Rescuing Mbuzini (for those not speaking N’dbele: Goat): David Macdonald reports on the interface between conservation and animal welfare and the activities of Lovemore Sibanda in the village communities around Hwange

December 9, 2015

Lovemore, as you will have read in earlier News Items, is the member of our lion team who specialises in working with villages to understand the human dimension of depredation by lions on domestic stock. On the 7th December Lovemore investigated a conflict report of a young male lion that had killed a bull in ... Read full story

A star attraction: David Macdonald describes the illegal trade in India’s star tortoise

December 1, 2015

Patterned with star-like figures on their shells, Indian star tortoises can be found in private homes across Asia, where they are commonly kept as pets. One can also see them in religious temples, praised as the living incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. How did they get there? Suspicious of a large-scale illegal international trade of ... Read full story

A Call to World’s Creative Minds – Can you think for tigers?

November 17, 2015

Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and World Animal Protection have launched “Think for Tigers”, an online competition today to find an innovative idea, product or solution that will help researchers and rangers locate, track or monitor tigers in the wild to better study and protect them. Researchers and rangers already use a variety of tools ranging ... Read full story

Are Cecil’s grand offspring on the way? David Macdonald reports that a 4 and a half year old male lion, nicknamed Xanda, which the WildCRU team has monitored since his cubhood is almost certainly one of Cecil’s sons

December 8, 2015

Last week Xanda was seen mating repeatedly with lionesses from the so-called Backpans Pride – pregnancy in lions lasts about 110 days, so all being well Cecil’s grand offspring should be around in March. Actually, as followers of our News Items will remember, while Andy Loveridge and I started the Hwange Lion Project in 1999, it ... Read full story

David Macdonald features on Natural Histories season finale

December 1, 2015

The Radio 4 series entitled ‘Natural Histories’ recorded the last show of the season in a live outside broadcast at the Natural History Museum on last Friday night. In front of a studio audience of several hundred people, seated beneath the famous Diplodocus, the show involved much natural history, music and poetry, weaving together the ... Read full story

David Macdonald explains how WildCRU research is revealing the rich social lives of carnivores

November 11, 2015

Everybody knows that many mammals, even some quite big ones, take sanctuary in underground burrows, and anybody whose childhood was enriched by the stories of Beatrix Potter can imagine Mr Badger and his family holding underground tea parties in their cosy den. But when it comes to evolutionary biologists trying to figure out exactly why ... Read full story