The BBC Natural History unit is one of Sir David Attenborough's finest achievements. They are head and shoulders above the rest of the world when it comes to wildlife film making. Amazingly talented people given the time and resources they need to do truly spectacular things.

I don't understand. If you are selling at 5kw/h during daylight, why are you seeing only slight decline in your bill? It should be near zero, if not a check written to you if you are careful to not use much at night. I went from $4-500 per month electric bills (we have an electric hot tub that sucks major juice) to $30 bills in summer, and under $100 in winter. My system cost around $40K, and I got back around $5K (and lost out on tons more because when I bought it the tax rebates didn't roll over and I didn't use them all). I live in N California, where it's incredibly foggy, and it still took under 9 years to pay for itself in savings. Had I been able to use all the rebate (like you can now, it rolls over until you use it up) it would have been a year earlier paying itself off. Since the system should last 20 years, that's a great deal, even for you at 11-15 years to pay itself off, that's still 5-9 years of free juice, and 20 years of never losing power (if you have batteries).
Another benefit is from decentralizing power production. That makes you immune from most failures or any possible attacks on the system.
I do agree, it's not a perfect solution, and not 100% pollution free, but it's a great solution for most, if done right. The carbon costs are relatively small, and a one time event.

I'm all for nuke if done responsibly, which means not on coastlines, built with failsafe design features that don't require power to halt the reaction and store the fuel, and not experimented with to get a bit more power out (which caused Chernobyl and 3 mile island as I understand it).

Hydro, on the other hand, is always incredibly damaging to rivers, which along with providing the water we need, feed what little wildlife we have left. I am against any new hydro projects and advocate removing the failing one's we have now. They are short lived under the best of circumstances, but the damage they do is often permanent.

I wonder what was wrong with that bear. It was obviously having trouble before they got there to be 'sleeping' out in the open like that. That's not normal bear behavior.
I wonder if they (the state/rangers) did an autopsy.
I've never seen anything like that in nature.
This makes me really sad, and a bit worried that we might start hearing about BCD (Bear Collapse Disorder-related to CCD in bees). I know up here in N California, we have a serious issue with very low water in our rivers causing warm water, which allows toxic algae to bloom, devastating our salmon (and other river fish) population. I have no idea if that's happening in Alaska too.
I wonder if this is related, either from eating tainted fish or drinking the water. It can kill healthy, well fed dogs within minutes of drinking it, so I'm curious what it's doing to the struggling wildlife that has no other source of water. I've not heard or seen any studies on that.
That's likely just one more part of the disaster that is the California drought. Fingers crossed we get some good rain this winter, if not things here are going to get a bit Thunderdome-y.

I don't think so, Dumb ways to Die was by McCann, and Crocwise isn't on their list of credits. I'm sure they had outside help, but the only credits I've seen say NT Parks and Wildlife.

The scary thing is that while in Australia it seems like the wildlife tries to kill you, in Russia it seems like the earth itself wants you dead.

Well, that and meteorites.

and winter...

From my investigation, that's incorrect.
The places in China where hand pollination is used still have bees. The reason they do hand pollination is they switched to a very few varieties of apples and pears...and apple and pear trees need a DIFFERENT apple or pear tree to pollinate, so if you only have one apple variety (the norm there) it won't self pollinate, no matter how many bees there are. Also, climate change is putting the bee cycles and the tree cycles out of synch, making natural pollination even more difficult or impossible. By hand pollinating, they are able to have less than 10% 'pollination' trees to 90% 'fruiting' trees, and pollinate on the tree's cycle. THAT'S why production was better with hand pollination, not because people could do it better, but humans could target which pollen to use on which flower/tree. Also, commercial beekeepers won't 'lend' (rent) their hives out, or require high payments for them pricing most farmers out, because farmers there still use pesticides that kill bees through the pollination seasons.

Other areas that used to do hand pollination have stopped thanks to education. Now they plant more variety (so the bees/insects/birds CAN pollinate for them) and use less pesticides (that they actually didn't realize would kill bees) and are getting better yields for less money than the Chinese.

EDIT: These 'studies' always seem to ignore the incalculable cost of removing all the natural food pollinated by bees, and the collapse of many food webs caused by the loss of that food base. If people are spending cash to do the pollination work, you can be certain they'll go to great lengths to NOT share that produce with any wildlife.

Also, human hand pollination doesn't work for crops like certain grains and smaller vegetables and nuts, main human food sources. It only works for foods where a single pollinated flower will produce something worth the cost of pollination...grains simply don't, and neither do most vegetables, fruits, or nuts. Only large fruits or vegetables could use this economically. So while you're correct, it CAN be done, doing it across the board would probably quadruple the cost of average foods, if not worse.

WIKI-" If humans were to replace bees as pollinators in the United States, the annual cost would be estimated to be $90,000,000,000.[4]"

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/will-we-still-have-fruit-if-bees-die-off/

We had a squirrel behave a bit like this in our yard a few years ago. It kept trying and failing to climb a tree, couldn't get more than a foot off the ground without falling off backwards. We happened to know someone who volunteers at a local wildlife rescue center, so I put on some thick gloves and grabbed it in a nice soft towel, then put it in a cat carrier. A few days later we heard back that it had made a full recovery, and they suspected it was drunk. Turns out that when doing some home renovation my father in law had moved our compost bin slightly, but not all of the compost that it was covering. We assume the squirrel got into some old fruit that had fermented and got good and tore up.

