cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8953267

Banner image: Lilac-breasted roller in Etosha National Park, Namibia. Image courtesy of Giles Laurent via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

How Namibia's bird conservation projects build community resilience (commentary)

• Droughts and land degradation often erode communities’ social bonds, but in the Karas region of Namibia, bird conservation initiatives have become a rallying point.
• Women and youth are at the forefront of these initiatives, which has inspired confidence among peers and shown that conservation is not the domain of scientists alone, but also a practice of everyday community resilience.
• “It is time for policymakers, NGOs, and donors to support these initiatives not just as biodiversity projects, but as investments in community well-being,” a new op-ed argues.
• This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

In Namibia’s Karas Region, birds are more than symbols of freedom or beauty — they are teachers of resilience. Their survival in arid landscapes mirrors the endurance of the communities who live alongside them. Grassroots bird conservation projects here have revealed something profound: protecting birds can also strengthen families, nurture hope, and build social cohesion.

Across villages in Karas, parents and children tend habitats together, restoring nesting sites and planting native vegetation. These acts of care are not only ecological interventions; they are lessons in patience and problem solving. When a child sees a weaverbird return to a reed bed that the community has protected, it is a moment of triumph that teaches perseverance in the face of environmental challenges.

Women and youth are at the forefront of these initiatives. In one community, a group of young women organized bird walks for schoolchildren, teaching them to identify species like the sociable weaver and the pale chanting goshawk. Their leadership has inspired confidence among peers and shown that conservation is not the domain of scientists alone — it is a practice of everyday resilience.

Sociable weavers nesting in acacia trees, Karas Region, Namibia. Image courtesy of Martha Karas.

These projects also counter the isolation that environmental stress can bring. Droughts and land degradation often erode social bonds, but bird conservation has become a rallying point. Families gather to monitor nesting sites, share stories, and celebrate small victories. In doing so, they weave resilience into the social fabric. Conservation here is not only about biodiversity; it is about belonging.

The ecological benefits are clear. Protecting bird habitats safeguards pollination, seed dispersal, and pest control — services that sustain agriculture and livelihoods. But equally important is the emotional strength these projects cultivate. In Karas, conservation has become a human resilience strategy: a way to confront uncertainty with collective action and hope.

This perspective challenges the conventional view of conservation as a technical exercise. Too often, policies focus narrowly on species counts or protected areas. While these metrics matter, they overlook the lived experience of communities who find strength in caring for nature. By recognizing conservation as both ecological and social, we broaden its value and deepen its impact.

Lappet-faced vultures like this are native to the arid plains of the Karas Region, and organizations like Vultures Namibia ensure there’s awareness of them. Image courtesy of Martha Karas.

The lesson from Karas is urgent. As climate change intensifies, resilience will be as critical as resources. Grassroots bird projects show that resilience can be cultivated through simple, shared acts of care. They remind us that conservation is not only about saving species, but about sustaining the human spirit.

It is time for policymakers, NGOs, and donors to support these initiatives not just as biodiversity projects, but as investments in community well-being. Funding should prioritize programs that empower women and youth, foster intergenerational learning, and strengthen social bonds through conservation.

Birds in Namibia’s Karas Region are survivors of harsh landscapes. But they are also mentors of resilience, teaching us how to endure, adapt, and thrive together. By listening to the voices of those who lead grassroots efforts, we can reimagine conservation as a strategy for human strength as much as ecological survival.

Supporting these projects is not charity — it is foresight. In every nest protected, in every child inspired, we see the seeds of resilience that will carry communities through the challenges ahead.

Conservation, at its best, is a story of hope. And in Karas, that story is being written by birds and the people who care for them.

Martha Karas is a Namibian writer based in the Karas region.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8933482

If you are ever confronted by a toad, you soon see why there is little chance of confusing it with its froggy cousin.

I realised this after discovering a glorious, warty specimen settled on damp concrete in the garage one autumn. It was not only its copper-coloured eyes, squat boxer face and bumpy, waterproof skin — allowing it to survive away from water for longer — but its size that impressed. Wild toads can live for more than a decade; this creature may have been as old as my son.

