Knowing your subject is pivotal to meaningful wildlife photography. It makes the differences between a pretty picture and significant image. So, who better to ask about a subject than an expert.

Here I interview Dr Vicki Fishlock of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE) about her research and love for the big-eared, long nosed soap opera stars of her life! :)

Today (29th July) is International Tiger day! The point of this day is not to raise money (although that is nice), but to raise awareness! So, celebrate your tiger shots, share them and share the awareness!

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.

Infra-red flash reveals the panthers spots!

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.