Climate change biologist Dr Shannon Conradie. Winner of the 2024 $150 000 JWO research grant.
Yves Vanderhaeghen
To find a solution in which that elephant, or lion or other wildlife, is always an asset, on either side of the boundary, is a task Professor Morgan Hauptfleisch, research director at the Namibia Nature Foundation (NNF) has set himself and his students.
Dr Kiiru is a towering figure in conservation, known in particular for her work in saving elephants and their habitats and promoting an easier co-existence with people who share their space. She is now the Executive Director of Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya, a former cattle ranch which encompasses 48 000 acres of semi-arid savannas and shrublands. Next month, she will be addressing the 13th Oppenheimer Research Conference in Midrand on the subject of “Transforming spaces of research”.
If you go down to the woods today, it may surprise you that they’ve withered, or disappeared. Nature’s vanishing act goes largely unnoticed, despite its dramatic scale. And as the animals and plants die along with it, so too does what conservation biologist Kevin Gaston calls our “personalised ecology”.
Edith’s Checkerspot butterfly Euphydryas editha. This unlikely champion of resilience is an unglamorous, unadventurous butterfly that normally travels less than a few hundred metres in its two-week life.
Edith’s Checkerspot butterfly Euphydryas editha. This unlikely champion of resilience is an unglamorous, unadventurous butterfly that normally travels less than a few hundred metres in its two-week life.
Dr Camille Parmesan is a climate change researcher who knows what it feels like to have one’s habitat wither.
His name’s Bond, William Bond, and he says it’s time to put fire to the veld. To save it.
Keep an eye on the lions; watch where the elephants are, where the people are; track the poachers; count the nesting vultures.
That’s a tall order far on the veld, or deep in a vast nature reserve, where constraints of distance, cost, connectivity and a shortage of hands make conservation a thorny task at the best of times.
There’s little as rare as a rere’s egg on Madagascar. So when Chris Ransom, the Director of Field Programmes at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, announces that they’ve had a few eggs hatch it’s huge news. “We got quite excited,” he says. “We haven’t managed to breed them at our Ampijoroa breeding facility since 2017, but this year we managed. That was a real achievement”.