Stephen Murphy (smurph)
smurph.bsky.social
Stephen Murphy (smurph)
@smurph.bsky.social

Professor at U Waterloo - Sch Environment, Resources & Sustainability. Ecologist, EIC Restoration Ecology, Botanist, Protected Areas. Grasslands. https://uwaterloo.ca/environment-resources-and-sustainability/blog/you-break-it-we-fix-it .. more

Environmental science 40%
Agriculture 29%

Damn right.
One thing that I’ve become increasingly certain of over the course of this year:

As an academic, I do not have (and never will have) a responsibility to teach students to use Gen AI ‘ethically’ (as if that were possible).

The idea that academics should be doing this is a blight on the sector.

If you think Dr. @colincarlson.bsky.social is kidding below about the G20 intergovernmental panel site linking to the 'best Malaysian casinos', he is not (pandemic-financing.org). No, I don't recommend clicking on the link - the thumbnail link illustrates how right he is.

Dr. Bond was indeed a pioneer in promoting the need for 'open' ecosystems like grasslands and not over emphasizing the notion that afforestation is the desirable default, a concept that can be tied all the way back to Clements' mistakes regarding 'climax' successional states as forests
William Bond challenged the idea that forests are nature’s default, arguing grasslands & savannas are ancient ecosystems.

As mass tree-planting boomed, he warned that blanket afforestation can harm biodiversity and water systems. His work pushed conservation to start with how landscapes function.
William Bond, grasslands researcher who reminded conservation that context matters, has died
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In recent years, one of the loudest ideas in environmental policy…
news.mongabay.com
One thing that I’ve become increasingly certain of over the course of this year:

As an academic, I do not have (and never will have) a responsibility to teach students to use Gen AI ‘ethically’ (as if that were possible).

The idea that academics should be doing this is a blight on the sector.
William Bond challenged the idea that forests are nature’s default, arguing grasslands & savannas are ancient ecosystems.

As mass tree-planting boomed, he warned that blanket afforestation can harm biodiversity and water systems. His work pushed conservation to start with how landscapes function.
William Bond, grasslands researcher who reminded conservation that context matters, has died
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In recent years, one of the loudest ideas in environmental policy…
news.mongabay.com
One thing 2025 made clear: Durable progress on climate in the US will require structural reform to our corrupted political systems. Otherwise, steps forward will always be vulnerable to the bloody clawbacks we saw this year. A political strategy that doesn't center system reform is not "pragmatic."
How do you know whether or not your conservation monitoring program is helping you to deliver outcomes? We have made a checklist of 15 distinct reasons - some more directly connected to outcomes than others.
2025 Georgina Mace Review now out in #ProcB - How monitoring matters for nature #conservation: 15 reasons framed in a theory of change #OpenAccess royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
@invam.bsky.social collection, prairies, and AMF all featured in the awesome article

Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing
These fungi boost plant growth and restore depleted ecosystems, but federal funding for a library housing them has been cut – and it may be forced to close
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Over the Chicago River and thru the hoods.

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Menominee River, Wauwatosa, where I spent many, many hours kicking around from ca. 8 to 12 yrs old. A crummy degraded forest that I seemed to have all to myself most days. It takes so little. I was lucky to have it.

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Merry Christmas one and all, from the Vaders 🎄

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Discussing the spiritual side of nature, why Holly, Ivy and Mistletoe are significant, and how meaning is going being lost. Happy Christmas! youtu.be/hkn_r4DZrxY?...
The spiritual side of nature
YouTube video by Bill Sutherland's Conservation Concepts
youtu.be
Merry Christmas! Please enjoy the opening to this Japanese Christmas concert special that I watch every year.

As far as I can tell, this has otherwise been scrubbed from the internet

nice work!
Experimental evidence that students are more likely to contest grades when they are delivered by an evaluator with a female-sounding name.

"These findings suggest that women in evaluative positions face disproportionate resistance when delivering negative assessments."

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

🎄 Happy Christmas 🎄

#Sheltie 🥰
Fine, whatever, this random cat is your new god of the winter solstice

"Business?!? Mankind was my business. **The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business.**”

- Jacob Marley, A Christmas Carol
“.. We need to get better at treating this like a business,” ICE acting director Todd M. Lyons said .. as efficiently as Amazon moves packages: “Like Prime, but with human beings.”

@washingtonpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
“.. We need to get better at treating this like a business,” ICE acting director Todd M. Lyons said .. as efficiently as Amazon moves packages: “Like Prime, but with human beings.”

@washingtonpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Awful but sums up the reality.
His analogy is that public health has built a temple, an Acropolis, but that will be destroyed. "You don't try to go back and put a scaffold around the Acropolis to fix it. You build the Sistine Chapel. So my advice is detachment from from Legacy organizations that are going to be destroyed."

Don is, once again, spot on.
I am telling you that a large part of their dysfunction is that several Trump officials imagine themselves, constantly, as being in a social media sizzle reel where they display status and dominance over others. Their online personas are driving their actual behavior.
Kash Patel made the FBI buy a custom fleet of armored BMW X5 for him to ride around in. trib.al/9pBbwTB

Patel’s FBI spokesperson claimed—without evidence—that this is actually saving the American taxpayer money. The standard version of the X5 costs about $70,000.
Anyone else have a coauthor who is so much fun to write with that you just find yourself grinning in some combination of satisfaction and pride as you edit a manuscript?

If not, get yourself one.

Rookie numbers. Wait until 330 pm.
a man in a suit and tie says " those are rookie numbers " in front of a window
ALT: a man in a suit and tie says " those are rookie numbers " in front of a window
media.tenor.com
I am telling you that a large part of their dysfunction is that several Trump officials imagine themselves, constantly, as being in a social media sizzle reel where they display status and dominance over others. Their online personas are driving their actual behavior.
Kash Patel made the FBI buy a custom fleet of armored BMW X5 for him to ride around in. trib.al/9pBbwTB

Patel’s FBI spokesperson claimed—without evidence—that this is actually saving the American taxpayer money. The standard version of the X5 costs about $70,000.

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

“Companies welcomed us into intimate spaces without hesitation so everyone who wanted protection could receive it.

At each session, I heard versions of the same small truths:

“My mom told me to make sure I get the shot.”
“Not sure I would’ve had time if you all hadn’t come here.”
What giving flu shots backstage taught me about public health
On or off Broadway, public health lives or dies at the level of ordinary, everyday interactions.
www.statnews.com
Policy on health is clearly broken - politicized, out of touch, reactive and slow. My recent keynote at the Canadian Biosafety Symposium took a big-picture look at how and why that's happening, and how we can turn things around.

Here's a general-audience version, recorded at the Deep River library.
Inquiring Minds 03: Mark Ungrin - Science, Pseudoscience and Public Policy
YouTube video by Deep River Public Library
www.youtube.com
Heads up to artists still using Twitter- Twitter is now adding an "Edit image" button under all images posted on the site that allows everyone to feed it into genAI and modify it as they wish with a prompt
Anyone else have a coauthor who is so much fun to write with that you just find yourself grinning in some combination of satisfaction and pride as you edit a manuscript?

If not, get yourself one.

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

My news to me good news for Dec 23? You can watch laysan albatrosses doing their thing live on Midway Atoll. For those of you with frazzled nerves (all of you?) it is very calming.... Picture below doesn't convey the actual sights and sounds. Give it a try! www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3iK...
Midway Atoll NWR Wildlife Live Camera
YouTube video by Friends of Midway Atoll NWR
www.youtube.com

That would be 'douche canoe'