"Even If I Quit Being A Professor And Doing Research, I'm Always Going To Be A Coroner Now".

[hatrack]

Diana Six’s love of the outdoors began before she could form words, run, or collect the bugs and fungi that were precious to her as a child. A tough home life eventually led her to drop out of school and live on the streets. But biology classes in community college helped Six discover her calling in studying various forms of life. “They took me right back to how I was as a kid,” she says.

Now an entomologist at the University of Montana, she has spent the last 30 years researching how bark beetles are decimating pine forests. But a constant, haunting depression has taken over her life. A recent trip to Glacier national park spurred her to vent some of this emotion in a tweet that went viral and resonated with many: “Glacier National Park. 97F in June. Little snow left. 75F degree water. Glaciers disappearing. That is what we hear. But the worst is what most never see.” To Six, the climate crisis isn’t just decimating glaciers and life on Earth. It’s taking her identity with it. She recently spoke to the Guardian about her changing role on the land she loves.

EDIT

"Life doesn’t just deal with this. When I went up Glacier with my students a few weeks ago, the flowers were curling up. At some of the lower elevations, glacier lilies were shriveled, lupins didn’t even open. The flowers should extend for another three weeks and they’re already gone. Any insects or birds that depend upon them, like bees or hummingbirds are in trouble, their food is gone. Bird populations have just baked.

“There have been total losses of a lot of baby birds this year. You see these ospreys and eagles sitting on top of the trees in their nests and those young, they just can’t take the heat. Year after year of that and you lose your birds. “People seem to think of extinctions as some silent, painless statistic. It’s not. You look at birds that can no longer find fish because they’ve moved too far off shore. They’re emaciated, they’re starving to death. We are at the point that there’s nothing untouched.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/21/climate-crisis-glacier-diana-six-ecologist

[woodsprite]

1. The Repubs don't care as long as they're the last ones standing w/ fistfuls of money. nt

[brewens]

2. Wasn't getting rid of the birds part of Bush's Clear Skies Initiative? It's finally paying off.

[jaxexpat]

4. That's my kind of humor. True to the point of pain.

[CrispyQ]

3. Everyone should read this. -nt

[lookyhereyou]

5. another major heads up

like many from all directions all around the globe

will we pay attention and do whats needed

or dither and deign what we should be seeing clearly.

[Ligyron]

6. But it's really all those wind windmills that are killing the birds.

Many people know that. Or so some stable genius once said.

just in case.