{"id":5150,"date":"2016-09-11T19:07:31","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T00:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=5150"},"modified":"2016-09-11T19:07:31","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T00:07:31","slug":"schadenfreude-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/09\/11\/schadenfreude-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Schadenfreude"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surely Professor Carl Jones<\/em><\/a>, a conservation biologist who often clashes with fellow environmentalists, felt at least a twinge of the old schadenfreude<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>as he describes some of his conservation work on Mauritius<\/strong><\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\"aldabra-giant-tortoise\"<\/a>

Aldabra Giant Tortoise<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

The original grazers had been giant tortoises, until they went extinct. So I figured we should introduce Aldabra giant tortoises. They were a different species, but it seemed to me they would do the same job. When I talked to my friends about this, they all thought I was mad. \u201cHow do you know they will be an exact fit?\u201d they asked. Botanists were literally purple<\/strong> with rage, saying the tortoises would eat critically endangered plants. I said: \u201cSure, that\u2019s the idea. Your plants won\u2019t survive unless tortoises graze on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

We conducted some studies that showed tortoises would do far more good than harm. It turned out that the seeds of endemic plants that passed through a tortoise\u2019s gut germinated far better than if they hadn\u2019t. After the [Mauritian Wildlife Foundation<\/a>]\u00a0restored the tortoises, the native plants started to come back.<\/p>\n

\u201cKestrel manoeuvres in the dark<\/em><\/a>,” NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (3 September 2016)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surely Professor Carl Jones, a conservation biologist who often clashes with fellow environmentalists, felt at least a twinge of the old schadenfreude\u00a0as he describes some of his conservation work on Mauritius: The original grazers had been giant tortoises, until they went extinct. So I figured we should introduce Aldabra giant \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5178,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150\/revisions\/5178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}