Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Post

🚨 NEW WASP FOUND IN DENMARK 🚨 In #SaksfjedWilderness we have found Netelia caucasica - a wasp that has never been found in Denmark... until now! 🐝 And today the Danish press went crazy in wasp news! ⬇️👌 The animal was caught in our "malaise trap": a tent designed (believe it or not) to collect mosquitoes and other flying insects. Jens Thorving Andersen, our naturalist has been sitting late into the evenings looking at the collected animals. Suddenly, something looked suspicious! Final confirmation was obtained few days ago via emergency calls to wasp CEOs around the world. 🌍 Netelia is a genus of nocturnal parasitic wasps that parasitize caterpillars. Otherwise, there's not much else we know about this small wasp. However, the species is considered rare throughout its range, which includes Germany and Sweden. 🌟 Of course, this is not the last time we find new Danish species. With Saksfjed Wilderness, we at Hempel Foundation are dedicated to restore and protect #biodiversity. With epic research projects and collaborations in the pipeline, we will create the best conditions for #dknature based on #rewilding. #nature #Natura2000 Hempel A/S Lolland Kommune

Are you thinking about leading a workshop at Symposium 2025? Do you have the perfect topic just waiting to be shared more broadly with wildlife rehabilitators? Is your application open, but you just haven't clicked submit yet? Don't wait to apply! The workshop application cutoff is next week on August 1, 2024. Here's why presenting a workshop at Symposium might be for you: 1) Share your expertise with wildlife rehabilitators across the country who are eager to learn. Based on conference feedback, attendees love the opportunity to practice hands-on skills and learn from experts in the field! 2) Teach a specialized skill in an intimate setting. Since workshops are longer sessions with smaller groups, workshop presenters get the chance to answer questions and discuss the topic in depth with attendees. 3) Enjoy registration discounts. As a thank you for presenting, workshop attendees will receive a discount on their full-week registration. Make your mark at Symposium 2025! Learn more by visiting our presenter resources here: https://loom.ly/6M70EPI #nwra #nwrasymp2025

This week marks Invasive Species Week! Check out the heatmap of our invasive non-native species (INNS) records for London below. Greenspace Information for Greater London acts as a repository for INNS records, helping to track the coverage and spread of these species. We currently hold over 100,000 invasive non-native species records in our database. You can aid efforts to control invasive species by submitting records of any sightings to the GiGL database, via the link on our website. Find out about our invasive species record holdings here: https://buff.ly/3Vd0kyp For even more information, the Non-Native Species Secretariat (NNSS) is running a whole host of initiatives this week to raise awareness of the impacts of invasive non-native species on Britain's wildlife. You can attend online seminars, and find out more about how to identify and correctly tackle invasive species. Find out more here: https://buff.ly/42zQS9y

Great Article on Long-Term Management Plans (LTMPs) As someone who didn’t fully grasp the complexity or lets say find it easy to explain the idea behind Long-Term Management Plans (LTMPs), I found the article by Nora H. and her co-authors to be a brilliant explanation of how these plans work—and why they’re so important. What really stood out to me was how Nora used two vastly different examples—the tiny Partula snails and the majestic giraffes—to illustrate how LTMPs function across species of all sizes. The article did an excellent job of breaking down LTMPs, showing that they’re not just about animal care but also about managing populations, maintaining genetic diversity, and preparing species for potential reintroduction into the wild. Whether it’s protecting the last remaining Partula snails or ensuring sustainable populations of giraffes, Nora’s article made it clear that every species, no matter its size, plays a crucial role in our ecosystems. This is a great way to explain what can be a complex process, and I’ll keep it as my go-to example for future reference. Another great issue of 𝗭𝗼𝗼𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮! Thanks, European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA). #Conservation #Wildlife #LTMP #Biodiversity #Sustainability #SpeciesSurvival #Zoos #EnvironmentalAwareness #GiraffeConservation #PartulaSnail #EAZA

Curious about some of the devil ray species commonly found at landing sites in Sri Lanka? One goal of Blue Resources Trust (BRT), co-founded and directed by New England Aquarium MCAF Fellow Daniel Fernando, is to train community members how to identify endangered species at landing sites. Check out the post below to learn about the sicklefin devil ray, spinetail devil ray, and bentfin devil ray: https://lnkd.in/gsJ4C9NA

