Author: Marina

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saviours vow to keep the red flag flying

Published Date: 09 November 2005 Click on thumbnail to view imageBy Grant Woodward

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ITS flame red coat was once a familiar sight in gardens and woodlands the length and breadth of Yorkshire.

The mischievous exploits of Squirrel Nutkin in the popular tales penned by Beatrix Potter won the red squirrel a place in the hearts of children everywhere.
However, the species now teeters on the brink of extinction – pushed there by a ruthless transatlantic rival.

The American grey squirrel has over the years muscled in on its traditional food supplies to the point where greys currently out-number reds by 66 to one.
The invasion has raised the very real threat that the red squirrel will disappear for good.Thankfully, help is now at hand.
A far-reaching plan to save the red squirrel from being wiped out was formally launched today by leading scientists and conservation experts.The North of England Red Squirrel Conservation Strategy aims to bring together wildlife groups as well as landowners, businesses, and the local community in the battle to ensure its survival.

The woodlands chosen will be managed to get the right mix of trees in terms of species and age structure to support healthy populations of red squirrels, but which are less well-suited to the higher energy demands of the larger grey. Targeted grey squirrel control will also take place in “buffer zones” surrounding the reserves to protect the red populations.
Landowners and farmers in the reserves and surrounding buffer zones have already announced their support for the plan.
They will be armed with all the expert advice, training and support needed for effective red squirrel conservation.
The Forestry Commission will also provide support in the form of cash grants to help private landowners with the cost of red squirrel conservation in and around the reserves.


(Full text  at the Yorkshire Evening Post)

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Copenhagen1

Photo: Johan Spanner for The New York Times
Photo: Johan Spanner for The New York Times

Protesters bring out giants of various sorts to depict current woes. These range from the practical – cut down or eliminate meat consumption – to  ghoulish and alien apocalypse-builders.

Climate Refugee Puppets. Photo: Johan Spanner for The New York Times
Climate Refugee Puppets. Photo: Johan Spanner for The New York Times

(What surprises me is how few protest-based image makers utilize any newer media tactics. It could almost be 1975.)

Slide show at NY Times.

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Scared Silly Over Climate Change

I have been revisiting writers focused on climate change, and thought again of Bjoern Lomborg the “climate skeptic.”.
He’s a Danish statistician and the author of the books The Skeptical Environmentalist and most recently Cool It. Environmentalists tend to hate him, although I read Cool It and he has many valid positions on misspent money and hysterical priorities that  are wobbled far off-balance.

When you read his FAQ, you see some sensible opinions:

Lomborg finds that the smartest way to tackle global warming is to invest heavily in R&D in non-carbon emitting technologies, which will enable everyone to switch over to cheaper-than-fossil-fuel technologies sooner and thus dramatically reduce the 21st century emissions. Specifically, he suggests a ten-fold increase in R&D in non-CO2 -emitting energy technologies like solar, wind, carbon capture, fusion, fission, energy conservation etc…. This is entirely in line with the top recommendation from the Copenhagen Consensus 2008, which includes some of the word’s top economists and five Nobel Laureates.

That said, I looked today at his recent news on his web site, and I DO see a reason to find him dangerous:  his recent writing includes an anecdotal series of portrayals of African and Indian poor whose pressing issues are disease, poverty, hunger. These articles – which have been published in the last 6 months in the Wall Street Journal  de-emphasize the urgency of addressing climate change, and tacitly fuel financiers, policy-makers and the public who tend to agree (ironically) with the impoverished subjects of Lomborg’s reports: that climate change is an abstraction, its harms are so far down the line both in terms of time and in terms of consideration.

But some of his complicating the media perceptions is very productive. Like this essay of his from June 2009 The Guardian, entitled Scared Silly Over Climate Change:

Exaggeration also wears out the public’s willingness to tackle global warming. If the planet is doomed, people wonder, why do anything? A record 54% of American voters now believe the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is. A majority of people now believe – incorrectly – that global warming is not even caused by humans. In the United Kingdom, 40% believe that global warming is exaggerated and 60% doubt that it is man-made.

But the worst cost of exaggeration, I believe, is the unnecessary alarm that it causes – particularly among children. Recently, I discussed climate change with a group of Danish teenagers. One of them worried that global warming would cause the planet to “explode” – and all the others had similar fears.

His detractors are vocal!
Here’s one site, Lomborg’s Errors

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forum comments on UK squirrel immigrants

Credit crunch dining
Rename grey squirrel meat as ‘spruce venison’ and watch it fly off the shelves at Waitrose.

so
I dunno. Bloody immigrants – come over here, climb our trees, grab our nuts….

Armstrong and Miller
Kill them. Kill them all.

