The battle of the birds is BACK! 🐦✨  Bird of the Year returns this September.  🗓️ Voting will open Monday 15 September  🗓️ Voting will close Sunday 28 September  You can sign up now to become a campaign manager. 👉 https://f.mtr.cool/xjbevgkqfr

📢 Fantastic article on the impacts of overheads on #ECRs in #AoNZ: ojs.victoria.ac.nz/nzsr/article... 🔥🔥🔥 @oliviatruax.bsky.social

I'm super excited to share our new paper on Norwegian lemming genomics just published in @pnas.org!! Read the paper here: www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.... Summary ⬇️

#iccb2025 biodiversity and carbon planting day with Brisbane Sustainability Agency #ArcherfieldWetlands Getting in a few thousand plants and finding lots of bird species

Had a great time in Brisbane for #ICCB2025! My favourite part was making new connections by getting to greet people at the registration desk, and at the poster evening, where I had a constant stream of lovely questions.

Here is the link to our SCB Oceania Region Statement from #ICCB2025

If you can’t wait for the next ICCB - We are thrilled to announce that the next SCB Oceania conference will be held in Nov 2026 together with @newzealandecology.bsky.social in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa NZ! #NZES_SCBO2026 #ICCB2025 confer.eventsair.com/2026-nzes-sc...

We’re excited to welcome the new President of the Society for Conservation Biology: Mwezi Mugera! We acknowledge and thank outgoing President Vanessa Adams for her long service. #ICCB2025

Our #ICCB2025 #conservation congress statement from today’s @scboceania.org members meeting: static1.squarespace.com/static/66c56...

Averting complete extinction of multiple frog species in Kosciuszko National Park requires a proactive response in the face of chytrid, says David Hunter. #ICCB2025

Michael McFadden explains how recent Australian drought led to emergency rescue of Booroolong frogs, with 60 collected for an ex situ breeding programme, including sperm biobanking for all male founders. #ICCB2025

Deon Gilbert shares conservation work for the Baw Baw frog, which has been hit hard by chytrid. Lots of challenges with reproductive management initially, but lots of learnings, including use of artificial breeding technologies, mean things are turning around. #ICCB2025

Luis Carrillo shares some #conservation success stories from Amphibian Ark. More than 10% of amphibian species require ex situ conservation, so there’s a lot more to do. #ICCB2025

Alicia Dimovski is working to use dermal secretions for minimally-invasive tests of hormone levels (eg testosterone & corticosteroids) in amphibians. This technique looks promising for understanding physiology and assessing stress. #ICCB2025

Phillip Byrne discusses population augmentation for genetic rescue via hybrid vigour. High levels of population structure and local adaptation make outbreeding depression a real risk for amphibians so experimental crossing via artificial fertilisation can be used ro inform management. #ICCB2025

Aimee Silla discusses the applications of reproductive technologies to assist conservation breeding programmes for amphibians. Aimee calls for a standardised framework to measure fitness-determining traits. #ICCB2025

Gina Della Togna discusses reproductive technologies & biobanking for amphibian #conservation. While most survey respondents have an understanding of this tech, but <40% are using it, so the team are working on scaling up initiatives globally. #ICCB2025

Elize Ng describes the challenges of coordinating #conservation across the East Asian Australasian Flyway. What has been done, and how successful have these actions such as predator control, habitat protection and restoration been? #ICCB2025 🪶

He-bo Peng discusses how an aquaculture ban has led to unregulated mollusc harvest in Yalu Jiang has impacted shorebirds at this major stopover site in the East Asian Australasian Flyway. Around 75% of the shorebirds stopping off rely on molluscs for >90% of their diet. #ICCB2025 🪶

Shorebirds are declining at a higher rate than that of their habitat loss. Dan Liang is investigating how direct mortality by humans at key stopover sites in their migration routes may explain the discrepancy. #ICCB2025 🪶

Red foxes are a real threat to shorebirds at their high tide roosts in Australia. Andrea Griffin used camera traps, detecting 183 independent visitation events by foxes, though eDNA revealed no shorebirds in fix scat from those sites. #ICCB2025 🪶

Oceanians at #ICCB2025 Everyone from (or working in) Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, & Polynesia is invited to the SCB Oceania meeting, Thursday lunchtime in M9. Grab a lunch plate and make new friends, meet old friends, and find about what SCBO are up to.

Shorebirds make great global sentinel species, as although they are susceptible to a wide range of threats, they are highly visible in the landscape and can be readily monitored to understand ecosystem change, says Tong Mu. #ICCB2025 🪶

Agriculture is killing our planet says #ICCB2025 plenary speaker Claire Kremen. How can we make the shift from extractive and destructive use of biodiversity, to acting in ways that are generative, sustainable, promoting biodiversity and enhancing biocultural diversity? #conservation

#ICCB2025 plenary speaker Amy van Nice from the Wildlife Alliance is sharing hard truths from work to combat the illegal wildlife trade. Among the many challenges, funding systems are biased towards short-term projects, and donor priorities are often misaligned with on-ground needs. #conservation

Legend! 🏆 @meg-shaw.bsky.social not only used memes in her #ICCB2025 talk but showed us the research supporting their effectiveness! Humour and beautifully-designed slides FTW!