After some deliberation (and Googling) I moved my toad to a pile of logs and fallen leaves near the pond. It was silent as I transported it, in gloved hands to protect its skin from mine, which meant it must have been a female: only male toads squeak when picked up.

Sadly, a report recently found that the chance to perform a toad relocation may become rarer than ever. Led by Dr Silviu Petrovan of the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the charity Froglife last October, it used one of the biggest data-sets ever gathered for amphibian population trends; between 1986 and 2021, a dedicated team of volunteers counted migrating toads during the spring breeding season. The findings were sobering: over the past 40 years, the UK population has declined by nearly half. The common toad (Bufu bufo), now reassessed as ‘near threatened’ in England and Scotland, may soon need a new name.

'In 2025, 275 active patrols helped almost 135,000 toads complete their lust-driven journey to reproduce'

(Image credit: Getty Images/Westend61)

One of two species native to Britain, the common toad has a place in our culture not enjoyed by the natterjack, whose home on sandy coasts and modest population has meant few of us will ever encounter one. The common toad, however, has had a near-ubiquitous presence in Britain since the last Ice Age: a study of frog and toad bones at Repton in Derbyshire found evidence of local populations as far back as the 8th century. The excavation concluded there was a toad boom in the 14th century, which might explain why the creature begins then to creep from folklore into literature.

From magic and medicine to myth, toads have been linked always to the suspicious and powerful: a toad is the first ingredient Shakespeare’s witches drop into their cauldron in Macbeth, the 15th-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson makes his toad treacherous and Milton’s Paradise Lost has Satan himself choosing to inhabit one for his disguise.

As with all folklore, there is confusion: what is bad is also powerful and power is something people try to harness. Across medieval Europe, women were advised that a toad effigy clamped between the knees during childbirth could ease labour pains. Meanwhile, toads were thought to carry a jewel in their heads that changed colour to warn of poison and protect against evil — or, as Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, the toad was ‘ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head’.

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These ‘toad-stones’, mentioned since the Middle Ages, became especially popular between the 14th and 17th centuries. They were, in fact, often fossilised fish teeth, but that did not stop people believing the proper way to extract one was to sit a toad on a red cloth until it belched the stone up, to be caught and set into a ring or amulet for luck.

'Frequently one comes upon shapeless masses of 10 or 20 toads rolling over and over, one clinging to another without distinction of sex'

Two toads, inspiring enough for George Orwell.

(Image credit: Getty Images/Stephan Gehrlein/500px)

Modern literature has given the poor old toad a gentler reputation. In his superb 1946 essay Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, George Orwell describes the creature after hibernation as having ‘a very spiritual look, like a strict Anglo-Catholic towards the end of Lent’. The essay credits the toad — not the cuckoo — as the herald of spring. His description of toad copulation brings to mind a particularly lively urban Saturday night, with the creature entering ‘a phase of intense sexiness. All he knows, at least if he is a male toad, is that he wants to get his arms round something and if you offer him a stick, or even your finger, he will cling to it with surprising strength and take a long time to discover that it is not a female toad. Frequently one comes upon shapeless masses of 10 or 20 toads rolling over and over, one clinging to another without distinction of sex’.

My own re-homed toad did not hop into her new refuge, but crawled, stretching her limbs across the leaves like an aged yogi. The glands in her bumpy skin contain toxins that deter predators, meaning that, unlike the frog, she can stroll away from trouble rather than leap. I never saw her again, nor any sign of the alien-like double-rowed strings of eggs she might have left clinging in the pond. Around St Valentine’s Day, amorous toads leave hibernation and begin their migration to ancestral breeding ponds, sometimes many hundreds of feet away. Most return to the very pond of their birth, using chemical signals and magnetic orientation to find their way — regardless of whether a new A-road now crosses their route. The long, jelly-like strings of eggs hatch within days. It takes two or three months for a tadpole to become an inch-long toadlet, which must then brave cars and predators as it leaves the water to find new ground for feeding and hibernation.

