What if Netflix was free, and it curated beautiful, short films about what is happening to the planet, and how we can be better environmental stewards? Enter waterbear.com. No doubt I am very late to the party and plenty of people have already heard about this great platform. But I […]
Three ideas that have most shaped how I look at the world.
How do you provide people with fast access to medical supplies and services when they live in remote rural regions, sometimes more than a day’s walk from the nearest doctor? One answer is with drones. During my time in Ranomafana in Madagascar, I was lucky enough to speak with some […]
Mammal camera traps are sexy and butterfly nets make you feel like a Victorian scientist. But nothing beats the gruesome realities of catching dung beetles. Dung beetles are just about one of the most important and cost-effective animals you can sample, whether you’re doing so to test the impacts of […]
Once upon time, the island of Borneo was blanketed by dense and pristine rainforests. Ancient dipterocarp trees pierced the canopy, towering over a sea of treetops like parasols. These noble giants were the first to go when the chainsawing started. When industrial logging came to Borneo, it struck with an […]
Towards the start of our Borneo fieldwork, I bumped into Nathan Trowbridge walking through the forest. We would eventually record a pretty funny podcast, the highlight of which was Nathan’s story of his pet lungfish with an anal prolapse. But for starters, Nathan wanted to know what our project was […]
Walks next to rivers are nice. Walks in rivers are better. You get a different perspective when your legs are freezing cold and you keep stepping on jagged rocks. And it’s usually a more memorable one. When a few friends and I spent a week in France, we trekked a couple […]
Deep inside a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, lies the Global Seed Vault. That’s such a cool sentence. I didn’t write it. It’s the sentence that sits at the top of the Crop Trust website, over a picture […]
Hands down my favourite film is Tarzan (the Disney version). The soundtrack is amazing. The animals are awesome. And Tarzan is a badass. More than once at Uni, my mate Dan and I would cook omelettes for breakfast whilst listening to Son of Man by Phil Collins. I’m pretty sure […]
When we think of wars or political volatility, we understandably think of the immediate toll this has on humans. Wildlife conservation, on the other hand, is easier to think of as a separate sphere of activities, concerned with planting nice trees or picking up beach-side plastic. But this is not […]