Luke Macaulay

Helping landowners & land managers improve wildlife habitat. Acoustics to identify what you have. Bringing back bobwhites. Ph.D. Former faculty at UCB & UMD.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

We can solve conservation problems, but we need to do more than simply preserving natural areas and leaving them alone.

Unmanaged natural areas can provide acceptable habitat, but usually far from optimal.

There’s a few reasons for that:

1. land use change and development has so altered the landscape that we need to actively work to represent a diversity of habitats in conserved areas.

2. Natural processes like fire, grazing from native herbivores, and predation by apex predators, which interacted to shape vegetation diversity, are usually absent.

3. Invasive species can dramatically reduce the habitat value of an area

4. A lot of our forests were harvested 80 to 100 years ago, and we now have relatively even-aged stands that lack age and structural diversity needed to support a diversity of wildlife.

Despite all this, we have the knowledge and ability to manage natural areas to support greater biodiversity and abundance.

It often involves targeted disturbance. Warning some of these may surprise you:

-Strategic timber harvest to create structural and species diversity and establish forest understory.

-Herbicide for invasive and undesirable plants,

-Prescribed fire to maintain open grassland areas,

-Timed disking to stimulate wildflowers, and/or

-Targeted grazing to mimic historical herbivory and reduce grass dominance.

Determining how to apply these tools can take a lot of nuance and should be done with forethought, but they can make dramatic improvements for some of our most declining wildlife species.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@lexfridman 100% I feel like it’s insane to fire the founder of a business over this.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

Yeah well progressive don’t cover a flat tire fix on the side of the road despite having roadside assistance that never showed up. They also increased my premium a few weeks after buying it because I cancelled my old policy to switch to them! I’ll try having my grok bot give them a call and see what it can do. Thinking about looking for alternatives after these 2 issues in the first month of switching.

@progressive

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

Japanese stiltgrass is one of the worst invasives in the Eastern US.

I tried mechanical control for years and it didn’t affect it at all. I finally got serious experimenting with herbicides this spring.

I found 3 that each work well, but the price per acre is a 5x difference.

The video gives a detailed breakdown of two of my replicates and how they turned out.

Here’s the pricing by per acre cost based on today’s prices. Imazapic (Plateau), listed last, is the cheapest option.

Pendimethalin 38.7% (Prowl H2O) — $131.95 per 2.5-gallon jug — 4 quarts per acre — $53 per acre

Prodiamine 40.7% (Prodiamine 4L) — $199.95 per 2.5-gallon jug — 26 fluid ounces per acre — $16 per acre

Imazapic 23.3% (Panoramic 2SL / Plateau) — $330.00 per 2.5-gallon jug — 10 fluid ounces per acre — $10 per acre

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@Mignodon @realEstateTrent 😂

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@astro_Pettit @elonmusk Research also suggests that higher wavelength lights common with LEDs are worse for nocturnal insects, turtles, and migrating birds. We can definitely improve on this situation with motion activated and lower wavelength lights.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

Judging from the increasing acorn drop on our trampoline, looks like it’s going to be a pretty good acorn year.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

Mourning dove aging:

You can tell the young of the year by the light colored edges of the feathers.

Works for bobwhite quail too, but for them lgit’s just the primary covert feathers that have it.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@elonmusk Similar division benefits explain why we have 12 inches in a foot. Easy to divide into thirds and quarters without fractions.

[Naval @naval]

Immortality, meaning, and love are readily available - they’re just running around disguised as children.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@WillPhoenix1 @JeremiahDJohns @DavidSacks @grok compare pollution from data centers to lawn maintenance. Assess emissions (including lawn mowers without catalytic combusters), noise, fertilizer, and herbicide.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@Samajaman1 @JeremiahDJohns @DavidSacks It’s probably less in a lot of areas. That’s the max projected area in Texas assuming max buildout, which probably won’t happen given the psyop @DavidSacks talks about.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@ChrisHalbersma @JeremiahDJohns @DavidSacks @grok Compare water use of 500 acres of regularly irrigated turfgrass vs a 500-acre data center campus. Include realistic per-acre ranges, note that not all turf is irrigated, and put national totals in context. Keep it concise and evidence-based.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

Houston, I think we have wild bobwhites in Southern Maryland.

[Quail Forever-Chesapeake Bay @bay_quail]

SoMD Quail!

@LukeRangeWalker exciting!!
https://t.co/CliArIV7xv

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@elonmusk It’s true. Does great work.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@Rothmus I feel like the resurgence of socialism today is due to envy.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

Please define processed foods.

Technically, almost everything we eat has been processed in some way:
• Washing, chopping, or freezing vegetables
• Pasteurizing milk
• Grinding meat
• Making cheese, bread, or yogurt
• Canning beans or tuna

These are often perfectly healthy and have been part of human diets for centuries.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

Besides predator escape cover, blackberries also get you this.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

@robdavisjr54 Mmmm. That’s a gooood lookin pig there.

[Luke Macaulay @LukeRangeWalker]

Great to see more habitat going in on the ground.

And just as important… showing it off to the public and teaching them about what goes into it on tours like this.

[Quail Forever-Chesapeake Bay @bay_quail]

On Saturday (07/11/26) our @quail4ever Chapter celebrated a three-year funding partnership with @MarylandDNR with a habitat walk at Browns Branch WMA.
Our $53,000 in locally raised conservation funds helped make this 500 acre ESH partnership project possible!