Good news about the environment is rare these days, but in Tanzania there are signs that local wildlife conservation efforts can effectively protect the natural resources that provide the lion’s share of revenue for the economy. Eco-tourism is Tanzania’s largest economic sector and biggest dollar earner for this developing nation, but wildlife populations have suffered … Read more
Wildlife ecologists studying the rare spotted owl in the forests of California have discovered that large, intense wildfires are not responsible for abandonment of breeding territories. Instead, the researchers found that post-fire logging operations, which are common on both private and National Forest lands, most likely caused declines in territory occupancy of this imperiled wildlife … Read more
A new video documentary released this week describes the important positive ecological effects of high-severity forest fires. High-severity forest fires, also called stand-replacing or crown fires, create rare and important wildlife habitat, and many species of plants and animals reach their highest abundances only in these blackened ‘snag forests’. Fear of high-severity forest fires is … Read more
A new study published this week described in detail for the first time an endangered long-distance wildebeest migration in the Tarangire ecosystem of northern Tanzania. Wildlife migrations were once widespread globally, but are now mostly lost, and the remaining few migrations are in precipitous decline because of rapid, human-caused changes to the landscapes where they … Read more
Fifteen years of research about severely burned Snag Forests in the western U.S.A. and their important value as wildlife habitat and ecological services has produced a healthy body of scientific literature. These papers, and others, have opened the eyes of many to the now-obvious fact that burned forests create wildlife habitat and even old growth … Read more
We’ve had a fantastic 18 months of giraffe science publishing at the Wild Nature Institute, with 10 papers out in peer-reviewed scientific journals. These papers are all the product of our Masai Giraffe Conservation Demography Project, which is the largest individual-based study of giraffes in the world. We are grateful to the amazing giraffe scientists … Read more