our letter in @theguardian.com on the rise of 'beaver bombing' and other illicit and unregulated species reintroductions in Britain and elsewhere. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Interesting to see another HUGE purchase of land for a privately protected area in Patagonia. I saw the early stages of this campaign, led by local climbers etc, when doing fieldwork there in 2011. It is misleading to say that it was 'inspired' by gringos. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

How can we make conservation fieldwork more inclusive and just? New document by the SCB Europe's DEIJ Committee summarizes key barriers to participation and practical, evidence-based actions and ways forward. See a couple of examples below. 🔗 www.scbeurope.org/en/deij-comm...

Another day, another illicit species release: I suspect there are a few people who know exactly where this one came from (Bavaria, originally, I bet - it seems all Europe's illicit beavers can be traced back there), and quite a few more who have strong suspicions. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

One of my PhD chapters: 'Designing user-centered technologies to address the illegal wildlife trade' is OUT NOW in the @society4conbio.bsky.social journal Conservation Science and Practice! Please check out the graphical abstract and give it a read: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Fieldwork can be a unique opportunity, but it can also be a very significant challenge to well-being. My colleagues have developed this interactive reflection tool to help manage well-being whilst on fieldwork, preparing to fieldwork, and when you get back inclusivefieldwork.leeds.ac.uk/wellbeing/

Are you an ecologist? Do you collect biodiversity data for your role in a charity, research, a government body, or a specialist organisation? Read on for a thread that might interest you… 🧵 [1/6] #biodiversity #forests #darkextinction #ecology #research

when leaving comments on an early draft of Dr @sicilyfiennes.bsky.social amazing thesis, I described a sentence in it as “so good it should be embroidered on a tea towel”. As a end-of-PhD present, they gifted me this amazing tea towel, with that sentence embroidered on it! Best academic gift ever!

Profits from scientific publishing are eye-watering, costing us billions. In ‘The Drain of Scientific Publishing’ (arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820), (building on ‘The Strain of Scientific Publishing’ doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00327) we show how it is harmful – and unnecessary.

@extinctionleeds.bsky.social is an interdisciplinary doctoral training programme focusing on topics relating to extinction and its meanings, histories and legacies. Watch the whole🎬👉 media.leverhulme.ac.uk/video/extinc... @katatrepsis.bsky.social @universityofleeds.bsky.social

Fancy coming to POLLEN in Barcelona and joining our panel on "Political Ecologies of Restoration: Reintroduction, Assisted Migration, and Rewilding"? Then submit an abstract via the link below! pollenpoliticalecology.network/pollen-2026/...

A curious thing I share about #okapi is their long history with the U.S., esp. New York: @amnh.org, Bronx Zoo, @wcs.org. Deals w Belgian Congo, Lang's Congo trip, Gilman's philanthropy, #Warhol & Anne Eisner Putnam's art, & Madison Square Gdns where Mr G, the only circus okapi, died. Book out today

this paper in @consletters.bsky.social is a superb primer on what power means in conservation - a big job to summarise centuries of social theory and decades of conservation social science research into a few thousand words! conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Fancy coming to POLLEN in Barcelona and joining our panel on "Political Ecologies of Restoration: Reintroduction, Assisted Migration, and Rewilding"? Then submit an abstract via the link below! pollenpoliticalecology.network/pollen-2026/...

🚨 We are looking for 3 new colleagues to join the GreenFrontier team as Postdoctoral Researchers! Deadline for applications: 25 Nov 2025 Each of the 3 openings will involve extended ethnographic fieldwork + plenty of opportunities to consolidate research & leadership skills! Please share widely!

Short piece in @consletters.bsky.social exploring social, cultural, political and ecological apsects of illicit and unregulated species translocations - what others (not me, due to homophone errors) might call guerilla rewilding. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A fun visit to the University of Kent, to discuss species reintroductions. Here's me in front of the campus mural of a European Bison. There's a small herd of them living just three miles from this mural, but it is not a simple story of a 're' introduction.

This is an important petition on academic freedom, for a professor at Syracuse, NY, USA, who has been indefinitely suspended for a very mildly sarcastic four-word social media post relating to US politics. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Today I am mostly thinking about the popular inter-war literary genre 'animal stories written by fascists'. Join me.

new virtual exhibition on wetlands, exploring how people interact with their wetlands, their rhythms, dynamic changes, and flows of many kinds. www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/...

This paper - on what habituation does and should mean - is a must-read for anyone working on wildlife conservation, human-wildlife interactions/conflict/coexistence, translocations, in the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences.

I've long thought of our research as artworks 😉. But now it is actually true - our research on Caspian seal conservation has been integrated into an artwork in Berlin, on ecological degradation and human-nature interactions. w/ @phoca-sapiens.bsky.social. www.studio1-0-6.com/carried-by-t...

Another productive meeting of the Defra/ @naturalengland.bsky.social Species Reintroduction Taskforce, this time at Wild Ennerdale, Cumbria. Classic Taskforce behaviour, crouching in a forest looking at a successfully translocated Hairy Wood Ant colony.

