Recycling – What’s the Point?
The Otterside Journal
by Aimée Carroll
4y ago
Recycling is easy and its benefits are obvious- so why aren’t more people doing it? A number of factors are influencing our waste treatment choices- and we aren’t necessarily to blame. Waste treatment is the additional dimension to waste disposal. The latter has apparent advantages: If you put your rubbish in the bin, you will not have to look at any unsightly litter. Like all human behaviour, the practice is driven by the reward. When you choose to recycle, the prize is the satisfaction of doing your bit for the environment. While this may be a worthy cause, it is difficult to quantify and ob ..read more
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The Galapagos Expedition
The Otterside Journal
by Ashley Reaney
4y ago
Island ecosystems are vastly different to those of continents. Their isolation, coupled with vacant niche space, often prompts natural selection to go into overdrive, producing a plethora of evolutionarily distinct and rare organisms. For this reason, 50% of planet’s marine tropical diversity, and 30% of the its biodiversity hotspots, occur in island communities. To many biologists, island-dwelling organisms are ideal for studying evolution. A group of related species inhabiting a small, isolated environment allows for many robust biological conclusions to be drawn about their origins, espe ..read more
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Credit Cards: The Latest Health Craze
The Otterside Journal
by Luke Fagan
4y ago
For all the recent social awareness regarding plastics in our world, we are still producing 300 million tonnes every year – 50% of which is single-use. A quick calculation shows that roughly half a tonne of plastic is produced per person, per year. While plastic is cheap and incredibly versatile with properties that make it ideal for many applications, these same qualities have also resulted in it becoming an environmental issue. While ‘plastic pollution’ conjures up a wide array of images in our minds (from plastic bottles in bushes to cigarette butts on beaches), microplastics – the stuff we ..read more
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System Malfunction!
The Otterside Journal
by Harry Coninx
4y ago
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” George Orwell In this quote from Animal Farm, Orwell wasn’t making a point about biodiversity and ecosystem function, but today his words are surprisingly relevant. Humans are altering the environment at unprecedented levels, with deforestation, biotic changes and global warming all exerting significant impacts on ecosystems. Biodiversity is declining at a rate 1000 times anything observed in the fossil record and this is accelerating. Species extinctions are increasing every year, but are they all important? Should we b ..read more
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Making A Mammoth
The Otterside Journal
by Mark Browne
4y ago
There are countless posts out there claiming the imminent return of the woolly mammoth- this is not one of them. This is a guide to making a mammoth. Think recipe blog but for prehistoric animals. If you’ve ever played cooking mama it’s a bit like that, but with mammoths, cooking mammoth. The only way to bring back the mammoth is with DNA, and thanks to discoveries like Lyuba, a 41,800-year-old mammoth calf discovered in the Siberian permafrost, we’ve actually found a lot of mammoth DNA and attempts to bring the mammoth back are already underway. Permafrost is the best-known source of ancient ..read more
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The Buzz of City Life
The Otterside Journal
by Aoife Cantwell-Jones
4y ago
We are currently seeing huge declines in insect species around the world – this is alarming not only for global biodiversity, but also because insects play a fundamental role in maintaining our ecosystems, for example through pollination. One of the drivers at the heart of these declines is land-use change, and traditionally this would have included the expansion of urban environments – but this view is slowly changing. It is estimated that by 2050, 67% of the world’s population will live in cities. Although urban expansion is typically (and rightly) cited as a potential driver of species d ..read more
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Could Savannas Turn into Rainforests?
The Otterside Journal
by Aoife Cantwell-Jones
4y ago
The widespread fires and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazonas have been recent worldwide headlines. Aside from the fact that many of these fires were man-made, rainforest fires are problematic – many rainforest tree species are not adapted to burn; many, especially those living in moist rainforests, have thin bark and suffer high mortality when fires occur. Some trees burn better than othersThis is a different story to the savanna vegetation also found in Brazil. Savannas typically burn every 1-3 years, and their species are adapted to recurrent fires. For example, savanna trees can ofte ..read more
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Wildlife Urbanites
The Otterside Journal
by Luke Fagan
4y ago
It is estimated that by 2030, over 5 billion people will live in major cities. Our increasingly urban lives will cause towns to sprawl outward to where the wilderness used to be, and as more animals begin to appear in ‘civilised’ locations, the relationship between wildlife and urbanite will evolve. Certainly, some creatures will fare better than others, but how we choose to consider other species in future will go a long way towards deciding our future. In some ways, it is completely natural to congregate together as a species. After all, it is more than likely that we derive from a common ..read more
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Lessons from the Vaquita’s Imminent Extinction
The Otterside Journal
by Éinne Ó Cathasaigh
4y ago
The Vaquita (Phocena sinus) is the world’s smallest and most endangered cetacean, with less than 22 individuals remaining in the wild in the summer of 2018.  Endemic to the Upper Gulf of California (UGC), this critically endangered porpoise is facing extinction as a result of entanglement in illegal gillnets.  Gillnetting is a non-selective form of fishing used primarily in the UGC to poach totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), an endangered sciaenid fish of similar size to the Vaquita.  These issues stem from the lack of socio-economic development in the area, with little alternative sources of incom ..read more
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Breakfast With Giant River Otters
The Otterside Journal
by Luke Fagan
4y ago
An unfortunate by-product of the wide availability of zoos throughout the world is the expectation that animals can be readily seen in the wild. If I want to see a jaguar in a zoo, it takes a few minutes to locate the enclosure on the map, if I want to see one in the Amazon, it might take a few years. The requirement for immediate service is often prioritised over practicality, such is the modern consumer focused world – Uber Eats et al. With the wide availability of wildlife documentaries, we may be forgiven for thinking the documented animals are widely observed and easily found, which is al ..read more
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