Early this month I posted about a decree by the French ecology and agriculture ministry addressing the concerns of farmers and resulted in relaxed hunting laws for wolfs and increasing the number that could be killed this coming season. The news is not getting any better, with the french government landing on the side of livestocks. [LPO reports]

Thankfully, I have never seen any real conflict, but I have seen many animals on the state highways around and running through national parks.

A recent paper by Brewin et al. 2015 in PLOS looks at "the Potential of Surfers to Monitor Environmental Indicators in the Coastal Zone". In short, they demonstrated that by using the abundant surfer population in the south west United Kingdom (UK), they could generate ~40 million data points per year, overcoming the current inadequate sampling methods. This data would be invaluable for costal monitoring and management.

A recent scientific paper published in PLoS Biol by provided some rather amazing results...  Humans are not the only species that can talk! 

Image of Babblers taken from wikipedia many thanks Avcida.

A decree earlier this month by the ecology and agriculture French ministerial spells bad news for the French wolf population. The decree is about the organisation of wolf hunting for the 2015/2016 season (Official Journal of 2 July 2015).

~60% of the worlds population of the endangered asian elephant (elephas maximus) is found in India, with Karnataka state haralding the largest population. Scientists at NCF collated data to form a distribution map of elephants in Karnataka.

Photography Johan Georget spent 7 hours waiting for this amazing image of this black rhino at sunset. This is a prime example of creating an image. He put in the effort and time to source location, observe the behaviour of the rhinos going to this watering hole, and waiting for right time. Fantastic pic! 

Forest officials have reported a wild tiger in the fringes of Bannerghatta National Park in the south of Bangalore. This is barely 10km away from city.

The coming of the monsoons in India is associated with good news, particularly with regards to the wildlife after long and difficult dry seasons. However, that is not always the case, and Assam is an example.

Some good news came recently, when 5 major conservation organisations (WTI, IFAW, IUCN NL, World Land Trust & Elephant Family) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to raise £20-million for the construction of 100 key elephant corridors.

Nikon announces new 500mm and 600mm f/4 lenses (and a smaller one too).... 

Great news for the Nikon wildlife shooters out there...  :) Jared Polin (aka FroKnowsPhoto) gives you the low-down!

A disturbing story by Kalyan Varma : "When we read of man-elephant conflict , we agree that “capture” is the most logical solution. But do we know what capturing a wild elephant actually means, what it looks like, what it feels like?"