Toads return to the same ponds, which means when those ponds are drained or built over it breaks a link that is both ancient and ecological. Although a toad’s skin may look tough enough for a witch’s cauldron, it is porous. Agricultural pesticides seep through it, poisoning the animal, at the same time as killing off its food sources, such as spiders, beetles, worms and slugs. The creatures that prey on pesticide-poisoned toads are also affected, hedgehogs and otters among them, which often skin the toad inside out to avoid its toxic glands. Climate change, too, plays its part. Last year saw the driest spring in more than a century, disrupting hibernation and the availability of a toad’s choice of food, and milder winters cause toads to wake too soon, losing body condition and producing fewer eggs.

Why should we care about the much-maligned toad, apart from the fact that a world with one hiding in your garage is richer than a world without? The answer lies in the natural cycle. As with birds and insects, the decline of once-common species sends ripples along the food chain. As Froglife’s report notes: ‘It is not extinction, but the population decline of abundant species that will have the most serious ecological consequences. Abundant species tether food webs, account for much of the interaction diversity in a given community, and carry out ecosystem services’.

There is some good news. Froglife reports that, although toad populations crashed by 68% per cent between 1985 and 2013, efforts in the past eight years have brought ‘regional recoveries’, reducing the total decline to under half. Much of this is thanks to the Toad Patrols — volunteers who literally carry toads across roads by the bucketful. In 2025, 275 active patrols helped almost 135,000 toads complete their lust-driven journey to reproduce.

'It would be a shameful thing to have created a landscape that in only 40 years manages to kill off a creature that has survived 400 million, through the extinction of the dinosaurs to the Industrial Revolution'

It takes two or three months for a tadpole to become an inch-long toadlet, which must then brave cars and predators as it leaves the water to find new ground for feeding and hibernation.

(Image credit: Getty Images/Naturfoto Honal)

Community-led action can sound worthy, but futile. In fact, there is precedent in the revival of another creature once commonly squashed on tarmac: the hedgehog. As rural populations continue to fall, urban hedgehogs are making a comeback. The excellently named HogWatch project has seen dramatic rises in hedgehog populations in Highgate Wood, north London, in only eight years, thanks solely to citizen action. In October 2024, the National Hedgehog Conservation Strategy—launched by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society — became the world’s first of its kind, providing a frame-work for NGOs, government, landowners and communities. The Hedgehog Street campaign has already recruited more than 100,000 ‘hedgehog champions’.

Are toads the new hedgehogs? Let’s hope so. It would be a shameful thing to have created a landscape that in only 40 years manages to kill off a creature that has survived 400 million, through the extinction of the dinosaurs to the Industrial Revolution.

In the meantime, anyone with a garden can help. Despite not being able to build amphibian tunnels for commuting juveniles, Jenny Tse-Leon, head of conservation and Impact at Froglife, says that ‘the restoration and creation of more and better-connected ponds and habitats such as woodlands and grasslands are essential to their survival’. No matter the size of your garden, a small pond, log pile, stones or even an upturned flowerpot can become a summer refuge and a winter hibernaculum.

One day, perhaps, the sight of a toad making its slow, dignified way through the garden may become as common as it once was — and our children, too, might move one from a garage to a bed of leaves and see for themselves why these characterful creatures have long been woven into the fabric of British culture.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8932698

The River Otter's Remarkable Comeback

The first sign isn’t the otter itself. It’s the ripple – small, nearly invisible – spreading across the marsh. Then a blur of brown breaks the morning water’s silver surface. A head lifts, whiskers dripping, eyes alert. For a second, it lingers. Then it’s gone again, leaving only widening rings.

Not long ago, this scene, in this place, would have been impossible. In the 1980s, the chances of spotting a river otter anywhere along much of the Great Lakes shoreline were close to zero. Pollution, trapping, habitat loss – together they’d driven otters out. What remained were faded accounts, the odd specimen in a museum, a memory. Their return isn’t just welcome. It’s a sign the lakes themselves are healing.

The Great Lakes. Credit: Philroc/Wikimedia Commons.

A freshwater giant

North America's Great Lakes – Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario – form the world’s largest group of freshwater lakes. Together, they hold about one-fifth of all surface fresh water on Earth. Their basin straddles the border of Canada and the United States, sheltering more than 3,500 species of plants and animals, and tens of millions of people.

These waters aren’t simply vast storage tanks. They are living systems. Marshes filter runoff. Rivers swell with migrating fish. Wetlands cradle frog eggs and sedge roots. For millennia, Indigenous nations and fishing communities have relied on these shorelines. But stressed systems can break – and for decades, this one did.

