#magnificent ramshorn

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Y'all know I'm a sucker for endangered species reintroduction stories, right? Especially when it's not a charismatic megafauna being highlighted. So of course I was excited when this headline crossed my dash.

The magnificent ramshorn (what a great name!), also known as Planorbella magnifica, is a tiny snail endemic to ponds and other quiet waterways in North Carolina's lower Cape Fear River basin. In fact, they were only known from four sites in the region. Due to plummeting numbers in its limited habitat, some of the last of these snails were removed from the wild to create an intensive captive breeding program. (It really doesn't take much to keep a snail happy in captivity once you figure out what conditions it needs.) The last wild individual was observed twenty years ago, and it is considered to be extinct in the wild.

That is, until now. Two thousand of these little reddish snails were released into a safe pond in Brunswick County. Researchers are using this as a way to observe how well these captive-bred snails adapt to their historic habitat, including successful reproduction. If all goes well, we can hope to see more reintroductions of these native mollusks back into their original range.

We nature nerds are biased, because we think everything in nature is awesome (yes, I'm even an apologist for mosquitoes!) So of course we get excited when a bunch of rare little snails get a second chance, because we understand how crucial each species is to its ecosystem. It can be tougher sometimes to sell the importance of this to the general public, who may question why it would be such a big deal for one snail species to go extinct. That's why I think it's so important for us to keep sharing our knowledge and--perhaps even more importantly--our enthusiasm for all these amazing beings. Keep being cheerleaders for critters like these snails, and your enthusiasm may end up being contagious!

[opineonionated]

On the decks

Una MacGlone+Jim McEwan - a whole other vibe

Una MacGlone double bass (with and without preparations) Jim McEwan piano (with and without preparations), dulcitone, objects: tape recorders, radios, crinkly bag

This album is a collage of recordings and sound treatments. We had two very fruitful days in the Ramshorn Theatre (thanks Gerry Rossi!) where we recorded several improvisations with minimal or no discussion. After some time, we listened to the recordings and chose our favourite tracks to provide the basis for another layer of improvising, again with the briefest of chats beforehand.

We intended to capture the experience of being in different psychological states such as disconnection and nostalgia in 'a different kind of everyday'. 'wintermoon' takes the open remoteness of the Hoy coast and the North Sea as inspiration. 'a whole other vibe' depicts the feeling of how it felt to walk home from the CCA on a frosty night after a GIOfest gig. Playing music and being with your friends combine to bring another kind of consciousness where you see and hear your city as a new place. Thinking about how light may sound after many miles of travelling, 'sparkle' is an imagining on what starlight sounds like after centuries and many miles have passed.

Maria W Horn & Vilhelm Bromander - Earthward Arcs

Stockholm-based composers and musicians Maria W Horn and Vilhelm Bromander present their first collaborative release titled ‘Earthward Arcs’. The two pieces on this tape date back to 2019 and focus on spectral explorations in between the realms of the acoustic and the electronic. Using small snippets of Maria W Horn’s SuperCollider code as a starting point, the algorithmically generated sketches developed as Vilhelm Bromander’s unique approach to the double bass – his focus on acoustic detail, intonation and timbre – came into the picture. The title track focuses on beating patterns and difference tones, as the electronics and the double bass gradually shift roles across the 18-minute-long dynamic, textural drone. “Mycelial Bloom” employs a five-limit tuning system founded on a single tone sequence, which, when modulated, unlocks unique emotional resonances. Strikingly direct, yet limitless in its depth, this piece is imbued with a haunting, cinematic magnificence. Together, the two tracks showcase the compositional prowess, tonal mastery and inimitable restraint of these two Swedish artists, and offer a first brief glimpse of their collaboration.