It seems the Australian wildlife is no longer content with trying to kill everybody, they're now into boosting cars as well:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2015/feb/24/koala-tries-to-drive-in-pictures

What I said was mostly in jest, but I will entertain my learned colleague's well-reasoned arguments with a response.

"Squirrel fella didn't know what was going on"? That's right. He didn't. He didn't know the intentions of the human, other than his general instinct of "stay away from non-squirrels." His fear of him was totally justified.

Deus Ex Machina? There was no unexpected intervention which led to a happy ending here, that is my point. The squirrel expected the guy to grab him, he just didn't want him to. My point is that if the guy had kept on riding down the river, the squirrel would have been fine. But for his interference, the squirrel wouldn't have been drowning. His actions were negligent. His actions caused a situation of peril for that squirrel. If the squirrel had jumped toward the man and entered the calm part of the river and failed to swim, I might agree that intervention would have been necessary. Instead, the squirrel jumped in the exact opposite direction of the person, likely fearing for his life and choosing the most direct escape route, thus dooming himself. But he wouldn't have jumped that way if the guy hadn't been there. We can't know where he would have jumped, but I doubt it would have been in the most violent part of the river. Animal instincts aren't dumb, otherwise that squirrel would have been long dead.

Guy saved his life? Did he? Did we see a drowned squirrel swimming away from the rock before the guy even got there? Was there something that I missed in this video? Was the squirrel in imminent danger of being eaten by a vicious squirrel-eating miniature river-swimming orca? My point is the guy put the squirrel in danger simply by being there. Even after the squirrel jumped, it is not known that the squirrel would have drowned if the man had simply swam away. We assume because we think that squirrels are shitty swimmers.

Self-righteous? Did I say that I don't touch wildlife? Did I say that I might not have done the same thing in his position? No. I am simply saying that we should all abide by the general principle that wild animals do not need our help. Our interactions with them should be constrained to watching them pass and keeping them out of our areas when necessary and shooting and eating them when legal and not deleterious to the species. None of us should assume that our interactions with wildlife are anything other than a semi-masturbatory effort that serves the single purpose of entertaining us and making us feel good with little to no actual understanding of the animal's position.

Don't feed the wildlife you freaking moron.

Poor island and it's wildlife.

Really like this for natural areas. Now do snowmobiles and require them in areas with wildlife.

You're missing the forest for your own trees concerning these government agencies and how they are used by special interests, people-Lands declared federally-owned then 'managed' in this country have been historically for public use. According to the Sierra Club: "Public lands are used in the production of oil, gas, coal, hardrock minerals, timber, and livestock in addition to being used for roads, power and gas lines, and communication facilities just to mention a few. Likewise, the Public lands are an environmental treasure house for recreation and wildlife and scenic wonder from desert to seacoast, mountain top to prairie, grassland to forest -- a shared heritage for now and the future."

Most generational ranchers don't fuck-up the land, they don't abuse it , it's their goddamn livelihood. They know it's vibe way better than the feds and their little friends....

Bundy was paying to, and had a preexisting deal with Clark County and his damn family had been cattlemen on these lands for a few generations, living in harmony with the goddamn turtles, and not trashing the place like newtbox (god you think you know what the fuckit is you know nothing about except what the TV tells you) here and others use in defense of the encroaching and over-reaching bureaucracy whose ONLY goal is to save their own interests in the rights of this land for their nefarious personal good-ol' boy club purposes.

Urbanization and ominous government with peeps with votes never getting involved in righteous decisions during the process of being ASS-RAPED from behind tomes legislation with special interest laws piggy-backed within legislation has ALWAYS been the method of politicians, licking the asses of the money-men.

If people would get an ACTUAL clue abut how the government works to benefit these cunts, they'd start to sound like people who did their homework instead of self-righteous cunts trying to sound smart.

I am happy to accommodate the cries of 'ignorance' and 'fail', heard all this shit before, so go fuck yourselves unless you have anything else to spew but scripted 'what you think you know' horse-shit. I understand that certain types of dum-basses are quite satisfied with themselves to talk a lot and say nothing but whats fed them.

The United States government fucked the Native Americans, now they're fucvkng cowboys and ranchers......No digression with land and money drunk robber-barons, especially when they have dutiful putties to interpret history to suit their delusions.

Wanna fix the situation America? Stop eating their meat. Try turtle soup, the shits awesome.

First, use by cattle causes damage. Second, if the cattle didn't 'use' the land (as the law has said it shouldn't for well over a decade), wildlife could, and the few minimal remaining wildlife areas are a legitimate use (unless you believe humans have dominion over all and should use it all up ASAP), so the land is not "unused land" to most.
I must believe his bill also includes many penalties (if not mostly penalties) for not paying it for decades, and fines for grazing on non-grazing land. Common resources are exactly that, common, and not for one person to convert to their own (illegal and damaging) uses (excluding other permitted uses), especially not for free.