Provocative but very necessary argument in @consletters.bsky.social on rethinking politics and definitions in carnivore conservation in Europe, moving away from crisis mode now that meta-populations are healthy. By @hannalp.bsky.social and von Essen conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Happy Fat Bear Week, for all of those who celebrate: explore.org/fat-bear-week

along with @monicavasile.bsky.social and @hannalp.bsky.social I a huge fan of underwhelming species reintroduction videos. Here is my contribution, releasing some native ramshorn snails into my garden pond.

Excited to share the preprint of our first @cascade-hei.bsky.social paper on “Potential for academic institutions to support international biodiversity commitments” 🌿 🌍.

My academic sphere crosses between critical geography and conservation biology. Of the two, I've seen more racism in geography arenas than in biology. For all the anti-racist rhetoric, there can be some major lack of reflection. Doesn't help its ability to address all the horror in the world.

Piece in @theguardian.com on 17-metre long beaver tunnels in Dutch dykes. Shows the potential issues with beaver re-introductions, and how risks/benefits vary vastly between places. Also, neatly reworks the metaphor of beaver dams/tunnels as ecological engineering www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My comment on a student's draft of a PhD thesis chapter, and their reply. Some books are a classic for a reason. I judge a book on how often PhD students borrow/steal it from my bookshelf.

Academic and scientific freedom and censorship are critical issues in biodiversity and conservation research, in all disciplines, but it is rarely discussed. Please your experiences of academic and scientific freedom, and constraints on it in our survey app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/leeds/acad...

Academic and scientific freedom and censorship are critical issues in biodiversity and conservation research, in all disciplines, but it is rarely discussed. Please your experiences of academic and scientific freedom, and constraints on it in our survey app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/leeds/acad...

There are a lot of general review type papers on social science and rewilding out there, but this is one of the best ones as a primer on the most important questions to ask: ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid...

POLLEN 2026 is happening in Barcelona 🌅 The call for panels is open and closes on July 31st. See here for more information: tinyurl.com/5b8c5w7j Spread the word.

So, so, so proud to have worked with Hanna on her PhD, which was a brilliant study of human-wolf coexistence in Spain. She now works on coexistence with carnivores in northern Sweden/Sápmi, including on payments for coexistence.

We received exceptional applications for the 2025 SCB Europe Early Career Conservation Award and decided to award two candidates. Congratulations to the winners Dr Hanna Pettersson (University of York UK) and Dr Volen Arkumarev (Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds / BirdLife Bulgaria) 👏🥳

Do you work in conservation/for a conservation organisation? Please take our survey! We need respondents who work in conservation (broadly defined) in any capacity Survey takes 15/20 minutes, doesn’t ask for name & is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French www.cmi.no/projects/292...

As we start our research project on academic freedom and censorship in biodiversity conservation research, it is apparent that there is a massive gap between actual experiences of serious censorship, and public and political discussions, e.g. around 'cancelling'.

🚨Job Alert 🚨 🐕‍🦺 🐄🐎🐦‍⬛ Do you have project management skills & an interest in human-animal relations? We are recruiting a project manager role (5 years) for our new project (info in the 🧵) @sheffielduni.bsky.social 📆 deadline 30 June www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNO134/p...

Great to see work by Sarah Oakes, our of our fantastic Extinction Studies PhD students, highlighted by @leverhulme.ac.uk. Sarah's amazing interdisciplinary project is unique and important in linking social, cultural, and biological facets of #extinction in a #food security context.

A very diverse bunch of scholars - from across biology, conservation, and migration studies - wrote this piece on the very obvious, yet not quite obvious enough for some, dangers of comparing invasive species and human migration. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

📣SAVE THE DATE📣 The European Congress of Conservation Biology (ECCB) 2026 will be held in Leiden, 6–10 July! The theme of the conference is “Effective Conservation Science”. Join global experts to explore effective conservation science through keynotes, workshops, field trips, and more.

Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) Conference in Barcelona, June 2026. Help us disseminate the event and submit your articles, please! @icta-uab.bsky.social @pollenetwork.bsky.social pollenpoliticalecology.network/pollen-2026/

At the Wadden Sea in Germany for the European Conservation Humanities Network meeting, talking about time, change and processes in conservation. It looks like we will get lots of high winds and rain, so we might get empirical evidence of erosion and deposition

This was a fun, sunny day, launching the newest NNR. Really interesting that it referenced evolving histories of human-nature connectedness in the site, from Neolithic carvings through Brontë novels to the modern social challenges of Bradford and future changes.

congratulations to Dr @sicilyfiennes.bsky.social , for successfully defending their thesis on the songbird trade in Indonesia. A highly interdisciplinary study, with some wonderful papers and a cool interactive website here www.uncagedconservation.com

🚨 New paper! 🚨 The #lynx and #wolf have been extinct in #Scotland for over 400 years. Could divisions over their #reintroduction, linked to #rewilding, be in part the product of shifting baseline syndrome? 🐺 Check out this new paper to find out 👇 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Join us for the second CASCADE webinar on Friday 4th April! We will be joined by @slpbenbow.bsky.social (Fauna & Flora International) and Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood (@uniofstandrews.bsky.social) to discuss big questions in ocean governance 🌊 Register here 👉 forms.office.com/e/fxLXph2feK