[agentjoannemills]

i know scylla effectively killed more than a thousand civilians in one go, in the first episode alone, but like. i love her. i love the angst her character can bring and will bring to the table. the long road to redemption. the potential for mutual longing. raelle will have to hold onto her morality, and her forgiveness won’t be so easily earned. scylla’s redemption will be long and arduous and full of deep-seated regret.

raelle may come to believe in scylla again, but there will always be that tendril of fear that scylla would again betray her, and scylla will have to live with that. raelle has always been willing to die, but she’s not in it to kill, and she has to come to terms with the fact that the love of her life did kill a lot of people. there’s a lot of blood in scylla’s hands, and raelle knows she doesn’t have the right to wash that blood away — she’s a fixer but this is the one thing she cannot fix.

and through all this there’s the fact that through all the pain and betrayal, they do love each other. that’s the one truth scylla has to offer: she loves raelle, and maybe in time, raelle will believe that. but that belief doesn’t come with forgiveness, and the distance between them will seem so insurmountable. not because of the lack of love — that has never been their problem — but because of the broken trust. the trust that scylla broke herself.

scylla has a lot to answer for. she’s flawed and she’s done reprehensible things. she truly believes in the cause, she was ready to do her job, but she didn’t expect raelle to come crashing through her walls like a furious comet. there’s a lot to unpack in her psyche. she’s got a long road to walk in her atonement.

i know she’s a villain but i just really love her.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice today of its intent to sue outgoing Interior Secretary David Bernhardt for delaying protection for 11 species that have been identified as warranting endangered status but placed on a candidate list instead.

The species that have been kept waiting for protection are the monarch butterfly, eastern gopher tortoise, Peñasco least chipmunk, longfin smelt, Colorado Delta clam, three Texas mussels, magnificent ramshorn snail, bracted twistflower and northern spotted owl.

The Trump administration is coming to an end with the worst record protecting species of any administration since the Endangered Species Act was passed. Just 25 species have been listed as threatened or endangered in the past four years, leaving hundreds of at-risk species without badly needed protection.

“The Trump administration’s undermining of the Endangered Species Act puts the monarch butterfly, eastern gopher tortoise and hundreds more plants and animals at risk of extinction,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center. “For newly nominated Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to successfully save these species from extinction, it will require more money for endangered species, new leadership at the Fish and Wildlife Service, and a renewed commitment to science and following the law.”

In 2016 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service developed a workplan to address a portion of more than 500 species waiting for protection, but because of interference from the Trump administration, the agency has failed to make dozens of findings every year since. In 2020 the Trump administration failed to made decisions for 58 species from its workplan.

Earlier this year the Center filed suit in Washington, D.C. over more than 200 species from the workplan that await decisions. In addition to the 11 species included in today’s notice, the Center plans to initiate lawsuits for another nine species waiting for listing and 89 species waiting for designation of critical habitat. It hopes to work out a schedule with the Biden administration to ensure these species get protection and avoid extinction.

[rjzimmerman]

Once again, an environmental organization is suing the federal government for dragging its feet to protect endangered species. This isn’t the first lawsuit, and it won’t be the last, so long as the hostility of the republican party and the trump administration toward protecting the multiple components of our environment continues.

Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

The Center for Biological Diversity today filed a notice of intent to sue the Trump administration for failing to protect nine imperiled species under the Endangered Species Act, including the San Francisco Bay Delta population of longfin smelt and the Puerto Rico harlequin butterfly.

The eight animals and one plant live in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Today’s notice also covers the Berry Cave salamander, Hermes copper butterfly, Sierra Nevada red fox, red tree vole, gopher tortoise, magnificent ramshorn snail and a large flowering shrub called marrón bacora.

This is the second notice to sue the administration that the Center has filed in less than a week. Last week’s notice covered 26 species for which the administration failed to make determinations and provide protection or designate critical habitat.

All nine species in today’s notice have been found to warrant protection as threatened or endangered species. But their protections have been delayed under a provision of the Endangered Species Act that allows the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to withhold protections if they are making “expeditious progress” listing other species.

Yet the Trump administration is not making expeditious progress in listing species, which makes delaying protection for the nine species illegal. To date, the administration has only listed 16 species — the fewest protected by any administration in its first two years since the Reagan administration, when James Watt was Interior secretary.

Some of the species proposed for protection: