Julien Fattebert, PhD 🇺🇳🇪🇺🇨🇭

📢COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT📢

Mont Rigi, Belgium, July 2026

🐻📊Join FatBear's Applied Movement Data Analysis in R courses for wildlife grad students & practitioners. Beginners & R users welcome 🌍📈

Info and registration: fatbearbio.weebly.com/workshops.html 🐾

Naciri, M., et al. (2026). A capture–recapture framework for combining biologging data with physical captures to decompose and estimate demographic rates: Simulations across life cycles and application to polar bears. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 17, 585–597.

This Brazilian frog might be the first pollinating amphibian known to science Nectar-loving tree frog likely moves pollen from flower to flower

It’s the first time a frog—or any amphibian—has been observed pollinating a plant, researchers reported in 2023.

Learn more on #WorldWildlifeDay: https://scim.ag/4riUU1G

Excited to share the first paper of my PhD project where we looked at how changes in legal protection have influenced the population dynamics of wolves in the US 🐺

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

@consletters.bsky.social

Are returning pumas putting Patagonian penguins at risk?

New research @wildcru.bsky.social estimates >7000 adult penguins in one colony were killed in a four-year study; most weren't fully eaten, indicating they weren't all killed for food

But the study also indicates pumas alone are unlikely to drive the colony to extinction ⬇️

Botswana shows how smarter cattle herding can save lions, reopen ancient wildlife pathways The lions that roamed the plains of northern Botswana were dying. One by one, the big cats were succumbing to poisoned bait planted by exasperated villagers. The lions had been chipping away at their…

Reviving traditional herding in northern Botswana has sharply reduced cattle losses and retaliatory lion poisonings in the Okavango Delta.

Lion cub survival is rising, and the region’s lion population has grown 50% in four years, with potential to reopen long-blocked wildlife corridors.

Floating cities of logs: can the ‘lungs of Africa’ survive its exploitation? The Congo River basin is one of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems. But it is also home to a growing population and relentless trade in timber and charcoal

The world's second-largest rainforest is increasingly beleaguered. 🌍

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

This is the most incredible footage of blue whales I’ve ever seen

OccuGAMs: Non‐linear occupancy and abundance modelling with imperfect detection Hierarchical occupancy and abundance models (HOAMs) have become a leading approach for inferring wildlife population dynamics because they explicitly account for imperfect detection. HOAMs are sui...

Published!📖

OccuGAMs: Non-linear occupancy and abundance modelling with imperfect detection🌍 🖥️

🔎 Find out more:

Finally.

The landscape of no worries? Increased recreation exposure decreases the landscape of human fear in wildlife Recreation's expanding footprint increasingly overlaps habitats once considered refuges from human disturbance. Yet our ability to predict wildlife re…

With the increase of recreation on public lands, there is an increasing need for data on how recreation affects wildlife. We ask whether wildlife responses to recreation depended on previous exposure to recreation

Paper, led by @markdittmer.bsky.social here www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Great 2 weeks teaching @ UNAM and setting up future research collaborations!
Time to go home (unfortunately)

Out of interest, will there be a recording available for watching later?

Bermuda snail thought to be extinct now thrives after a decade’s effort Special pods at Chester zoo helped conservationists breed and release more than 100,000 greater Bermuda snails A button-sized snail once feared extinct in its Bermudian home is thriving again after conservationists bred and released more than 100,000 of the molluscs. The greater Bermuda snail (Poecilozonites bermudensis) was found in the fossil record but believed to have vanished from the North Atlantic archipelago, until a remnant population was discovered in a damp and overgrown alleyway in Hamilton, the island capital, in 2014. Continue reading...

Bermuda snail thought to be extinct now thrives after a decade’s effort

This is cool.

However, I didn't know sperm whales looked like this 😬

End of an intense week of teaching habitat selection in R here in Katima. Time to relax on the banks of the stunning Zambezi River, overlooking the Zambia side 😍

Graphical abstract for the paper "Experimental evidence for large carnivore risk cues reducing deer browsing intensity in a temperate forest"

New lab paper out: experimental evidence for large carnivore risk cues reducing deer browsing intensity in a temperate forest🌳

🦌Deer modified their behaviour in response to large carnivore scent cues, with more pronounced effects in lynx treatments🐾

📎Full paper here: doi.org/10.1111/1365...

No Rhino Poaching in Kaziranga for 730 Days, Says Assam CM Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday highlighted a major conservation milestone, stating that no rhino poaching incidents have been rep

India's Kaziranga National Park has acheived an incredible 730 days with zero rhinos lost to poaching 🙌 #rhinoconservation
www.sentinelassam.com/breakingnews...

Fast-track solar plan crumbles as risks to endangered vultures come to light Environment Minister Willie Aucamp has torn up the fast-track approval for a solar power farm in Limpopo after environmental consultants who flagged the high risks to vultures were replaced by new con...

News from South Africa

www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026...

Genomic diversity of cougars across Utah: evidence for latitudinal differentiation in a continuous population - Conservation Genetics Genetic data on wide-ranging wildlife species can inform population structure, management decisions, and landscape connectivity. The genetic structure of a population can change over time, alongside c...

New paper out today on genetic connectivity of cougars in Utah🐈🧪🧬 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

On beautiful Katima UNAM campus crunching some wildlife data!

Off to Namibia 🇳🇦 tonight for 2 weeks teaching analysis of movement data, habitat and connectivity modeling

Happy to see this @econovoau.bsky.social paper out in the new issue of Journal of Animal Ecology - higher herbivore activity is linked to greater herb diversity & plant functional redundancy besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
#ECONOVO #Biodiversity #savanna #SouthAfrica #Rewilding

🎁 A New Year’s gift to the geospatial community: a brand-new QGIS plugin that unlocks access to 80+ petabytes of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets with zero coding required.

Serval population status in the Greater Kafue Ecosystem, Zambia Mesopredators such as servals (Leptailurus serval) often receive less funding for research compared to charismatic large carnivores. However, understa…

Serval population status in the Greater Kafue Ecosystem, Zambia: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Some reading for the holidays☺️

Multiple anthropogenic stressors can negatively impact species but can a single stressor also have multiple, concurrent impacts? Here we show that light pollution creates several simultaneous impacts to the nocturnal movement ecology of a moth and a spider: tinyurl.com/5eku5bff (1/5)

Jungle cats take to trees to avoid food fights - The Wildlife Society Wild felines specialize on different prey in different layers of the rainforest

Ocelots, jaguars, margays and pumas don’t want to fight over dinner. New research shows they divide hunting in the rainforest based on the areas that their prey lives.

WORKSHOPS Through our applied animal movement data analysis courses, both wildlife practitioners and research students receive immersive hands-on training in the utilization of state-of-the-art tools and...

📢COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT📢

Katima, Namibia, February 2026

🐻📊Join FatBear's Applied Movement Data Analysis in R courses for wildlife grad students & practitioners. Beginners & R users welcome 🌍📈

Info and registration: fatbearbio.weebly.com/workshops.html 🐾

20 Years of Bears in Switzerland In the summer of 2005, the first brown bear returned to Switzerland. Since then, up to three young males have migrated from the Trentino region in Italy almost every year. Some stay for only a few day...

20 Years of Bears in Switzerland via @korafoundation.bsky.social

www.kora.ch/en/news/20-y...