Kudos to the amazing science comedy lineup at #ICCB2025! Something for everyone to learn from & laugh over: bird tinder, bugs > kids, fish hybrids, cheap therapy, Antarctic maths & spooky birds! @theg-cat.bsky.social @drobledoruiz.bsky.social @luzvpascal.bsky.social @lizzylowe.bsky.social +Ali & Sho

Funding and politics are huge challenges for Indigenous researchers and communities, says Kiri Reihana in the Voices of Moananuiākea kōrero. #ICCB2025

John Lamaris @scboceania.org speaks on the Tambu system on Papua New Guinea, as part of the Voice across Moananuiākea kōrero | conversation, uplifting Indigenous voices and ways of knowing and doing. #ICCB2025

Zhao Xiang from EcoCommons is working to reduce knowledge, coding & computational barriers to species distribution modelling. EcoCommons provides an accessible, user-friendly & interactive environment containing spp & environmental data, modelling algorithms, and compute infrastructure. #ICCB2025

Abundance indices are regularly used for population monitoring, but they can be challenging to apply to small popns. Keiichi Fukaya uses occupancy modelling for shorebird monitoring in Japan, where good survey data has been collected over >20 yrs that can be used to estimate trends. #ICCB2025 🪶

Genomics isn’t routinely applied in conservation planning or species listing, says Manuela Cascini, yet it has utility for taxonomic delimitation that can inform conservation prioritisation - potentially saving $$$ in the long run! #ICCB2025 #consgen

Patrick Finnerty looks at the proactive approach of #rewilding in Australia, where the unique landscape can make these projects challenging. ‘Sky island’ mesas can act as safe havens with invasive predators absent. #ICCB2025

Charlotte Lassaline discusses the invertebrate pet trade. Data collection on the number of species traded in Australia indicates that globally the trade is being massively underestimated. There are huge risks associated with the pet trade, especially if unregulated and unsustainable. #ICCB2025

Adam Toomes showcases a framework for predicting and intercepting illegal wildlife harvest. Poachers are reading the scientific literature, and even using the same tools and equipment to find individuals that researchers use for fauna surveys. #ICCB2025

Migratory shorebirds use artificial wetlands such as flooded croplands, says Takehiko Shimizu. Using a before-after control-impact study and joint species distribution models, finding that the short-term flooding supported greater numbers and diversity of wetland birds. #ICCB2025

Lamuel Chung uses spatial factor multi-species occupancy models to predict changes in distribution under varying climate change scenarios, finding they prefer cooler conditions, and valleys and ridges, and tend to co-occur with dingos and bandicoots. #ICCB2025

Martin Thibault investigates behavioural responses by #seabirds to human disturbances in New Caledonia, assessing flight initiation distance and acoustic phenology in 4 spp. Birds on the most remote (least visited) islands appeared most sensitive to disturbance. #ICCB2025

Scott Forrest aims to predict animal movement. GPS tracking data + knowledge of environmental features gets us part of the answer, but animal movement is complex, so he developed a model deepSSF using neural networks to take this complexity into account. #ICCB2025

Rosa Mar Dominguez Martinez calls for equal protection for all threatened fish species, where illegal trade for seafood is a real issue when protections are inconsistent across countries. #ICCB2025

Canberra grassland earless dragons have been severely impacted by habitat loss, says Bernd Gruber. In 2006, sample collection began, facilitating temporal comparison of genomic diversity, showing a decline in heterozygosity. #ICCB2025

OneDArT is coming out in July, allowing DArTseq #genomic data to be analysed and interpreted without requiring existing R skills for greater accessibility. #ICCB2025

Holly Bradley blows the audiences’ mind, showing us the use of iPhone LiDAR & free app polycam for scanning natural habitats of western spiny-tailed skinks for development of fit-for-species artificial habitat development for mitigation translocations. #ICCB2025

Post-translocation monitoring is really important to determine the success (or failure) of #conservation management actions. Working in remote & challenging terrain makes this difficult, so Jo Monks has been testing the use of drones for detecting alpine skinks. #ICCB2025

Over 21 yrs, the Hungarian meadow viper conservation programme has seen 5420 vipers born, and now over 1000 have been released back into the wild. #ICCB2025 #ConservationOptimism

Can shed skin be used for non-invasive molecular sexing with qPCR existing markers for eastern massasauga snakes? Devin Chen says yes we can - and more accurately than traditional invasive methods for snake sexing. #ICCB2025

Romney Edwards-Francis discusses movement, connectivity, and genetic diversity of red-tailed tropicbirds, following population founding on Lady Elliot Is in 1983. All returned fledglings that reached breeding age are male. #seabirds #ICCB2025 🪶

Rob Davis discusses unintended wildlife impacts of anticoagulant rodenticides in Australia. Recent studies show far wider impacts than expected. #ICCB2025 #PestMgmt

Melissa Price encourages #conservation researchers & practitioners to get onboard with financial mgmt, inventory mgmt, and project mgmt software to keep on top of the day-to-day of solving the big multifaceted conservation challenges. #ICCB2025

Micha Jackson describes the intensive management of aggregate-nesting water birds in the Murray-Darling Basin. Long-term tracking efforts reveals inter-, intra-, & individual differences in migratory patterns for species like ibises and spoonbills. We need a whole-of-lifecycle perspective! #ICCB2025