Last November I went out to work on a Environmental Education project lead with Ricardo Lima, in the small island country of São Tomé and Príncipe in West Africa. We visited hundreds of people in rural communities and dozens of classrooms across the country in an experience that undoubtedly made us realise how important these activities are and how they should … [Read more…]
A few days ago I co-author a short note that presents the first record of the Bicoloured-spined Porcupine for Brazil. Its not often that a mammal of this size is first recorded for a country, even one as large and biodiverse as Brazil! Checkout the short note here.
In the latest issue of Nature, I co-author a reply to S. Kumar’s article: “Extinction need not be forever“, published also in Nature about a month ago. In this reply we highlight how behavioural and ecological factors, which are not necessarily captured by genetic material, are essential not only to define a species identity but also to ensure its … [Read more…]
In a recent Editorial I co-authored for the Asian Journal of Conservation Biology we touch on the issue of wildlife trade in Asia and discuss how the consumer must be the central part of our strategies to manage this trade that threatens many species worldwide . Read it here.
The snake Bothrops muriciensis is a little known Brazilian viper that until recently was only known from the couple of records that were used to describe it. I paper I co-authored in the open-access North-Western Journal of Zoology presents six more records and looks at applying the IUCN Red List criteria to the species until now classified as Data Deficient. … [Read more…]
Images of tigers and elephants are among the most common threatened mammals used by conservation organisations as ‘flagships’ to promote fundraising – but new research led by the University suggests that other threatened ‘Cinderella species’ could prove equally effective. At the moment, only 80 flagship species are used by these NGOs, and more than 60% … [Read more…]
The Children’s book “Ten friends to remember” written as part of my interhsip with the Centre ofr Eco-cultural Studies in Sri Lanka is now available on Google Books and Mongabay.com . The book has ten stories, all illustrated by a local designer, each of which touches upon a conservation related subject, from human-elephant conflict to wildlife trade and … [Read more…]
In a newly published article in the peer-reviewed blog Biodiversity Science I argue for the need to include marketing principles in our strategy to preserve biodiversity and discuss some of the most important pitfalls of engaging with stakeholders outside the scientific community. Read it here!