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The biggest go first
© James Cameron The saying “it isn’t rocket science” is a common cliché in English to state, rather sarcastically, that something isn’t that difficult (with the implication that the person complaining...
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No need for disease
It’s human nature to abhor admitting an error, and I’d wager that it’s even harder for the average person (psycho- and sociopaths perhaps excepted) to admit being a bastard responsible for the demise...
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Having more tree species makes us wealthier
As more and more empirical evidence pours in from all corners of the globe, we can only draw one conclusion about the crude measure of species richness (i.e., number of species) – having more species...
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Science immortalised in cartoon
Well, this is a first for me (us). I’ve never had a paper of ours turned into a cartoon. The illustrious and brilliant ‘First Dog on the Moon‘ (a.k.a. Andrew Marlton) who is chief cartoonist for...
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Brave new green world: biodiversity’s response to Australia’s carbon economy
I’ve had a busy weekend entertaining visiting colleagues and participating in WOMADelaide‘s first-ever ‘The Planet Talks‘. If you haven’t heard of WOMADelaide, you’re truly missing out in one of the...
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Want to work with us?
© Beboy-Fotolia Today we announced a HEAP of positions in our Global Ecology Lab for hot-shot, up-and-coming ecologists. If you think you’ve got what it takes, I encourage you to apply. The positions...
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Learning from danger
Study vehicle, a group of vicuñas and a guanaco in San Guillermo National Park (San Juan, Argentina) [courtesy of Marco Escudero]. Guanacos and vicuñas are native to South America, and are the...
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A carbon economy can help save our species too
We sent out this media release the other day, but it had pretty poor pick-up (are people sick of the carbon price wars?). Anyway, I thought it prudent to reprint here on CB.com. – Will Australia’s...
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Our national parks must be more than playgrounds or paddocks
It’s interesting when a semi-random tweet by a colleague ends up mobilising a small army of scientists to get pissed off enough to co-write an article. Euan Ritchie of Deakin University started it off,...
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Australia’s national parks aren’t ‘national’ at all
Following our The Conversation article a few weeks ago about the rapid demise of national parks in Australia, a few of us (me, Euan Ritchie & Emma Johnston) wrote a follow-up piece on the...
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Guilty until proven innocent
The precautionary principle – the idea that one should adopt an approach that minimises risk – is so ingrained in the mind of the conservation scientist that we often forget what it really means, or...
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Fast-lane mesopredators
© F. Fish http://goo.gl/rWG8fI Another post from Alejandro Frid (a modified excerpt from a chapter of his forthcoming book). – I fall in love easy. Must be my Latino upbringing. Whatever it is, I have...
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Don’t blame it on the dingo
Our postdoc, Tom Prowse, has just had one of the slickest set of reviews I’ve ever seen, followed by a quick acceptance of what I think is a pretty sexy paper. Earlier this year his paper in Journal of...
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MPs’ ignorance puts national parks in peril
Led by Bill Laurance, our latest opinion editorial in the Higher Education supplement. Interestingly, it has already spawned a bilious and spittle-flecked response by Queensland’s Acting National Parks...
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Quantity, but not quality – slow recovery of disturbed tropical forests
It is a sobering statistic that most of the world’s tropical forests are not ‘primary’ – that is, those that have not suffered some alteration or disturbance from humans (previously logged, cleared for...
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Cleaning up the rubbish: Australian megafauna extinctions
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how to run the perfect scientific workshop, which most of you thought was a good set of tips (bizarrely, one person was quite upset with the message; I saved him...
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King for a day – what conservation policies would you make?
I have been thinking a lot lately about poor governance and bad choices when it comes to biodiversity conservation policy. Perhaps its all that latent anger arising from blinkered, backward policies...
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Biowealth: all creatures great and small
“So consider the crocodiles, sharks and snakes, the small and the squirmy, the smelly, slimy and scaly. Consider the fanged and the hairy, the ugly and the cute alike. The more we degrade this...
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Essential role of carnivores on the wane
© Luca Galuzzi http://www.galuzzi.it This interesting review has just come out in Science, and because I was given a heads-up about it, I decided to do a F1000 recommendation. That’s more or less what...
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Incentivise to keep primary forests intact
The Amazon rainforest. Photo by Rhett A. Butler I know – ‘incentivise’ is one of those terrible wank words of business speak. But to be heard by the economically driven, one must learn their guttural...
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