New Global Alliance Commits $80 Million for wild cat conservation

04/06/2014

WildCRU’s partners in wild cat conservation, Panthera, have announced their $200 million funding initiative for wild cats, with commitment of $80 million already in place from philanthropists from China, India, UEA and Panthera’s founders themselves, Dr Thomas Kaplan and Mrs Daphne Recanati Kaplan. Dr Kaplan was interviewed in Forbes earlier this week and the ... Read full story

‘From avengers to hunters: Leveraging collective action for the conservation of endangered lions’

28/05/2014

WildCRU and colleagues from UC Davis suggest that it may be possible to reduce illegal killing of lions by working within the local community to remove the economic incentive for killing non-problem lions. These findings are published in Biological Conservation (Vol 174, June 2014) and  featured in a ... Read full story

In memoriam: Rob Strachan

20/05/2014

Rob Strachan, amongst the country’s foremost naturalists, died on Saturday, 17th May. Since 2005 Rob had been Biodiversity Technical Specialist at Natural Resources Wales, but for the decade previously he was a central member of the WildCRU team. Growing out of discussions between David Macdonald and Alastair Driver (of the Environment Agency), and motivated as ... Read full story

WildCRU completes first Scottish wildcat camera trapping study

02/06/2014

In 2010, in collaboration with Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), WildCRU completed the first camera trapping study of the Scottish wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris). The study determined that camera traps could be successfully used to monitor wildcats allowing both individual identification and therefore density estimates to be made and also used to identify areas where wildcats, ... Read full story

WildCRU’s long term research project on big cats in Zimbabwe

28/05/2014

Conserving big cats involves understanding the dynamics of the ecosystems that support them. Predators not only eat prey, they frighten them – thus influencing both their numbers and their behaviour. WildCRU’s long term project on lions in Zimbabwe studies the trade-off faced by prey species seeking ... Read full story

Exposing the ‘scale’ of Pangolin persecution

05/03/2014

'Scaling up pangolin protection in China' by Zhao-Min Zhou, Youbing Zhou, Chris Newman and David W. Macdonald. Published in: Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/14.WB.001) In collaboration with the Chinese Public Security Bureau and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, our report, out today in the journal ‘Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment’, exposes increasing ... Read full story