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.
Kalema-Zikusoka, who was speaking at the 24th Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation “OGRC” Tipping Points webinar. The online seminar was held on the eve of South Africa’s Women’s Month and Kalema-Zikusoka’s overarching message to delegates was: “You are missing half the story and half the impact if you don’t involve women in conservation.”
Dr Camille Parmesan is a climate change researcher who knows what it feels like to have one’s habitat wither.
There’s no disguising it; researchers have rumbled the elusive, shapeshifting, mimic octopus off the coast of Mozambique for the first time, thousands of kilometres away from what has up to now been considered its habitat.
Wildlife crime has many threads. It’s entangled in the very fabric of our society and we must get to grips with its subtleties if we hope to unpick it. Maxcine Kater reports.
Apart from a skeleton at the Durban Natural Science Museum, a mummified head and foot at the Oxford Museum of Natural History in England and no doubt some bits and bobs in other collections, little remains of the dodo.
Environmental scientists should step out of their silos if they want their research to make an impact, says Duncan MacFadyen, head of Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation.
Many of South Africa’s cash-strapped and sometimes poorly managed provincial parks risk collapse and new ways must be found to sustain them. We can do this by learning from successes and failures elsewhere on the continent.
Support from wealthy individuals helps conserve our natural spaces and wildlife. But there are limitations …
Four in every five of us worldwide depend on medicinal plants for their primary healthcare. But are Africa’s traditional healers, the source of many of these cures, benefiting? These and other environmental and conservation questions are expected to be raised by Kenyan forest ecologist, Dr Doris Mutta at next week’s Oppenheimer Research Conference (4 to 6 October).
