#SciFri: ARC-BHS Joint Scientific Meeting 2023
Ahhh, the first weekend of December. For most of you it may be the start of your Christmas countdown, but for us herpetologists it is the timing of the annual Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust – British Herpetological Society Join…
#SteveReviews: Life on Our Planet
It is weird to me to watch a nature documentary, especially one which by title appears to be a spinoff of an Attenborough series and not have him narrate it. Instead however, Life on Our Planet which is available on…
#SciFri: European Turtle Alliance Conference 2023
On the 11th November, I visited Writtle University College for the annual conference of the European Turtle Alliance. Despite being reptiles, turtles and tortoises are not my forte and so I decided to try to fill that gap in my…
#SciFri: Free online Bsal course from EAZA Academy
A decade ago in 2013 when the discovery of the salamander chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans; Bsal) was published, my heart sank. What really scared me was the potential impact on wild newt and salamander populations in Europe, following the decline…
#SciFri: Searching for salamanders in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
If you wanted to create somewhere for herpetologists to flock in their hundreds, I could think of no better place than the Appalachian Mountains. The Great Smoky Mountains are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the…
#SciFri: GARD2022
If you read last week’s #SciFri post, you’ll know know that this time last year I was visiting Knoxville, Tennessee for the first Global Amphibian and Reptile Disease (GARD) conference. Aside from being the ideal place to network, and hear…
#SciFri: Zoo Knoxville
Today marks a year since the beginning of the first Global Amphibian and Reptile Disease (GARD) conference, held in Knoxville, Tennessee. I travelled to Knoxville alone (as I usually do for international conferences), visiting the United States for the first…
#SteveReviews: Uncharted Amazon
Sometimes you just want to watch something and unwind after a long day. That means you’re looking for something that isn’t too complex or hard to follow, until at least you’ve had a chance to have a cuppa and recover…
#SciFri: Visiting Kew Gardens
Roughly a year ago, I visited Kew Gardens for the first time since I was a child. It had been that long since I had actually been there, that it wasn’t at all like I remembered. I can only assume…
#SteveReviews: Our Great National Parks
It isn’t every day that a former President of the United States narrates a wildlife documentary series, especially given that the dominant force within the genre is Sir David Attenborough. It was a surprise when I opened Netflix one day…
