Or is it "zoocide"? Whatever: they can't wash the blood off their hands this time.
"I didn't intend to spend 40 years studying marmots, but new questions kept coming up," confesses a researcher whose professional life was hijacked by this under-reported drama. His perseverance paid off for us all with his "groundbreaking study, published in Nature," revealing to a stunned scientific community that "mountain rodents called marmots are growing larger, healthier and more plentiful in response to climate change." The longer growing season has boosted the plucky creatures' size, strength, and numbers. Unless. Unless we let Al Gore back out of his cage, in which case decades of hard-fought progress in the marmot community could be senselessly undone.
Snapping Back to the Narrative. Someone must have handed our scientist a note from off-camera during the interview, because he hastens to add: "This benefit to marmots is probably short-lived. . . . [I]f there's less snowmelt to nourish plants that marmots forage in the summer, it will severely affect them. In droughts, we've had very high mortality." Marmots cannot catch a break.
The next time you thoughtlessly exhale, or wait to exhale, consider that you're dooming a marmoset to the Scylla and Charybdis of obesity and starvation. Here's a site where you can support marmot research. Look into your hearts and dig into your wallets.
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