The disappearance

River otters (Lontra canadensis) once moved almost everywhere in this basin. They swam with ease, hunted with precision and thrived in backwaters and bays thick with vegetation. But by the mid-20th century, they had vanished from the state of Ohio and become scarce across most of the watershed.

The reasons stacked up quickly. Over-trapping for fur. Pollution that loaded fish with PCBs and other toxins. Wetlands drained for farms and cities. Rivers and streams straightened, dammed, stripped bare. By the 1970s, the silence spoke volumes: the otter was gone, and with it an apex predator vital to the food chain.

A river otter at Muskatatuck National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Don Sniegowski/Flickr.

The comeback

In 1986, Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) began reintroducing river otters to streams they had not seen in decades. Over the next seven years, 123 otters from Louisiana and Arkansas were released into rivers selected for their clean water, abundant food and protective cover.

They weren’t the only ones bringing otters back. In the late 1990s, New York’s River Otter Project relocated 279 otters – drawn from the Adirondacks, Catskills and Hudson Valley – to 16 sites across western and central New York state. Many of those waterways had been without otter populations longer than most residents could remember.

In Ontario, biologists have documented otters recolonizing areas such as Algonquin Provincial Park and the north shore of Lake Superior, where they had been scarce for much of the 20th century. Across western Canada, populations have rebounded more broadly. Aside from rare remnant areas on Prince Edward Island, river otters are now considered stable or expanding in nearly every province and territory.

Meanwhile, restoration of the habitat itself was gathering pace. Drained croplands were being reflooded as wetlands, riparian buffers were planted to shore up streambanks, and old dams were being removed to reconnect fragmented waterways. All of these efforts were bolstered by the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a landmark U.S.–Canada treaty that pushed both countries toward reducing toxic discharges and restoring damaged habitats. By the 1990s, many of these rivers – once pollutants’ dumping grounds – were visibly cleaner and healthy enough once again to sustain apex predators.

The Maumee River at Defiance, Ohio. Photo: Bob Dilworth/Flickr.

Where the otters are now

Today, river otters once more slip through marshes and estuaries across the Great Lakes basin. Breeding populations are thriving along the Sandusky, Maumee and Grand rivers in Ohio. Sightings are increasingly common in Georgian Bay (part of Lake Huron) and along Ontario’s north shore of Lake Erie. Otters have returned to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula too, where quiet backwaters and fish-filled streams are ideal habitat.

As predators at the top of the chain, otters help regulate fish and invertebrate numbers. Their presence signals something deeper, too: the water is clean, the system productive, the ecosystem whole enough to support them again.

Challenges ahead

Recovery, unfortunately, doesn’t mean safety. Roads remain a serious threat. Highways cut through wetland corridors, and otters are killed crossing them. Wildlife officials map these blackspots and add underpasses, fencing and warning systems – but progress is slow.

New contaminants are appearing as well. PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals,” are showing up in Great Lakes fish, their long-term impacts still unknown. Shoreline development eats away at denning sites. Climate change threatens to shift prey distribution and alter seasonal ice cover. Any of these pressures could slow or even reverse otters’ recovery.

Otters in the harbour in Grand Marais, Minnesota, on Lake Superior. Photo: Sharon Mollerus/Flickr.

More than a species

To many Indigenous communities, the otter represents more than biology. In Anishinaabe culture, for example, it symbolises resilience, adaptability, play. Seeing otters return is a cultural renewal as much as a biological one – a sign that healthy ecosystems sustain people as well as wildlife.

For others, the meaning is simpler. Otters spark joy. A sudden flash through cattails. The clean dive of a plunge. A slide down mud or snow. In this way, they’ve become unofficial guardians of fresh water, their vitality pulling people into conversations about wetlands and rivers.

The folks in charge of the comeback

The otters’ recovery is the work of many. ODNR’s reintroduction laid the foundation, but protection and monitoring continue through agencies, non-profits and volunteers.

The Alliance for the Great Lakes fights pollution and protects shorelines. The River Otter Ecology Project spreads knowledge and research. The Wetlands Initiative rebuilds marshes and floodplains that support countless species, otters among them. Together, they form a safety net for the otters’ future.

