I've been shifting focus at work, from performance engineering to observability, and that means learning a whole lot. More learning in public! First up: #loki. It's a databases for logs with some interesting design decisions that make it more performant than other logs databases. Here's a video I made with my colleague, Jay Clifford, to share what we've learned, including a demo app that ties in Loki, Grafana, and Alloy: https://youtu.be/1uk8LtQqsZQ
"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was pressured by activists to remove an area with ancient trees that was set to be logged as part of the Poor Windy project"
“This tree sit has exposed the inexcusable malpractice of the BLM and demonstrated the power of community organizing. Direct action is the last line of defense…"
Where will all the microbats go when the NSW forests are logged and clear-felled?
Decline of rare UK bat linked to tree felling for British empire’s fleets
"Rife deforestation 500 years ago aligns with western barbastelle slump, finds study of bat DNA."
"The examples of flora and fauna disappearing because of human excesses over the past 50 years are manifold, but research has found that the decline of a characterful bat began in the UK when its trees were felled for shipbuilding 500 years ago."
"“These bats usually roost in mature oak and beech trees, and move around every few nights – so they benefit from areas with substantial woodland cover. Our findings reveal that the northern and southern British populations have declined over several centuries, beginning about 500 years ago. This coincides with a period of widespread tree-felling to supply wood for colonial shipbuilding. It is likely that the decline we found was triggered by this loss of woodland – which has continued since that period.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/14/decline-of-rare-uk-bat-linked-to-tree-felling-for-british-empires-fleets
Another tree was cut down along the trail. I think they're trying to eliminate some of the growth to prevent a fire, but I didn't see anything wrong with this particular tree.
I have to assume the Forest Service knows what they're doing.
For more than 40 years, the tribes in Maine have had to play by different rules than other indigenous groups across the country, and they have suffered in tangible ways as a result. Now, a push for greater tribal autonomy has come to a head
"18th-century treaties were never intended to deed away land. Like many American #Indigenous groups, the #Wabanaki viewed stewardship as a communal undertaking — they didn’t share European conceptions of private land ownership. Unattuned to this foreign mindset, the Wabanaki signed treaties assuming the documents outlined land use, not ownership."
By Rachel Slade
March, 2024
"The #HoultonBandOfMaliseets’ administrative headquarters, built to resemble a log cabin, sits on a small tract of tribal land in Aroostook County, just north of where I-95 intersects the Canadian border. A few steps away, the #MeduxnekeagRiver roars past, the sound of rushing water a reminder of the harm done by 19th-century log drives, when clearing the river of obstacles turned the flow fast and shallow. A decade ago, the Maliseets took it upon themselves to start a #restoration project, partnering with federal and state agencies and nonprofit groups to add boulders and bends to the Meduxnekeag. To date, they have covered a four-mile stretch, recreating conditions that will cool and oxygenate the water, in order to help insects, birds, and fish thrive. The work requires patience. So does much else. The river is hardly the only historical damage tribal leaders around the state have been attempting to repair.
"One of the four remaining Wabanaki tribes whose forebears arrived in Maine more than 10,000 years ago, the Maliseets inhabited an area now split between the United States and Canada long before the existence of an international border. Chief #ClarissaSabattis, who wears her heather-brown hair in two long, thick braids that drape over her shoulders, was elected to lead the #Maliseets in #Maine in 2017. Since then, she says, she has struggled daily with the complex legal relationships the tribes have with the state government, dictated by the 1980 #MaineIndianClaimsSettlementAct.
"The terms of the settlement were the result of a decade of legal wrangling (and centuries of fraught dealings before that) that resulted in the state wielding unprecedented power over tribal affairs. The tribes have come to find the arrangement both burdensome and unjust. 'Our tribal council is our governing body,' Sabattis said when I met her at the Maliseet administrative offices. 'We should have full authority to make the laws and serve our people without interference from other governments.'
"Several years ago, the Maliseets, Mi’kmaq, #Passamaquoddy, and #PenobscotNation banded together and formed #WabanakiAlliance to collectively push for #TribalSovereignty. Most of the country’s 570 other federally recognized tribes are sovereign, which in the context of tribal affairs implies a sort of quasi-independence: through a direct nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government, indigenous groups can run their own communities. They administer their law enforcement, courts, schools, health care, and civil infrastructure on their reserved lands with federal assistance and funding — and, unlike in Maine, can do so without state-level interference. Sovereignty also means that if the tribes believe the state has violated their federally protected rights, they have recourse both through federal agencies and courts. It’s a system under which tribes across the nation have begun to flourish in recent decades."
