This month marks the re-opening of the controversial trophy hunt for at-risk grizzly bears in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Scrutiny of this hunt was ramped up last year with new evidence that…
Emus, as depicted after being seen on the 1800-04 Baudin voyage.
Charles-Alexandre Lesueur/F. Lambert/Wikimedia Commons
Environment minister Greg Hunt’s pledge to appoint a threatened species commissioner is a bright spot on an otherwise pretty bleak conservation landscape. Hunt described the “deep challenge” of species…
Longing to return to its espinal home.
Poco a poco
Rewilding is considered one of the crazier ideas in contemporary conservation. The idea of resurrecting woolly mammoths and setting them loose in Siberia and the American Great Plains or lions roaming…
Forest elephants keeping us on our toes.
Stephanie Schuttler
Much to my excitement, my PhD research was recently published in PLOS ONE. I was studying African forest elephants that live in the dense forests of Central and West Africa to learn more about this understudied…
Greg Hunt, and all environment ministers past and future, could be protected from legal challenge over mining approvals.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Earlier this month, a Senate inquiry paved the way for the Parliament to give Environment Minister Greg Hunt legal immunity against future legal challenges to his decisions on mining projects. If it passes…
Western Australia’s shark kills follow decades of similar policy in Queensland.
AAP Image/Sea Shepherd
One of the most common justifications for Western Australia’s shark cull is the longstanding use of baited hooks - or drum lines - in regions such as Queensland. Two key questions need answering. First…
Contrary to the film of DreamWorks’ imagining, Madagascar is not ruled by King Julien and his colony of lemurs. In fact the status of the lemurs on the island – the only place on earth that they exist…
Addressing the conference on illegal wildlife trafficking in London, Prince Charles said it “broke new ground”, while Prince William said it represented an “unprecedented gathering” that has “never before…
The reaction to the euthanasia of Marius the giraffe at Copenhagen Zoo has highlighted cultural differences in attitudes to animals and death between the UK and Denmark. I first visited the Copenhagen…
Not useful for carrying lunch, unfortunately.
Sam Weber
The rich biodiversity of the UK’s far-flung overseas territories was highlighted recently by a Parliamentary report. Scattered throughout five oceans, these 14 islands account for much of the species biodiversity…
China is the most recent nation to destroy its ivory stockpile. It is the world’s largest market for illegal ivory, and the move is welcome news for threatened elephant populations. Ivory represents a…
Working dawn till dusk to turn $10 billion into dust.
US FWS Mountain Prarie
Confiscated ivory taken from smugglers, traders and tourists by US authorities was crushed to chippings last week, The stockpile of more than six tonnes, amassed since the 1989 international embargo on…
Canaima National Park, home of Angel Falls and many rare and threatened species.
tryktern
Michael Parker, The Conversation e Charlie Williams, The Conversation
Researchers working with the world’s most complete data on threatened species have pinpointed the most irreplaceable regions, whose existence is not only vital to species’ survival, but which are also…
The grey-faced sengi, found only in remote East African forests, is related to elephants.
Francesco Rovero
Kakadu National Park, Western Australia’s Shark Bay and Queensland’s wet tropics are among the world’s most important protected areas for conserving species, according to a study published today in the…
150,000 square kilometres of tropical rainforest is destroyed every year.
Threat to democracy
With current concerns focusing, quite rightly, on controlling carbon emissions, it is easy to lose sight of the need for continued conservation efforts. In fact our recent study published in the Proceedings…
Europe, the world’s most industrialised and intensively managed continent, is going wild. During the past three decades it has witnessed conservation successes with the most unexpected species: Europe…
Royal interest in tigers has cut both ways through the years.
S. Taheri
On the face of it the British royal family’s commitment to wildlife conservation is unmistakable. Perhaps the most well-known work is that of Prince Charles, who in May co-hosted a meeting on illegal wildlife…
Mink may look cute but they’re causing havoc in Scotland.
John McAvoy
Efforts to curb invasive mink are taking a modern turn in Scotland, where a project is providing spotters with an app to log the movements of their targets. MinkApp enable volunteers to upload information…
Researchers in Aberdeen and the RSPB have set up a project that enables Scottish birds to write their own blogs. Readers will be able to track the daily lives of red kites as they travel around the Scottish…
Some readers might find this image distressing, and so they should.
Soggydan
There’s no doubt the slow loris is a cuddly cutie from central casting. It is an animal that could easily have been dreamed up in the studios of the Disney Corporation of the 1950s and I’m afraid that…