The original Bradford pear was supposed to be sterile. Worked out really well :(

Maybe not in forestry, but I still see developers planting them all over the place.

They need to be banned. There are miles and miles of these trees along 32 and 95, and just on my road they’re completely taking over large swaths of woods. (Aided by English Ivy killing of mature trees in the area. That should be banned too).

Where we used to live there was a big brawl once, or the beginnings of one, where there were maybe 30 kids gathered outside the house next door and a girl beating on the door to the house, yelling about how someone had disrespected her (or her cousin? I can't remember). Cops showed up, everybody started getting real belligerent, and come to find out the girl who was trying to start the whole thing had been driven there by her mother. Who was also screaming about disrespect. She kept yelling at the cops and pointing at the house like she expected them to just be like "ok then, yes you're right ma'am, she disrespected someone so we should totally let all these kids start fighting."

The most similar domesticated horses to the original wild horses are probably the small horses the Mongolians are famous for. They’re very sturdy but very small. Horses don’t need to be very large to be effective riding animals, so I’m not sure the delay there was just about size of the animal.

Yeah I was on there yesterday and many of the comments about this story were people going on about how brave he was.

Which is just absurd - let's say (in some fantasyland) the vaccine is actually poison - then the brave thing to do is say "I won't give it" and make a stink at the risk of your personal income and medical license. Pretending to give it in return for cash is just fraud. Cowardly AF....

TLV tree farm in Dayton (Triadelphia Mill rd)

Lord this just brought me to tears. I can't imagine dealing with it on that kind of scale.

I'm not a scientist. Just a random person that has been trying to clear my land of invasives and plant useful native species to help the bugs. It all looks a mess but I rejoice almost every day over some critter or bird or delightful little bit of life that I have here. And every time I feel I'm making progress I start hearing leaf blowers and the neighbors treat their lawns for "pests" and I struggle to explain to people how much more magical it is to have lightning bugs in the summer than it is to have a tennis court lawn.

I can't imagine having studied this stuff for a whole lifetime, investing every fiber of myself in it, to have it reduced to corporate profit flow. My heart just breaks for all of you doing that work.

Life on this planet is so goddamned beautiful and special.