George Holmes

Wetland Times

new virtual exhibition on wetlands, exploring how people interact with their wetlands, their rhythms, dynamic changes, and flows of many kinds. www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/...

This paper - on what habituation does and should mean - is a must-read for anyone working on wildlife conservation, human-wildlife interactions/conflict/coexistence, translocations, in the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences.

Stakeholder consensus suggests strategies to promote sustainability in an artisanal fishery with high rates of poaching and marine mammal bycatch Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

The original paper is this one, in @peopleandnature.bsky.social
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

I've long thought of our research as artworks 😉. But now it is actually true - our research on Caspian seal conservation has been integrated into an artwork in Berlin, on ecological degradation and human-nature interactions. w/ @phoca-sapiens.bsky.social.
www.studio1-0-6.com/carried-by-t...

Another productive meeting of the Defra/ @naturalengland.bsky.social Species Reintroduction Taskforce, this time at Wild Ennerdale, Cumbria. Classic Taskforce behaviour, crouching in a forest looking at a successfully translocated Hairy Wood Ant colony.

Now What? The Conundrum of Successful Recovery of Wolves and Other Species for European Conservation The recent decision to downlist the wolf from a “strictly protected” to “protected” status in the Bern Convention and Habitats Directive marks a turning point for European conservation. While reflect...

Provocative but very necessary argument in @consletters.bsky.social on rethinking politics and definitions in carnivore conservation in Europe, moving away from crisis mode now that meta-populations are healthy. By @hannalp.bsky.social and von Essen
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Fat Bear Week 2025 Fat Bear Week 2025

Happy Fat Bear Week, for all of those who celebrate: explore.org/fat-bear-week

along with @monicavasile.bsky.social and @hannalp.bsky.social I a huge fan of underwhelming species reintroduction videos. Here is my contribution, releasing some native ramshorn snails into my garden pond.

Excited to share the preprint of our first @cascade-hei.bsky.social paper on “Potential for academic institutions to support international biodiversity commitments” 🌿 🌍.

My academic sphere crosses between critical geography and conservation biology. Of the two, I've seen more racism in geography arenas than in biology. For all the anti-racist rhetoric, there can be some major lack of reflection. Doesn't help its ability to address all the horror in the world.

See "The Rider on the White Horse" (Der Schimmelreiter), a classic late 19th century German novella by Theodor Storm - which @untamed.bsky.social suggested I read before our trip to the dykes and marshes of the Wadden Sea. Also, my geophysicist friend Adam Booth can image beaver tunnels underground.

There is a long history of animals in/on dykes in that general area - e.g. sheep are good (they compact dyke soil, suppress vegetation), mice and rabbits bad (tunneling/loosen soil). Plus stories of burying live animals (including humans!) in dykes as a superstition to ensure strong dykes.

Beavers were welcomed back to the Netherlands. Until they started digging 17m-long tunnels | Renate van der Zee Reintroduced to help boost biodiversity and retain water, beavers are now in danger of causing serious flooding. Should there be more culls? asks Dutch writer and journalist Renate van der Zee

Piece in @theguardian.com on 17-metre long beaver tunnels in Dutch dykes. Shows the potential issues with beaver re-introductions, and how risks/benefits vary vastly between places. Also, neatly reworks the metaphor of beaver dams/tunnels as ecological engineering www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My comment on a student's draft of a PhD thesis chapter, and their reply. Some books are a classic for a reason. I judge a book on how often PhD students borrow/steal it from my bookshelf.

Academic and Scientific Freedoms in Biodiversity and Conservation Research Online surveys is a powerful, easy to use tool for creating online surveys. Run by Jisc, online surveys is used by over 300 different organisations in the UK...

Academic and scientific freedom and censorship are critical issues in biodiversity and conservation research, in all disciplines, but it is rarely discussed. Please your experiences of academic and scientific freedom, and constraints on it in our survey
app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/leeds/acad...

Academic and Scientific Freedoms in Biodiversity and Conservation Research Online surveys is a powerful, easy to use tool for creating online surveys. Run by Jisc, online surveys is used by over 300 different organisations in the UK...

Academic and scientific freedom and censorship are critical issues in biodiversity and conservation research, in all disciplines, but it is rarely discussed. Please your experiences of academic and scientific freedom, and constraints on it in our survey
app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/leeds/acad...

Cary, Emma, et al. "Five critical questions we should ask of rewilding projects—And that social science can help us answer." People and Nature (2025).

There are a lot of general review type papers on social science and rewilding out there, but this is one of the best ones as a primer on the most important questions to ask: ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid...

POLLEN 2026 is happening in Barcelona 🌅

The call for panels is open and closes on July 31st.

See here for more information: tinyurl.com/5b8c5w7j

Spread the word.

Beaver activists claim they are 'doing God's work' An underground network illegally releases beavers but farmers say it can lead to trouble.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

So, so, so proud to have worked with Hanna on her PhD, which was a brilliant study of human-wolf coexistence in Spain. She now works on coexistence with carnivores in northern Sweden/Sápmi, including on payments for coexistence.

We received exceptional applications for the 2025 SCB Europe Early Career Conservation Award and decided to award two candidates.

Congratulations to the winners Dr Hanna Pettersson (University of York UK) and Dr Volen Arkumarev (Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds / BirdLife Bulgaria) 👏🥳

Conservation Labor: A New Frontier in Labor Theory and Conservation Science (CONLAB) There is a rapidly developing literature on the 'human dimensions' of conservation, including critical scholarship and appli...

Do you work in conservation/for a conservation organisation? Please take our survey!

We need respondents who work in conservation (broadly defined) in any capacity

Survey takes 15/20 minutes, doesn’t ask for name & is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French

www.cmi.no/projects/292...

I think that self-censorship, 'cancelling', etc are worth discussing, but there is a huge gap between that, and the much more serious issues e.g. threats to life, which are almost never discussed. E.g. the Free Speech Union has literally no mentions of Giulio Regeni on their website!

As we start our research project on academic freedom and censorship in biodiversity conservation research, it is apparent that there is a massive gap between actual experiences of serious censorship, and public and political discussions, e.g. around 'cancelling'.

🚨Job Alert 🚨 🐕‍🦺 🐄🐎🐦‍⬛
Do you have project management skills & an interest in human-animal relations? We are recruiting a project manager role (5 years) for our new project (info in the 🧵) @sheffielduni.bsky.social
📆 deadline 30 June www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNO134/p...

Great to see work by Sarah Oakes, our of our fantastic Extinction Studies PhD students, highlighted by @leverhulme.ac.uk. Sarah's amazing interdisciplinary project is unique and important in linking social, cultural, and biological facets of #extinction in a #food security context.

It's rather depressing that this response piece was necessary. It perhaps reflects a culture where academics and editors feel compelled to publish attention-grabbing articles which amount to little more than pseudo-intellectual trolling, rather than slow, careful scholarship.

Parallels between biological invasions and human migration are flawed and undermine both disciplines. Response to Ahmed et al. A recent article by Ahmed and colleagues (2025) attempt to draw parallels and assess distinctions between biological invasions and human migration. This co

A very diverse bunch of scholars - from across biology, conservation, and migration studies - wrote this piece on the very obvious, yet not quite obvious enough for some, dangers of comparing invasive species and human migration. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

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The European Congress of Conservation Biology (ECCB) 2026 will be held in Leiden, 6–10 July! The theme of the conference is “Effective Conservation Science”.

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