FERN’s Friday Feed: Conservationists vs. the barn cat
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The twilight of the American barn cat
Ambrook
“The notorious barn cat — perched atop a tractor, chasing mice, napping on bales of hay — was a sight once seen on virtually any American farm. Beloved for their pest control skills, domesticated felines arrived in North America in the early 1600s and quickly put themselves to work for farmers,” writes Patrick Kuklinski. “Now, barn cats are fading from many of their former haunts — and many believe their disappearance is long overdue.”
How much would you risk to catch a big striped bass?
The Atlantic
“Wetsuiting is a form of saltwater fishing that involves wearing a wetsuit and wading or swimming out to offshore rocks—almost exclusively at night, often during storms—to access deeper water or faster currents than can be reached in traditional waders. The quarry are striped bass, a fish that migrates every spring,” writes Tyler Ausin Harper. “Although ‘stripers’ … can be caught during normal waking hours, the largest members of the species, some more than four feet long, usually come close to shore at night. Stripers prefer inclement weather and rough water, which make ambushing their prey easier, but also make conditions more dangerous for the men—wetsuiters are nearly all men—who chase them … The hazards of this hobby … are often baffling to outsiders, who quite reasonably wonder why we bother. Perhaps not surprisingly, wetsuiting has long attracted highly particular personalities: cranks, brooding combat veterans, adrenaline junkies, recovering alcoholics, and spiritual questers.”
Waves are people, too. At least in one Brazilian city.
Hakai Magazine
“The Brazilian city of Linhares has legally recognized its waves as living beings,” writes Isabella Kaminksi. “In early August 2024, the coastal municipality passed a new law that gives the waves at the mouth of the Doce River, which runs to Brazil’s Atlantic coast, the intrinsic right to existence, regeneration, and restoration. This means the waves should continue to form naturally and their water must be clean. The new law requires the city to protect the physical shape of the river, the ecological cycles that make the waves unique, and the water’s finely balanced chemical makeup through public policies and funding. It also codifies respect for the waves’ cultural and economic role in the community, explains Vanessa Hasson, an environmental lawyer and executive director of the Brazilian NGO Mapas, which advocates for the country’s nascent rights-of-nature movement.”
For cave dwellers, a bag of Cheetos is ‘world changing’
The Washington Post
“When a recent visitor to Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico dropped a bag of Cheetos inside one of the caves, losing a snack was probably an inconvenience. But to the tiny microorganisms who call the cave home, the food can be a ‘world changing’ force, park officials stressed in a post on social media … The processed corn in the Cheetos, softened by the humidity of the cave, created ‘the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi,’ park officials wrote. ‘Cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organize into a temporary food web, dispersing the [Cheetos’] nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations … Molds spread higher up the nearby surfaces, fruit, die and stink. And the cycle continues.’ Some members of this ‘fleeting ecosystem’ are cave dwellers, but many are not, disrupting the cave’s delicately balanced ecosystem.”
Greed, gluttony, and the crack-up of Red Lobster
The New York Times
“In June of last year, Red Lobster announced that Ultimate Endless Shrimp — as much as you can scarf down for just $20 — would become an ‘all day, every day’ fixture of the menu. Game on, said America.” As David Segal writes, “As an occasional special over the years, it was always a frantic ordeal. Cooks and servers could barely keep up. Bargain hunters griped about the pace of refills. Cops were summoned to handle diners enraged that they couldn’t get takeaway bags … It was a struggle under the best of conditions, and, last year, Red Lobster was wobbling. Shunned by young diners and crowded by cheaper rivals, the chain would later report that its customer count had plunged 30 percent since 2019 … New management had arrived in 2020 and tried to revive the chain with the corporate version of heart paddles. Thai Union, a seafood giant based in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, administered the shocks in the form of stern lectures, surprise inspections and cost-cutting measures that strained the staff to its breaking point.”