This 🧵. "Friends don’t let friends eat Tasmanian salmon."

Friends, can I ask a favour. Our latest Honest Government out is a serious warning to Canada from Australia, which acts as a cautionary tail about the harms of the gas (LNG) export industry... Hence the cameo (spoiler alert) from our own aussie climate criminals, Woodside Energy 1/🧵

A group of men gathered outside of the NSW Parliament in Sydney yesterday to call for the inclusion of erectile dysfunction medication on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Water management in South Asia is a messy patchwork of agreements. Closer co-operation would keep rivers flowing, while keeping the peace

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

You can’t beat a night at a campsite! Warby-Ovens National Park, SE Murray-Darling Basin, Yorta Yorta Country. Enjoy your weekend!

Happy 59th #Boipuso to my friends and colleagues in #Botswana! Hope it’s a fun day!

There is still much to be done to fix university governance but nonetheless a huge win for the thousands of NTEU members who have campaigned tirelessly to build better unis. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Melkam Addis Amet to my friends and colleagues from #Ethiopia! I hope 2017 is a good one for us all, filled with plenty of coffee and pastries!

This #ThreatenedSpeciesDay, I’m taking a different approach (and it’s not Australia, sorry!). #Botswana is not quite 1/3 of NSW in area, but has over 130k elephants to manage. These megafauna impact a lot of plant biodiversity, and village agriculture. A major challenge for people and ecosystems.

Otoliths sit in pairs in a fish’s skull and give it a sense of balance in the water column. But some species like the European sand goby can have widely different otolith size and shape between their left and right sides as larvae/early juveniles! You never see them swimming in circles though!

Like them or not, structures like this aren’t going anywhere. But we need to do much better with understanding and funding ways to support aquatic biota, especially downstream. Effects of human health like malaria transmission from mosquitoes are equally rarely thought of.

It's 5 years since the best thing I've ever written and will ever write aired on Mad As Hell

The deaths of two unlicensed fishers in Kenya’s Lake Navaisha region, allegedly at the hands of the Kenya Coast Guard Service, raise questions about tactics used to police illegal fishing.

Very interesting, and something I can attest to…. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"More than 1,500 civilians may have been massacred during an attack on Sudan’s largest displacement camp in April, in what would be the second-biggest war crime of the country’s catastrophic conflict." www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

It is way time the @albomp.bsky.social government acknowledged this in its support of the Australian university sector. What's good for unis is good for the national accounts. thepienews.com/australian-c...

I may have been a bit slow to this party, but the imagery at www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/fishatlas/co... looks to have lots of potential - especially if larger images and other metadata such as actual measurements were also available. If you are into fish morphology, check it out!

Mmmm, remember Danakil #Ethiopia??

So @albomp.bsky.social, when does Jillian Segal get her marching orders, or are you totally cool supporting someone that actively supports a hard right agenda, including defeating the Voice. What’s it going to be, Albo? Let’s see ABC’s coverage too., theklaxon.com.au/jillian-sega...

Yep, shading that small seascape is completely practical and realistic…

@domknight.bsky.social And ‘My island home’ - although written by the Warrumpi Band (WA), Christine Anu’s version and a focus on the Torres Strait made it famous.

@domknight.bsky.social time to start planning that Qld playlist yet? I’ll start with Ganggajang’s ‘Sounds of then’ and the wet season lightning over cane fields…

Meanwhile, from Foreign Policy's Africa edition today: "More than 4 million people have fled Sudan since civil war broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023." 1/2

Interested in a fully funded PhD focused on forest restoration, conservation, and carbon and biodiversity markets? Brooke Williams has a scholarship (Australia) at the University of Newcastle, but international candidates are possible. Find out more here: www.newcastle.edu.au/study/resear...

Intermittent rivers are fuelled by arrival of their next flow pulse, potentially bringing new chemistry and rejuvenating the animals and plants dependent on it. In the dry tropics, a seasonal flood is an exciting and dynamic time, Thamalakane R, northern Botswana, where the flood is currently…

Denmark’s incoming EU presidency is set to coincide with a bruising debate over the future of farming in Europe, and Copenhagen wants climate at the center of it.

How quickly governments forget their individual backgrounds, and the training used to support the staffing of their departments and solutions to crises such as the covid pandemic or climate change.

Parts of southern #Africa have a scary prognosis under #ClimateChange, but don’t think it’s some theoretical notion for the future. This is now.

Students and staff at Monash are campaigning hard for the university to end its relationship with Woodside.

A bit about me: aquatic ecology research on fish in marine and freshwater ecosystems, esp. trying to understand more about the early stages of their life, and teaching on tropical ecology. Spend as much time as possible in Africa, esp. #Botswana and #Ethiopia, and exploring remote inland #Australia.

One of my activities at The Uni of Newcastle is teaching a tropical ecology short-course in conjunction with the University of Botswana. Here's an insight from what we got up to last year, and plans for later in 2025: youtu.be/6Wovoiefs5w. Hope you enjoy it🙂!

Tigray's Lost Generation: Six Years Without Education In parts of #Tigray, schools have been closed for nearly six years. Mai-Tsebri, Tselemti and Dima districts host thousands of IDPs who fled the genocide in Welkait, Humera, Sheraro and other areas in Western Tigray. 1/ www.nrc.no/perspectives...

It still disgusts me that the #Tigray war in #Ethiopia received such a trivial level of attention in the Australian media. Not diminishing the Gaza war, but the Tigrayan conflict exceeded deaths in Gaza by over 10-fold. observer.co.uk/culture/phot...

‘Ticking timebomb’: sea acidity has reached critical levels, threatening entire ecosystems – study #Climate

Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said yesterday she is ready to abandon her country's traditionally thrifty stance on the EU budget in the face of the threat posed by Russia.

Job done @benpugsley.bsky.social

A Florida weatherman telling his viewers he can no longer be confident in his forecasts due to cuts to atmospheric science is the kind of resistance content I’m here for. Kudos, Sir.🌦️

Independent Nicolette Boele in the lead by 21 votes in the #Bradfield recount. This one might stick @benpugsley.bsky.social

Just leaving this here.

The collateral damage lost in the Australian post-election political discourse: how will Dutton's son ever manage to get his own house now?

It pains me to say this, but if you are not a US citizen, you should not attend scientific conferences in the US, visit US institutions, or otherwise travel to our country. Right now it's not worth the risk. Hopefully that will change. If it doesn't, science in the US is sunk anyway.

Called to a family member’s house yesterday. “Can you please come and catch a snake 🐍?” Yeah, rightio. Cute green tree snake, harmless to people. #WildOz

#Numerology didn’t do much to keep the Nationals in check!

This is really good news 🎊 "Bluesky has overtaken its flailing rival X in hosting posts related to new academic research, indicating the platform is fast becoming the go-to place for scholars to share their work." www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...

TV camera operators around Australia breath collective sigh of relief at diminished risk of a football in the head in three years time.

How are things looking up your way @benpugsley.bsky.social ?