🚨🚨New research alert: Spotted hyaena distribution in Kenya is shaped not just by prey or livestock, but by humans’ propensity to kill them. Understanding human behavior is key to carnivore #conservation. 🌍🍪 Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @helsinki.fi

Online now: Toward a more effective ecological security pattern: why explicit integration of disservices and trade-offs matters

Conservation planning experts in training ✨ The annual Spatial conservation planning course at #HelsinkiUni is well underway, led by HELICS members. Today is our second practical session on using the cutting-edge Zonation 5 conservation prioritization software. Exciting stuff! 🖥️🌍🌿

Great catch-up and celebrations for a new paper out! At today’s HELICS meeting, we had our regular catch-up, shared recent research progress, and celebrated Federico’s new paper out with oat cookies, macarons and bubbles. Cheers! 🍻

What causes biodiversity loss? Land- and sea-use change, overexploitation, invasive species, climate change, and pollution are the direct drivers pushing species towards extinction - but what are the indirect drivers behind them? 📉 (1/2)

Destroying wild ecosystems like these doesn't just reduce biodiversity but has repercussions for local communities losing ecosystem services as well as contributing to the climate disaster by eliminating these valuable carbon sinks. At HELICS we're examining the drivers behind trends like this.

Focusing on the tawny coster 🦋 we show the power of social media data to help tracking species redistribution under anthropogenic climate change 🌳🌲🦔🦇🦅🦉🦎🐸🐝🐜🐠🐙 #SOTM 🧪🌐🌍🌏 doi.org/10.1111/cobi...

Happy #WorldWildlifeDay! Let's keep doing the work to bring more and more wild populations towards recovery.

It’s the Saimaa ringed seal! 🦭 1️⃣ Population: <200 in Finland 2️⃣ Tracks: Oversized paw prints in snow 3️⃣ Habitat: Only in Lake Saimaa Want to know more?❄️ Take a look at: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... #SaimaaSeal #WildlifeConservation

Guess the endangered species 🌊 1️⃣ Fewer than 200 of us live in Finland 2️⃣ We leave oversized tracks in fresh snow 3️⃣ Our home is a freshwater lake in Saimaa Did you guess? 🤔 #EndangeredSpecies #Conservation

An exciting story in island conservation today; wishing these tortoises the best!

Fuel for ideas and a taste of tradition 🍰 At today’s HELICS meeting, as we discussed upcoming teaching courses, we enjoyed a laskiaispulla a cardamom bun with cream, traditional for Laskiainen. Almond paste or jam, which do you prefer? #HELICS #Laskiainen #Finland @helsinki.fi

Great exchanges on network science & biodiversity complexity for Federico Grossi with Anne-Sophie Crépin and @daniel-iavor.bsky.social at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics. Sharp feedback & perfect weather for a face-to-face encounter with Stockholm's nature (frozen lake dip included)!

No single method captures all impacts to biodiversity. 🌵🦏🪸 Same for conservation science: interdisciplinary, scale-dependent. Governance needs multi-method approaches—integrating ecological & socio-economic perspectives. Conservation challenges are systemic. Our methods must be as well.

Abigail Parker & Fedor Zolotarev presented two #BIOBANG posters at #SBDIDays in Stockholm. Tough crowd when you're competing with a life-size moose for attention, but the poster session brought great conversations! #BiodiversityInformatics #ComputerVision #AIforEcology

Check out this blog post by our postdoc Miquel Torrents-Ticó on a recent paper he-authored. This excellent, nuanced work relates people's perceptions of climate change impacts to their well-being. miqueltorrentstico.wordpress.com/2026/01/14/h...

We're kicking off posting here to share our work on conservation science! We work especially with digital data to understand biodiversity loss, illegal wildlife trade, and human-nature interactions. Follow along for updates on the work of our interdisciplinary team here at @helsinki.fi