I know, I know, but: The president of the US saying, literally, "we're going in" in reference to sending the military to an American city for no reason beyond terrorizing the local population should be the most immediately impeachable shit imaginable

I know this is not a unique observation but public health was basically created to deal with the Spanish flu, and then a century later COVID hit and killed twice as many people and our response was to destroy public health

Fosso mama needed a nap.

This looks very cool Zoogeochemical niche construction: how animal-mediated biogeochemistry affects evolution: Trends in Ecology & Evolution www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Restaurant owners tell the Washington Post that sending troops into civilian areas seems to have scared off their customers www.washingtonpost.com/food/2025/08...

Trees are starting to come down in our small mammal exclosure study. @ambystomax.bsky.social found the first potential casualty this week 😩 (I still think we can save it!)

My new @science.org editorial on the role of scientists in defending democracy is out today. As authoritarianism takes hold in the US, we must fight for the democratic principles that enable a free society and scientists have a key role. I hope you'll join us. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

“More than 62,000 emails and 5,000 calls in the first couple weeks, all but a few in vehement opposition to Lee’s plan.” “‘People were fired up. It was like a declaration of war.’”

Join us at the University of Washington in the #HarveyLab in the School of Environmental & Forest Sciences. We're currently recruiting a postdoc in forest disturbance & landscape ecology for a project focused in western US + w/ international collaborators. Details below. Apply by end of August!

Hey, as a librarian I need to tell you: Our funding depends on usage. So go ahead and check out that book even if you don't think you'll finish it. No one will know. Check out that DVD even though you might not like it. Get ambitious in your quest for knowledge.

www.cnn.com/2025/08/12/e... If no news is good news, no data must be great news.

I'm giving a talk on Tuesday about carnivores as dispersers of mycorrhizal fungal spores as part of a special session on fungal spore dispersal. Come check it out if you are here in Baltimore and like fungi, carnivores, or trophic interactions. #ESA2025

Everybody needs to call this what it is: extortion

Obviously a lie, since the definition of PhD-level expertise, standard across universities worldwide, is that you can produce original knowledge.

And Congress certainly did not grant these authorities with the Director of Management and Budget, no matter how much he wants to be a deputy dictator. 3/3

We are on a bullet train to the end of US science, and possibly the country as a whole, when political appointees are reviewing every scientific grant submitted to NIH to determine if The Regime finds the science acceptable.

Years ago, at a workshop we held on changing wildfire risk in western Washington, I was struck by the analogy that preparing communities for megafires in our fuel-rich forests is similar to tsunami: rapid evacuation, because they can't be fought. Nice coverage by @rdzombak.bsky.social. Gift link.

Interesting thread. There’s also a really interesting podcast series - “on the divided dial” - about why conservative media dominates talk radio. www.nypublicradio.org/2022/11/15/w...

This is real I shit you not

Please, please, please-submit to good journals (society + reputed publishers), respect peer review, and do your reviews with integrity. So important. Thanks to all of you who do. @steve-carpenter.bsky.social @esajournals.bsky.social #Ecosystems

It is not “deal-making.” It is extortion built on Christopher Rufo’s idea of “taking down” one or more elite university. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/u...

the USA built a system of higher education so good that smart/rich people from across the world came here, spending billions to learn here, subsidizing education for Americans while spending money to live in our cities and towns. our government arbitrarily decided we should stop doing that

Also, “echo” ??

A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.

The COVID-19 lockdowns presented a natural experiment to examine how animals respond to recreation in National Parks. It's a lot more complicated than you might think:

Show me your budget, and I'll show you your values

Paying attention to the USDA reorganization plan? Comment window is open. www.usda.gov/about-usda/n...

Lemme just say if President Bernie Sanders had unilaterally imposed, by executive fiat, hundreds of billions of new taxes, personally browbeat executives about job cuts and investments and then fired the head of BLS, the Chamber of Commerce and the business orgs would not be sitting idly by.

Unquestionably the most dangerous and corrupt attack on the independence of US economic data in American history. Trump is firing the head of the BLS, a longtime civil servant confirmed 86-8 by the Senate, simply because the job numbers came in below his expectations today

In case you feel like you don't have enough to worry about, I present to you... radioactive wasps. 🪲🪳 apnews.com/article/radi...

The fact that literally zero outlets ever cover crime decline as a story is a huge reason. (And before you yell at me, we do!)

Paula MacKay recounts our latest backcountry trip--to an area scarred by wildfire--in this gritty blog post. Hear (and see) what a trip into the wilderness is like for a field biologist. @woodlandparkzoo.bsky.social paulamackay.com/blog/the-pas...

This is an absolute shame. First the DDIG now the PRFB. Opportunities to support students and postdocs in EEB are already so limited. The PRFB was life changing for me - it provided the freedom and opportunity to chase interesting questions and grow as a PI.

Wow, got a grant that I applied for almost a year ago. I’m not used to unexpected good news these days!

Administration: "Meanwhile, global GHG concentrations in the upper atmosphere have continued to rise...all without producing the degree of adverse impacts to public health and welfare in the United States that the EPA anticipated in the 2009 Endangerment Finding." US public health and welfare:

the one thing i genuinely did not anticipate from this administration was its vicious, know nothing hostility to any and everything that might even be adjacent to science and scientific research. they genuinely one to destroy the entirety of the nation’s research capacity. and for what, exactly?

The take-home message is clear. Overlooking nature’s tree planters risks missing ‘win-win’ pathways for both climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation.

Our new study shows how animal biodiversity loss is a climate problem: tropical forests recover far less carbon where seed dispersers have declined. We’re not just losing forests – we’re losing their ability to regrow. Reversing that trend could align biodiversity recovery with climate solutions.🧵

In which i assert that Albuquerque is #1 for urban roadrunners (a claim more suitable for NPR than for peer review) one.npr.org/i/g-s227-664...

Service Journalism - News you can use. The Big Bad Bill ends Federal tax credits for residential rooftop solar but if you install it by December 31, 2025 you can still get the 30% rebate for the project cost!

“Continue” to coexist with salmon wrongly implies that they have *ever* coexisted with salmon.

U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Michigan's 13th Congressional District, is sponsoring a bill that would ban hunters from intentionally placing food on federal public lands to attract bears. 👏

The EPA has eliminated its research division, which for decades has provided the science behind regulations on clean air, clean water, and toxic chemicals. The US can afford to monitor, research, and regulate the impacts of industries on human and environmental health. We are just choosing not to.

Trump and Elon picked a fine time to chase thousands of red-carded employees out of Interior and the Forest Service.

👋

i think it is bad that the president's budget director thinks congress is an advisory body and that the constitution is a set of recommendations www.huffpost.com/entry/russ-v...

More fans of the exclosures

🚨 New Paper in Eco Apps 🚨 - Our research team at USFS PNW Research Station used a long-term adaptive management experiment to test the effects of forest thinning on wildlife habitat in the Tongass National Forest 🧵 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social

I talked to a NOAA colleague yesterday who told me that 75% of the federal employees of his division have left and he’s worried about their ability to get work done even if Congress funds NOAA at some level. The devastation to science will be felt for generations.