None of the mamby pamby stuff….
Grey squirrels are non-indigenous vermin that also eat bird eggs and dig up plants to eat the roots, and gardeners often have their entire crops of home grown veg lost in the spring when the grey squiels eat the shoots.
Grey squirrels should be terminated on sight, trapped, poisoned and hunted to extinction in the UK. People caught feeding them should be prosecuted. They have no place here, even though some people find them cute.

Tree huggers
The problem here has been the belief that the grey squirrel is somehow all cute and cuddly. They’re anything but. But it’s good to see that someone in power has realised the need to at least control – if not eradicate – the grey squirrel population. Foxes and rabbits next I hope.

SirClarke
Shooting them is never really going to solve your problem as killing a couple will just leave space for more to come in. Unless you want to spend all your time staking out the bird squirrel feeder and probably maiming a few whilst also scaring off your birds and destroying the feeder with pellets in the process then you probably need another solution.
I would have thought separate bird and squirrel feeders is your easiest solution, just make one lot an absolute pain to get to (covers/greased poles etc) and one really easy for them – even just on the ground.
Squirrels are pretty interesting to watch anyway and seeing as there’s absolutely no hope of ever getting rid of them from the UK you may as well embrace and enjoy them.

R60EST
Apart from the colour , what is the difference between a red and grey squirrel. The red is supposed to be native to britain and given it’s low numbers is a protected species , yet grey ones are vermin . Why ?

[…]
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Once there are too many red squirrels, they’ll be wondering if they have made the wrong choice, for red doesn’t really match the colour of the forests.
Why don’t people scream colour discrimination? Especially the animal rights.

and from Facebook:

Name:
Association for the Nullification of the Grey Squirrel Threat (ANGST)
Description:
Grey squirrels are VERMIN, overgrown tree rats. They out-compete our UK noble native Red Squirrels, and as harbingers of DISEASE they spread their fatal squirrel pox (squirrel parapoxvirus).
We are instigating a REVOLUTION, the rising up against the grey hordes of death.
We must garner support for the eradication of this pest, calling for the total ANIHILLATION of the species on our shores, never ceasing until the last rotting carcass of a grey squirrel is accounted for.
We need to instigate… (read more)
ANGST is a recent splinter group from the “I hate Grey Squirrels” group. It was an almost amicable parting of the ways. We felt that it was not pro-active enough, and not enough blood was being shed. We advocate research (modes of death, tracking devices, etc.), selective breeding of suitable hunting dogs, and the crushing of all dissenters. “I hate Grey Squirrels” was far too tame – it was just all talk.


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Luo Ping

There’s an exhibit up at the Met of Luo Ping’s works until January 10

Hanshan and Shide (detail)
Hanshan and Shide (detail)

… a vivid description of him, his wife, his master + context:

WIT AND NON-CONFORMIST, bohemian and connoisseur, devout Buddhist and self-proclaimed expert on the supernatural, the 18th-century Chinese painter, Luo Ping was all this and more. Luo was a native of Yangzhou, where the Grand Canal meets the Yangzi and the centre of a thriving salt trade. Destroyed in 1645, merchant patronage and increasing affluence during the nascent century of Manchu rule (1644-1911) turned it into a southern cultural metropolis, complete with scholarly and artistic pursuits. Home to more than a hundred renowned painters – according to Li Dou’s Yangzhou huafang lu (Record of the Flower Boats of Yangzhou, 1795), it was synonymous with the ‘Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou’, a loosely knit group of bold individualists. They subjected the traditional tenets of Chinese painting to much experiment, dwelling on the figurative genres of flowers, plants, rocks and portraiture. Labelled guai, ‘eccentric’ for their unconventional ways, they paid homage to no particular school. Luo Ping was the youngest proponent of the ‘Eight Eccentrics’, and although a timely representative of his age, has remained somewhat eclipsed…

Plum Blossom
Plum Blossom

In 18th-century Yangzhou, the plum blossom, Prunus mume, was a living subject. The precursor to spring and sign of renewal, it evoked many associations and sentiments. Jin Nong introduced the classical plum blossom in all its complexities to his pupil. During a six-week stay with the Luo family, he painted the monochromatic Plum Blossoms (1757), inspiring their devotion to the tree, which eventually earned them the accolade, the ‘Luo Family Plum School’. Another partner in Luo Ping’s work was his wife, Fang Wanyi (1732-1779), whom he had married at nineteen, in a ‘modern’ union of like-minded souls. One 10-leaf album, Figures, Flowers and Plants is a unique collaboration by Jin, Luo and Fang; the master painted the first five leaves, the next two are by the couple and the last three feature Luo’s finger painting techniques. In Leaf 3 (1760), Fang Wanyi’s orchids, symbol of moral integrity and female refinement are paired with Luo’s plum blossoms.

– Asian Art

  • Ghost Amusement Scroll (detail)
  • Ghost Amusement Scroll (detail)