git dem hogs

today marks the return of my joy for academia. I’ve been at tafe a year now but I’ve generally found the level of engagement with ideas kinda low and therefore not super satisfying. I could have just tried real hard anyways, done some bang up jobs. but I never did (lazy)

so now I’m sitting here writing pretty much the last assessment for my diploma, and finally rediscovering that deep satisfaction that uni used to bring me. and of all the things to get excited about,  it happens to be strategising about how best to destroy pigs. millions of them. but I love pigs?? it’s for a course in pest management. I’m specifically researching their damaging effects in cape york, on endangered sea turtle populations. in one survey area on the west coast during the years of 2009-2013, not a single nest survived predation by feral pigs. that is, 100% of eggs got et up by the hungry hogs. 100%. four whole generations just wiped out (from that area). that’s not so noticeable now, but there will come a time when adult turtles just stop showing up on those beaches to breed. so sad

cape york has the highest density of piggies in all of australia, check this map:

depending on the season and climatic conditions for the year, the population in cape york alone fluctuates between one and three million. they have gone troppo. despite being able to weigh up to 200kg+ the breeding capacity of these guys is best compared to rabbits, which is unusual for such big beasties. their extremely flexible omnivorous diet allows them to flourish wherever there is water- they devour native plants and animals, agricultural crops like sugarcane, legumes, fruit and veg, and have even forced some sheep farmers to change to running cattle due to losing 40% of their newborn lambs each year to predation. they are the ultimate survivors

the most common and effective means of control are baiting with 1080 (takes several painful hours to die), and aerial shooting. more humane means like trapping and expert ground shooting are extremely resource intensive and ultimately ineffective, as 75% of a population has to be culled every year in order to affect decline (due to those rabbit-like reproductive rates). 75% of a few million is a fuck-tonne of dead pigs. it’s just not feasible. so they’ve kind of given up on elimination and are just focusing on damage mitigation, like trying to protect sea turtle nests

something to come out of this that has upset me alot is the lack of commercial interest in australia for feral pig products (this is called the much more appealing ‘wild boar’ in other countries). there is a commercial industry, but the vast majority of it gets exported to europe and japan. wild boar has historically been a delicacy there but through over-exploitation their own populations have been lost. infact, australia exports 40% of the world’s wild boar products. so where the hell are they in our supermarkets? not even a squeak. I guess we’re all just grossed out a bit, have this idea they’re dirty and full of worms or something. but if we’re popping them off en masse to europe and japan then I’m pretty sure she’s right mate

it’s an industry already worth well over 100 million dollars, providing employment in rural communities, contributing to conservation efforts, and- hugely- with the potential to reduce our reliance on fucking industrial scale farming. which is just the commercially legitimised version of introduced species destroying native habitat. deer is another under-exploited pest species, though I did see some wid-caught venison in the supermarket for the first time the other day. we need to start shifting our mindsets away from the traditional, and into an integrated conservation/sustainability approach. there are millions of tasty animals destroying our last remaining pristine ecosystems- if you need to eat a living thing, eat that guy, no?

I identify with vegan principles to a large extent. where I differ is on the wholesale write-off of consuming animal products. the cycle of life doesn’t upset me; industrial scale farming is the bad guy here, with its unnsustainable practices, environmental degradation, and cruelty. I’m lucky enough that I don’t even need to eat animal  products with my current privileged aussie lifestyle; I have access to non-animal protein sources from all over the world. legumes shipped from south america, nuts from vietnam, tofu made in where ever tofu is made. that’s great. but I actually don’t want my diet to come from every corner of the globe, burning fossil fuels and consuming other valuable resources to make it to my plate. afterall it is just food, a part of life that ultimately has a mundane purpose. that purpose is to sustain me. I mean…amazing food can bring be to my knees; it’s possibly the closest thing I have to a religion. but I acknowledge that having non-perfunctory food every day is an enormous privilege

here’s a trendy word for you, ‘locavore’. that’s what I aspire to. use only what is grown, foraged, traded, or (as it is increasingly seeming acceptable to me) hunted locally. so in that way I want to learn how to hunt and prepare animals, because a localised diet would struggle to bring me enough protein and iron etc. one feral pig would feed me for a year. that is amazing. I would be so insanely thankful for that, particularly after the hard work and visceral challenge that should be involved with taking a life to sustain your own

anyways in conclusion after that personal tangent: feral pigs, deer, camel, whatever. let’s eat them instead please and save the olive ridley and flatback sea turtles

belye nochi pochtalona

last night I had a hankering for a quiet, beautiful film. after a bit of reading I found out about this gem, the postman’s white nights, which sounds clunky in english but is really quite lovely in russian. it is set in northern russia in an isolated community. the cast are actual villagers. it apparently took the film makers a year to find the right man to be their protagonist

it is a truly unassuming film. it just follows the postman, lyokha, living life in an absurdly beautiful yet remote part of the world. the performances were so compelling at times that I’m left wondering how much was scripted and how much was just pure documentation. particularly the moments with his neighbour’s son timur, and kolobok (which means ‘bun’), a chronic drunk. something that really strikes me in russian cinema is how proud they often are of their hard-living rural culture and history. there really are an abundance of films about these people’s stories- never romanticised, always necessarily bleak. but still proud. the postman’s white nights is the closest to a rosey picture of country life I’ve seen from russian cinema, and I suspect that to most people it would still seem harsh. I thought it was so wonderful, so humane. and with landscapes so intensely luscious that you can’t possibly fill your eyes up enough with them

cities are really only a modern phenomenon in most of russia. the rest is basically made up of these small villages. they are forgotten places that the state’s wealth has never quite reached. I read one review that described their lifestyle in the film as “neolithic”- I thought that was a bit harsh. regardless, there is increasing desperation as the cities draw away their young, leaving the old to fall into decrepitude along with their beautiful wood cabins and vegetable gardens. I really enjoyed this movie, with its elements of sweetness and contentment, for the alternative picture it painted of what is typically portrayed as a brutal existence

p.s. no torrents exist for it on english sites, so you’ll have to grab it from a russian site. I used this one which has heaps of different file sizes. then get the english subtitles here

clouds

rain has finally arrived in the valley. proper, drenching rain. the grass has been so dry it is like walking on sticks. it seemed like the heavy black cloud was going to slide by to the south of our valley, as it too often does, so I hiked to the top of the hill to see what was in store for us. though the darkest part of the front did sidestep coolabine, a thick wall of rain dropped over mapleton, through the obi valley, then came to spend the day with us. the raindrops were fat and cool and my heart bunched all up as it soaked through my clothes. I felt like our plants’s desiccated leaves, slurping up the water, filling out and flushing green again. it is hard to concentrate when you are so thirsty. now I am smashing out assessments that have been sitting untouched for weeks. still not sure what my brain function is proportional to; it could just be rain. but maybe it’s general ambiance, or change, or ease of living. when an area is dependent on regular rains like it is here, the struggle to survive becomes apparent pretty quickly during scorching weather. you can really feel the teetering, and it has a psychological effect. you can’t help but end up stressed and anxious and depleted on some level. with the rains yesterday and a drizzly day today, life is back on track, the plants are relieved and so am I