Photo: Carlos Porrata

Forward thinking

The next phase is keeping waterways open, clean and full of prey. As otters spread into smaller rivers and lakes, careful planning will matter – especially in regions under pressure from development.

Cross-border cooperation will be critical, since the lakes cross Canada and the U.S. – and otters do not care for borders. Public participation will matter too: reporting sightings, volunteering, supporting wetland projects. Each action helps.

The return of otters – and possibility

On a quiet morning, an otter surfaces with a fish flashing in its jaws. It climbs a half-sunken log, shakes itself in a spray, then slides back into the water with barely a ripple. The rings spread, then fade. The lake seems unchanged – yet it isn’t.

What matters is simple: otters are back. And their presence proves something worth remembering. Healing is possible. Ecosystems can recover. The story of the Great Lakes – its waters, its people, its wildlife – is still unfolding.

Survey: What counts as a scientific contribution?

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8845168

Snuffleupagus, a newly described species, is an adorable little predator

S. snuffleupagus, a newly described species of fish, is named after the beloved Sesame Street character, Mr. Snuffleupagus, to which it bears an "uncanny" resemblance.

Solenostomus snuffleupagus, a newly described species of fish, is named after the beloved Sesame Street character, Mr. Snuffleupagus. (David Harasti)

Scientist David Harasti never had any doubt what he would name the tiny orange creature he first spotted on a diving expedition in Papua New Guinea in 2003.

But it would take another two decades for Harasti and his colleague Graham Short to find the elusive fish again, study it, and officially designate it a new species.

Meet Solenostomus snuffleupagus, named after the beloved Sesame Street character, Mr. Snuffleupagus.

"Snuffy for short," Short, an ichthyologist at the California Academy of Sciences and the Australian Museum, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. "The resemblance was quite uncanny."

Short and Harasti have now written a new paper, published in the journal Fish Biology, describing S. snuffleupagus as a new species of ghost pipefish that makes its home along coral reefs, and disguises itself as red algae.

'The awesome power of natural selection'

The fish has quite a few things in common with its namesake — mainly its orange-brown colouring, the long filaments that look like shaggy hair, and its elephant-like snout.

Milton Love, a marine biologist at the University of California’s Marine Science Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif., says the fish's muppet-like appearance demonstrates "the awesome power of natural selection."

"Clearly, all of the morphological features that we find endearing are of some value to the animal," Love, who was not involved in the research, said in email.

"Or, and here is another hypothesis, Gaia created this fish after having one too many of those rum drinks that come with those little umbrellas."

A snuffy fish photographed by a diver in Tonga. (Darren Rice/Matafonua Lodge)

But its similarity to Snuffleupagus goes deeper than meets the eye.

It's also extremely elusive, much like Mr. Snuffleupagus, who, in his early appearances on Sesame Street, was only ever seen by Big Bird, leading the other characters to mistakenly suspect he was imaginary.

Harasti and Short tried for years to spot a snuffy fish again after that first 2003 sighting to no avail.

Their luck changed in 2021 when some scuba diver buddies started seeing the little creatures on the Great Barrier Reef and got in touch. The scientists headed to Australia to see for themselves, and on their second dive, they found the fish.

"It's an understatement to say that we screamed under water," Short said. "We high-fived, gave each other a hug, and we were just so excited."

An itty-bitty carnivore

In order to describe the fish and confirm it as a previously undocumented species, the scientists looked at CT scans of specimens first collected in 1993 during exhibition to far north of Queensland, Australia, in the Torres Strait.

Short says they were collected alongside several hundred other fish specimens and tucked away until he and his colleague came looking. But even back then, he says ichthyologist Helen Larson, who was part of the expedition, suspected it was a new species.

S. snuffleupagus, like other ghost pipefish, is a cousin of the seahorse.

The newly described Snuffleupagus fish is smaller than a matchstick. (Darren Rice/Matafonua Lodge)

Using iNaturalist, the citizen science platform, the scientists confirmed sightings of it in Tonga, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia, suggesting distribution across the southwestern Pacific.

And while it may look like Big Bird's beloved bestie, there are a few significant differences between S. snuffleupagus the fish and Snuffleupagus the muppet.