"If the #WabanakiTribes were #sovereign, they would need to be consulted on every land-use decision that might impact their territory. Potential harms to human health, water and air quality, or plants and animals would be grounds for blocking commercial activity. The influential #MaineForestProductsCouncil lobbies for #timberland owners, #logging companies, and #mills, including Maine’s largest landowner, the Canada-based #JDIrving company, which controls 1.25 million acres in the state. It has also been one of the most forceful opponents of #TribalSovereignty, arguing that any additional regulatory hurdles would stifle economic activity in the #MaineWoods."
‘Revolutionary’: EU Parliament votes to criminalise most serious cases of ecosystem destruction
"Countries will have two years to put the updated directive, which covers crimes 'comparable to ecocide', into national law. Ecosystem destruction, including habitat loss and illegal logging, will be punished with tougher penalties and prison sentences under the EU’s updated environmental crime directive."
The former federal leader of the Greens & six supporters spent Sunday night at a #logging site in the Styx Valley after harvesting machines moved in about a week ago.
The Biden administration has announced a plan to protect America's remaining old-growth trees in national forests from commercial #logging.
Timber industry leaders, however, are most definitely not fans of the proposal.
They want the administration to let them keep "thinning" old-growth #forests. They want a green light to log other forests before they even get a chance to become old-growth.
The #Oregon Timber Industry Won Huge #Tax Cuts in the 1990s. Now It May Get Another Break Thanks to a Top Lawmaker.
As the cost of fighting #wildfires increases, state Sen. Elizabeth Steiner has proposed a bill — developed in consultation with the #logging industry — that would shift millions in expenses away from the biggest landowners and onto taxpayers.
Looking to build a simple #python#app on top of my search project for a nicer #UI and eventually doing some #monitoring & #logging of user activity. Haven’t worked on this since uni when we used #flask and sometimes a bit of #django. Anyone have any good insights / best practices / favorite reference for something like this?
A great introduction to how to use #Python's #logging package. Concise, with modern best practices, and diving deep enough to actually explain all of the main parts in the logging package and how they interact, without being too long.
It explains how to set up logging for your Python application (or library, at the very end of the video) and has some great examples (e.g. how to log asynchronously to a remote destination).
"In the U.S., forests take up 12% of the nation’s #GreenhouseGasEmissions annually and store the carbon long term in trees and soils.
Mature and old-growth forests, with larger trees than younger forests, play an outsized role.
Remarkably, however, #logging is hardly considered in the Forest Service’s initial analysis, although studies show that it causes greater carbon losses than wildfires and pest infestations."
The U.S. Forest Service recently started a process that could restrict #logging of old-growth forests and #trees in all 128 #NationalForests. This nationwide forest plan amendment will protect some climate-saving trees, but it leaves open #loopholes that could allow logging of many others. The agency's proposal also lacks safeguards for #MatureTrees, which it defines as "the stage of forest development immediately before old growth."
Poland to halt logging in 10 of its most ancient forests
"#Poland is home to some of Europe’s last surviving ancient woodlands but its forests have been devastated by an onslaught of #logging.
Paulina Hennig-Kloska, who was appointed climate and environment minister last month after far-right and nationalist parties failed to form a coalition, said on Monday that the half-year moratorium in forests across the country was the first step to limiting logging."
"While nearly 56 million acres of well-established trees at least a century old remain in the region, logging has shattered this forest, leaving behind a patchwork of isolated stands of trees that has created a landscape less able to support wildlife, according to the study. And it has made the land more susceptible to #wildfire, scientists say."
Southeast Asia is home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, making it a pivotal region for global efforts to address the biodiversity crisis and climate change. But intense development pressure and global consumption are transforming the region’s landscapes, fragmenting forests, degrading waterways...
Shrinking civil space and persistent logging: 2023 in review in Southeast Asia (news.mongabay.com)
Southeast Asia is home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, making it a pivotal region for global efforts to address the biodiversity crisis and climate change. But intense development pressure and global consumption are transforming the region’s landscapes, fragmenting forests, degrading waterways...
Firm at the centre of Vanuatu logs issue is not a Chinese company says Embassy (www.rnz.co.nz)
The Vanuatu Forest Industry Limited is a Vanuatu company and not a Chinese company, according to China's Embassy in Port Vila.