Here’s an activity for you this weekend: either staying at home or heading bush, count the number and type of birds you see. It’s all part of BirdLife Australia’s Challenge Count, an annual event that’s…
Indigenous rangers at the Fish River Station in the Northern Territory.
Indigenous Land Corporation
There are places in Australia that are awe-inspiring, spectacular, mysterious; they touch our spirit and help define our nation. Kakadu is one, Uluru another, the magnificent red sandy deserts, the Kimberley…
Feral cats are a triple threat to our wildlife through predation, competition and diseases such as toxoplasmosis.
Eddie Van 3000/Wikimedia Commons
Feral cats are a huge threat to our native wildlife, hunting and killing an estimated 75 million animals across Australia each and every night. But the killing spree doesn’t end there. There’s a parasite…
Going, going, gone: wildlife like the loris are disappearing.
N. A. Naseer
Full marks to colleagues at the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London for the Living Planet Report 2014 and its headline message which one hopes ought to shock the world out of its complacency…
New research shows golden orb weaving spiders are larger in cities compared to their relatives in the bush.
Lizzy Lowe
Find yourself thinking that the spider living in your garden is the biggest you’ve ever seen? You could be right. New research shows some spiders are getting larger and even doing better in cities than…
Burnoffs in the mallee region of Victoria may have done lasting damage to the environment.
The smell of smoke in the autumn and spring air is an increasingly familiar one to many Australians. It signifies that time of year when land management agencies in southern Australia feverishly try to…
The National Trust has reported that the seasonal activities of plants and animals in the UK have been exceptionally early in 2014. Spring and summer have come early – and observations from some parts…
Quolls have been hit hard by the introduction of cane toads, foxes, cats and other big changes over the past 200 years – but if we act fast, we may be able to save them.
Bronwyn Fancourt
With sharp teeth and an attitude to match, quolls are some of Australia’s most impressive hunters. Ranging from around 300g to 5kg, these spectacularly spotted marsupials do an out-sized job of controlling…
Cattle drovers have won back the right to graze livestock in the Australian Alps - against scientists’ advice.
AAP Image/Bob Richardson
From reef dredging, to shark culling, to opening old-growth forests to logging, environmental policies are leaving Australia’s wildlife exposed to threats. The reason, we propose, is that society and government…
American wolves show us how important large predators are for conservation.
Doug McLaughlin
We know that introduced predators such as foxes and cats are one of the greatest threats to Australia’s wildlife, but what is the best way to control them? Many Australian ecologists argue dingoes are…
Not all that which is greening is green.
André Künzelmann/UFZ
The European policies designed to encourage a more biodiverse environment that is better able to support wildlife and plants are failing. In fact, our analysis of the reforms designed to “green” the EU…
Seeing orangutans like Big Ritchie in conservation areas can raise vital support to protect his cousins in the wild, new research shows.
Big Ritchie looks up from his pile of bananas, unperturbed by the flock of tourists taking his photo. Sprawled around him, mother orangutans* and their fluffy orange babies groom affectionately, chase…
The recent public exhibition of portraits painted by George W Bush, retired President of the United States, has managed to throw a lot of people into a tizzy. Critiques of his work ranged from relatively…
How does a young animal find its way to an unfamiliar location hundreds or thousands of kilometres from where it was born? A reasonable idea might be to find an older, experienced migrant and follow. This…
A pair of lesser flamingos in Mumbai’s busy port area.
Madhusudan Katti
Mention the word biodiversity to a city dweller and images of remote natural beauty will probably come to mind – not an empty car park around the corner. Wildlife, we think, should be found in wild places…
Without tigers, our ecosystems will suffer.
Flickr/kohlmann.sascha
Humans have an innate fear of large predators, and with good reason. Nobody wants to be a shark or a lion’s next meal. But new research in the journal Science shows that our inability to live with these…
We are losing our large carnivores. In ecosystems around the world, the decline of large predators such as lions, bears, dingoes, wolves, and otters is changing landscapes, from the tropics to the Arctic…
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…