This is my jam. Mines are super complex problems. These guys are dealing with abandoned/legacy sites which is even more challenging, since soil for reclamation is usually non-existent. The older the mine, usually the worse it is in terms of contaminants.
I wrote a paper on a mine up north that had Arsenic levels of 9,200 ppm. For reference, soil quality guides for limiting impacts to humans and the environment is 50 ppm…
So yeah, a bit of an issue.
One of the things I like that they are doing is they are using a pretty broad reveg prescription (multiple spp). This will help kick start things.
I mean, there's intelligent, sapient, conscious, instinctive... It's a multi-dimensional spectrum. The problem with trying to label things and put them in boxes (which we instinctively do as a species...) is that we tend to ignore evidence that doesn't fit into a box neatly.
And the reason is simple, multuspecies forest are more dense as they grow organically. Trees with large covers leave space in between, other spiciest may fit in that gaps perfectly.
Experts in in UK predicted that the buildings would be all fucked up and unsafe after 30 years if they didn’t stop using RAAC for everything, but here we are. RIP forests, contemporary history has shown that action will not be taken.
We should make more time capsules specifically for scientists and academic institutions… Instead of “what would be a neat symbol of the times” it’s more like “what can I take a sample of that nobody else will bother to and will otherwise change or decay?”
edit: Like, could a sample of your junk mail be useful someday? A month’s worth of the physical, letterbound, came-in-the-mail stuff, with a careful record of the time period, location and socio-economic status of the receiver.
To be opened 200 years from now, long after all the non-preserved samples have met paper shredders, recycling centers and the carbon cycle.
Sounds like this can easily be solved by installing lights/alarms along the track that are triggered by the train’s approach. If the bears are too drunk to get out of the way when the train gets there the options are either to A) slow the trains down and put the operators on bear watch duty or B) give the bears more time to move and make enough noise/light to kick that movement into high gear
I’m sure there’s heaps of easy solutions, just no incentive sadly. There’s dangerous intersections in my city that have gotten too many people killed and nothing has been done about them for years.
My neighbors used to have a crabapple tree in front of their house; the number of drunken deer I’ve seen has been both hilarious and extensive. Sidebar excluded, bear will still cross the tracks and so the issue is better addressed at the train level. I hate the idea of fences, so I’d opt for sound and visual deterrents
Oh, I'm very aware of animals getting drunk on fallen apples. That's what I assumed this story would be. It's not, though. It's about bears getting drunk on grain that has fallen off of trains to ferment. So it's an entirely different issue.
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