You should write about the evolutionary basis of storytelling?

Used to get stuck overnight there every time I flew in and out of Idaho. Can confirm it's not haunted.

Btw while I have you here, I'm just gonna fanboy out a LITTLE bit and thank you for everything you've done to inspire my own writing. You're on my Mount Rushmore of GOATs.

You're a man of action. Let me know what they say if you get a reply.

I agree, it seems like a Sisyphean task that only adds net suffering to the world, but I'd also be very interested to hear an Oregon wildlife ecologist give counter points.

And this is about the line where I feel out of my depth. My moral framework as a vegan and my training as an evolutionary biologist/ecologist make this particular topic quite difficult to disentangle in my own head. Plus, I'm not an expert in this subfield anyway so I degrees.

Hmm, I found it quite compelling. Sampling over 700 otters for a pathogen that requires the Virginia opossum to complete it's lifecycle and finding 22% infection rate felt like pretty good evidence to me.

But anyway, my point isn't to justify opossum--or any introduced species--culling anyway.

Opossums are also well established nest predators, so the concerns about birds are valid, even if they are less destructive than raccoons or domestic cats.

But we're touching on one of the most interesting discussions in ecology, which is: when does an introduced species become native?

Not an expert on opossums, but have some academic experience with invasive species. Opossums apparently transmit a nasty pathogen to sea otters www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Had no idea this existed! Very fun way to start the day. Wild to think it almost does seem quaint against the lived reality of today...

Would give just about anything for a VanderMeer-penned anti-ICE cosmic horror story set in Portland

Keith you don't have to sell it. We would read CSPAN fanfic if you wrote it.