Q2’17 Update from the Mara Cheetah Project

July 13, 2017

The latest update from the Mara Cheetah Project has been released: - Part 1 (PDF, 1.7MB) - Part 2 (PDF, 1.2MB) This project, led by WildCRU researcher Dr Femke Broekhuis and is supported by the Kenya Wildlife Trust. The project aims to determine the threats that cheetahs face in the Greater Mara Ecosystem and to develop ... Read full story

WildCRU lion conservation project wins University Public Engagement Award

June 29, 2017

A lion conservation project led by Dr Amy Dickman of WildCRU, Department of Zoology has won an award in this year’s Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards, which celebrate public engagement work across the University. The announcement was made at an awards ceremony at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on 28 June hosted ... Read full story

Wildlife Conservation Course 2017 at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus

June 13, 2017

"Danger is afoot – the world’s carnivores are disappearing! Equipped with superhero powers, a team of Southeast Asian environmentalists have just 13 days to save the world’s carnivores from extinction." This may sound like the plot for an action movie, but it’s actually the basis for a conservation education course that equips conservationists to handle all-too-real ... Read full story

WildCRU’s Paul Johnson had a clever idea, as he frequently does; this time, as David Macdonald reports, it was about why dogs are not the same as cats

July 12, 2017

Oddly enough the story began with neither dogs nor cats, but with the weasels and their relatives, the topic of a new book we are publishing entitled The Biology and Conservation of the Musteloids. WildCRU’s Mike Noonan had explored why weasels buck the mammalian tendency for the size difference between males and ... Read full story

BBC covers one of WildCRU’s lion projects

June 28, 2017

The BBC's online magazine recently profiled the work of WildCRU's Amy Dickman and her team, who are working to ease human-carnivore coexistence in Tanzania's Ruaha landscape. A variety of different approaches are needed to resolve human-wildlife conflict, and in this case they involve employing local warriors, providing community benefits from wildlife presence, and using what ... Read full story

David Macdonald writes, “It was more than 30 years ago that I was thrilled to become the first Chairman of the newly created IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group, and 20 years later to pass that role to WildCRU’s Claudio Sillero, so imagine our pleasure at co-authoring a study, published today, with an outstanding WildCRU doctoral student on what may turn out to be a new species of wolf.”

June 7, 2017

This new study shows that the Himalayan wolf lineage deserves taxonomic recognition at subspecies level (i.e. C. lupus himalayensis). It remains to be seen whether Himalayan wolves are actually a separate species, but discovering this is the mission of Geraldine Werhahn, the remarkable doctoral student who is leading our study. Geraldine, who was awarded the Oxford-Lady Margaret ... Read full story