While Snuffleupagus is famously big — bigger even than Big Bird — S. snuffleupagus is roughly four to five centimetres long, about the size of an airpod.

The Sesame Street character Snuffleupagus, pictured here rehearsing for the 2019 Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade in New York City, is much bigger and less predatorial than its fish counterpart. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)

And while Snuffleupagus would never harm a fly, S. snuffleupagus is a natural-born killer.

"They look adorable, very cute. They're very delicate and slow moving in the water. And it's been assumed that they only eat small crustaceans like small shrimp," Short said.

Not so, he says. The CT scans found tiny fish skeletons in the specimens' stomachs.

"Every fish has a role, and they are either eating or being eaten. It turns out, ghost pipe fish and in particular, snuffy … they're just like other fish," Short said. "They're predators."

Short says the widespread interest in S. snuffleupagus has been a delight, and he hopes it won't be the last fish he brings attention to.

He and his colleague already have their eyes on another species of ghost pipe fish that is known to divers around the Pacific, but hasn't been formally described.

If it works out, they plan to name it after another muppet, but Short wouldn't say which one.

"Not yet, because I need approval," he said.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8845166

Scientists Capture First-Ever Photos of the Elusive 'Cozumel Dwarf Fox' | PetaPixel

First-ever photograph of a Cozumel dwarf fox taken on September 17, 2023 | Image credit: Rafael Chacón

The Cozumel dwarf fox, a tiny animal so elusive that scientists were unsure whether it even existed, has been photographed for the first time.

Last month, researchers published the first-ever photographs and confirmed sighting of the Cozumel dwarf fox in more than 20 years in the journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation. The images show the adult male dwarf fox on the island of Cozumel, Mexico.

Close up of the Cozumel dwarf fox | Image credit: Rafael Chacón

While the images were only made public recently, the photographs date back to September 2023, when scientists located and safely recovered the Cozumel dwarf fox following online reports of a disoriented animal near the coastal highway on the island’s eastern side. After being held under observation and receiving a full health assessment, it was released into the Laguna Colombia State Reserve in Cozumel, a protected area chosen for its suitability and distance from road hazards.

Although the Cozumel dwarf fox was recovered, released into a protected reserve, and photographed, scientists say little is known about the species.

“The biggest challenge facing the Cozumel dwarf fox is that we still know almost nothing about it, including its remaining population size, distribution, or ecology,” Travis Bayer of Pathos Wildlife says in a statement. “That uncertainty alone is dangerous, because it makes effective conservation extremely difficult”.

A Tiny Animal That is Likely on the Brink of Extinction

The Cozumel dwarf fox is one of the rarest canine animals on the planet and represents a unique population that has inhabited the island of Cozumel for millennia, with subfossil remains suggesting its presence may predate early Mayan settlement.

This extensive period of isolation led to rapid evolutionary divergence and “insular dwarfism.” The Cozumel dwarf fox is estimated to be 60 to 80% the size of its mainland relative, the gray fox. Prior to this rediscovery, physical evidence of the Cozumel dwarf fox was entirely limited to these subfossil remains, and the last second-hand sighting had been reported in 2001.

Despite its long history on the island, the Cozumel dwarf fox has never been formally described or designated as taxonomically unique. Because its habitats in the southern portion of the island are increasingly threatened by land-use change, development, invasive species, and natural disasters, the scientific community considers the dwarf fox to be critically endangered and likely on the brink of extinction.

“One of the most important takeaways from this research is that species can quietly disappear without the world even realizing they are gone,” Bayer explains. “We often think extinction is something dramatic and obvious, but in reality, it can happen gradually and silently, especially for rare species living in remote or understudied habitats.”

Bayer adds: “The rediscovery of the fox is not a conservation success story yet, but it represents a second chance.”

More than 500 scientists join the first cohort of the ISC-INGSA science advice training programme

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Organized science in the age of AI: Are we asleep at the wheel?

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Call for nominations of experts to review the 2027 Global Sustainable Development Report

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Launch of a global mentorship scheme to support displaced scholars

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Call for mentors: Mentorship Initiative for Displaced Academics | deadline: 14 August 2026

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