News

The International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB) is the largest gathering of conservation scientists and practitioners in the world. Next week, on August 4th, over 2,000 delegates will gather in Montpellier, France, to be updated on one another’s projects, share information and plan for the future of wildlife and biodiversity.

Three of Durrell’s top conservation scientists will make presentations to their peers at the congress, including Professor Carl Jones, who has been given the honour of giving the plenary speech as the event draws to a close on August 6th.

Carl’s talk will be entitled Using species conservation to drive the restoration of ecosystems. This will showcase Durrell’s approach to conservation and communicate our results and the need for long-term commitment when attempting to restore species as both the building blocks and the impetus for rebuilding damaged ecosystems.

Dr. Richard Young, Head of Conservation Science, will be co-hosting a symposium alongside the IUCN Species survival commission on August 4th, entitled The difference conservation makes: evaluating the impacts of conservation evaluation.

All three Durrell scientists will speak at this symposium, and will use the opportunity to highlight Richard’s groundbreaking research which ultimately led to the award-winning Durrell Index.

2014 Tusk Award winner Herizo ‘Hery’ Andrianandrasana will make a presentation of his emerging work evaluating the benefits for people and wildlife of Durrell’s decades-long community programmes in Madagascar. Hery has worked amongst these communities for many years, and has an outstanding ability to both understand and communicate the needs of Malagasy people and wildlife on ‘both sides’ of the outreach programmes.

Dr. Richard Young tells us “Durrell will be playing a highly significant role at this globally important conference. This represents a major accolade for Carl Jones and the Trust in general. We hope to use this opportunity to both further awareness of the Trust and the Durrell Index, and begin building a network of conservation impact specialists around the world – so that we can communicate the value of saving species from extinction and get more support for the work we, and organisations like ours, are committed to.”