like you or me.

Thanks to @wilderness.org for pulling this together.

Quick. Somebody tell Trump that the best way to own Elon is to restore all research grants and double NSF funding.

Harnessing natural history collections for collaborative pandemic preparedness Five years after the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we have the opportunity to gather lessons learned about needed infrastructure for predicting, und

Check out our new paper in #BioScience!!! If COVID taught us anything, we very much need to be doubling down on our scientific structure and not regressing, and we need to improve collaborative networks that transcend geopolitical boundaries.

#naturalhistory #collectionsareessential

Really wish people would stop talking about the problem with Science under Trump as “budget cuts”.

No. Budgets are set deliberatively by elected members of congress. Budgets haven’t been cut.

What’s happening are *purges* and *censorship*.

#2025MMM GORG

Are you wondering how many educators have signed up for 2025 March Mammal Madness resources? #2025MMM

We need synergies, not silos, to solve humanity’s greatest challenges Climate change is often framed as humanity’s greatest challenge. And for good reason. Every fraction of a degree of warming – the planet is currently about 1.2°C (2.2°F) warmer than before the Industr...

We need to break down the silos between addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and human suffering.

Fortunately, the solutions are often complementary -- and we can sometimes find "win-win-win" opportunities to address all three.

More from Project Drawdown:

drawdown.org/insights/we-...

Extinction is forever: de-extinction can’t save what we had | Aeon Ideas Even if it works, genetic resuscitation would begin something new; it can’t restore what we lost. Extinction is forever

I don’t care what Colossal or Beth Shapiro are trying to sell you. Woolly mammoths are extinct and not coming back. De-extinction is an unethical vanity grift that cannot deliver on its promises.

Imagine DOGE opens your mail and finds your household electric bill. To eliminate this cost, they burn your house down without warning. Then they total up the bills that, as a homeless person, you will never again pay. On its website, DOGE boasts about the money it has saved you.

How stopping deforestation is a powerful “emergency brake” climate solution When people think of climate solutions, they often focus on smokestacks, tailpipes, and other artifacts of our fossil-fueled economy. That’s fitting since roughly two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse ...

Stopping deforestation is one of the largest and most effective climate solutions. It can reduce global emissions by ~10-12%, equivalent to the entire U.S. economy.

It could be a powerful "emergency brake" on climate.

So why aren't we paying more attention to it?

drawdown.org/insights/how...

Close your eyes. Take deep breaths. Slowly inhale through your nose, and exhale through your mouth. With each breath, imagine the face of someone you love, or a place you hold sacred. They are why we do this. Recommit yourself to the work. May we be strong. May we be steadfast. May we never forget.

Trudeau: I want to speak first directly to the American people… your government has chosen to do this to you. Your government has chosen to put American jobs at risk. They have chosen to raise costs for American consumers on everyday essential items…

The Erasing of American Science — The Atlantic Health How far can the Trump administration bend U.S. research before it breaks? February 14, 2025 For decades in the United States , scientists and government officials have coexisted in a mostly pea...

A challenging time for American science.

apple.news/An8MD0FhpQ8S...

This is why I get so angry about anticipatory compliance. So many of these EOs are being overturned. This is good news, and it means our advocacy is making a difference! Keep it up!

48 Scientific Societies Representing Almost 100,000 Scientists Ask Congress to Protect the Future of Science 48 scientific societies representing almost 100,000 scientists signed on to a letter asking Congress to protect the future of science

Today, a broad coalition of scientific professional societies who represent over 92,000 scientists are speaking out against the politicization and demonization of Federally funded science and government scientist jobs.

It was an honor to help the Union of Concerned Scientists with this! 🧪🌎

48 Scientific Societies Representing Almost 100,000 Scientists Ask Congress to Protect the Future of Science 48 scientific societies representing almost 100,000 scientists signed on to a letter asking Congress to protect the future of science

Forty-seven scientific societies have signed a letter organized by the @ucsusa.bsky.social urging Congress to protect federally funded research and federal scientists:

www.ucsusa.org/about/news/s...

INSKEEP: Would you like a president to go in and break some china and mess things up, even if you don't like the way this president is trying to do that? OCASIO-CORTEZ: I think when we talk about breaking things, messing things up - I mean, to the FAA? No. To the NIH? No. To our ability to contain Ebola before it gets on a plane and comes into the United States? No. I don't want someone being reckless. I actually don't want someone taking a wrecking ball to someone's chemotherapy to just see what happens. Now, I do think that we can examine certain things like Medicare Advantage - that I think is a scam - that in the name of so-called efficiency, ironically enough, we have handed over huge amounts of health care disbursements to private insurers who are pocketing it. Sure, yeah, let's go after that. But I don't think we just destroy everything that we have worked so hard for as a country to become innovative, to become just, to have some of the only lifelines that people have in this country to a roof over their head or food in their children's stomach. No, I don't think that we gamble with that.

Good framing from AOC

www.npr.org/transcripts/...

New EO to promote timber production on FS and BLM-with FWS implications related to the Endangered Species Act and NEPA..

(b) Within 60 days…the FWS…shall complete a strategy on USFS and BLM forest management projects under section 7 of the ESA to improve the speed of approving forestry projects.

The ISS is 'too clean', and it could be making astronauts sick US researchers have created the first 3D map of the microbes on the International Space Station, finding a lack of microbial diversity could be causing astronauts to get rashes, cold sores and other i...

But idiots think we’ll have a thriving human population on Mars 😂.

Ecology…

www.abc.net.au/news/science...

It’s not even in dispute & very clear in data. Racist federal housing finance policies in the 1930s+ [redlining] combined with continued disinvestment, made communities of color disproportionately have more concrete & less green infrastructure, which make them hotter. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Here’s How Many Employees Each National Park Is Losing A nonprofit is tallying up how many NPS employees have been let go from each park. A key asset has been social media posts from terminated employees.

Tracking DOGE/Trump firings at National Parks: www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adve...

A call for the United States to continue investing in science | mBio The U.S. life science research mission is critical not only to human health and understanding the natural world but also to agriculture and food production, technological innovations, socioeconomic pr...

A call for the United States to continue investing in science 🌐🌾 🧪https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00648-25

Some examples of research USGS does that is at risk with RIFs and restructuring:
- earth quake and volcano monitoring and warnings
- landslide risk assessments
- water quality testing
- wildlife conservation
- wildfire prevention and post-fire rehabilitation
- invasive species tracking

Please read—this is becoming serious!

Just saying.