🐾 It is wonderful news to see how many people have visited the Missing Lynx Exhibition (https://lnkd.in/dBx7Qxhe), which is travelling around Southern Scotland and Northern England. Education such as this is a vital step before any reintroduction. In 2018, the government rejected proposals for a trial reintroduction of lynx into the Kilder forest, largely citing the potential for human-wildlife conflict. 😺 Any reintroduction would rely heavily on the agreement and cooperation of farmers. Successful reintroductions across Europe have relied on local stakeholder buy-in. Where this has not been achieved, human-wildlife conflict can threaten the survival of the local lynx population. 🐑 Much of the opposition to a reintroduction of lynx has to do with their impact on sheep farming, not just the livestock they predate but also the stress on flocks that share a landscape with predators. 🐈 In Norway, the number of sheep killed by lynx is relatively high, with each Lynx killing an average of 10 sheep a year. However, this paper (https://lnkd.in/dE5mBPbt) shows evidence that this is largely due to flocks in Norway being pastured in or around forests, something that is much rarer in other parts of Europe, where predation rates are much lower (2 to 3 sheep per lynx per year). The paper suggests that lynx rarely actively target sheep but will kill sheep that they come across as a chance encounter. This is much more likely in forested landscapes as they are lynx preferred habitat.    🐏 This paper from 2018 (https://lnkd.in/dpDNTqiZ) suggests that the population of around 300 lynx in Europe is responsible for around 300 sheep kills per year, set against roe deer and chamois predation of around 12,500 per year. 🦅 One unknown factor that can only be explored through a trial reintroduction would be the level of game bird predation by lynx. This paper points out (https://lnkd.in/d7mJTPJZ) that nowhere else in Europe are the levels of gamebird stocking as high as they are here in Britain. If it occurs, gamebird predation is likely to present another potential area of human-wildlife conflict, as has been seen with illegal killings of raptors on grouse moors in Britain. 🌳 The dangers of rushing a reintroduction without proper stakeholder buy-in are clear from examples in Europe, particularly in parts of Switzerland and France, where proper stakeholder approval was not achieved prior to lynx reintroduction. #rewilding #lynx #missinglynx #carnivorereintroductions

🎧”Europe Talks Back” new episode is OUT: "Should zoos be banned?" 🔗 https://lnkd.in/exrgtVtb 🎙️In this episode, we will investigate a few questions with Martin Boye, President of the EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR AQUATIC MAMMALS, and Kate Werner, Senior Campaign Manager at PETA UK. ❓Zoos bring us much closer to wildlife, but their existence is a controversial topic. Go online and it’s easy to find groups that advocate for the closure of zoos, assessing that they do more harm than good to animals. However experts working in zoos think differently. So the question boils down to: Are zoos actually beneficial to animals? Do they have a role to play in conservation? Hosted by Gail Rego (She/Her), in co-production with Sphera Network. #EuropeTalksBack #Europod #EuropeanPodcasts #Eu #EnglishPodcast #zoos

This should be quite an interesting talk.

The Animal & Society Institute invite you to attend the next installment of the Colloquium Series: Talking to Lions: Human-Animal Cultures and the Power of Stories. The webinar will be held on Wednesday, May 29, 2024 at 12pm ET with Dr. Sandra Swart. ‘If a lion could speak,’ the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, ‘we could not understand him.’ But lions do ‘speak’ – they communicate in voice and action – and we homo sapiens have long tried to understand them and sometimes succeeded. In this talk, Dr. Swart will show how contact between humans and lions has sometimes shown evidence of mutual comprehension that has been co-created by the changes in human and lion lifeways. Dr. Swart will discuss how, at the same time as Wittgenstein used the lion to illustrate the impossibility of such communication, a real lion-human community were speaking to each other and used this conversation to survive in a shared territory in the Kalahari desert. This story, of how two apex predators learned to live together in a shared world, will be used as a way of thinking afresh about how we tell more-than-human histories in a way that challenges us to take animal cultures seriously. Register for this event here: https://lnkd.in/eftKPMmj #professionaldevelopment #lions #animals #animalsandsociety #humananimalculture #humananimalinteraction #humananimalbond #knowledgeispower