‘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

Wildlife Law Reform

31/01/2014

Wildlife Law is currently under reform (http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/areas/wildlife.htm). The existing legal framework for wildlife management was deemed ‘overly complicated, frequently contradictory and unduly prescriptive’, creating ‘unnecessary barriers to effective wildlife management’. The Law Commission are considering the law relating to the conservation, control, protection and exploitation of wildlife in England and Wales, and they published a Consultation ... 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

Mammals of Africa wins Dartmouth Medal

31/01/2014

We are delighted to announce that Mammals of Africa was last night awarded the prestigious Dartmouth Medal for a distinguished reference publication by the American Library Association. This is an enormous and exciting accolade, and well deserved by the dedicated team, headed by WildCRU’s Jonathan Kingdon. http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2014/01/mammals-africa-named-rusas-dartmouth-medal-winner-distinguished-reference