Elliot Connor is a young conservationist living in Sydney, Australia. He is a passionate insect-lover, and his raised fig tree leaf beetles, spiny leaf stick insects, and assassin bugs in addition to his three pygmy bearded dragons at home. He runs a field naturalist group in the Sydney area, and has recently won a competition […]
In the Footsteps of Giants: Reviving the legacy of a lost naturalist
If you’re reading this (and I’m pretty sure you are), then the chances are that you’ve heard of a bloke by the name of Alfred Russel Wallace. Unfortunately, however, many people haven’t, so you’ll forgive me if I take a minute to explain. The year is 1858 and a small group of white-haired, balding British […]
The Trouble with Tortoises: How a Galapagos giant was rediscovered after more than a century
They say that television is a force for evil, corrupting our youth as they while away their days, eyes glued to shining screens. Television is meant to be ‘fake’, ‘artificial’, dominated by corporate powers and indoctrinating children with conforming world views and a profound apathy that grows with each generation. So what would you think […]
The tale of the Night Parrot: An epic of rediscovery against the odds
Parrots are birds. Birds fly. So parrots fly. Simple, right? Well, not exactly.
Frogs, sex and la(r)va
The Quito rocket frog (Hyloxalus jacobuspetersi) disappeared before it even got a name. It was first described for science in 1991, but it wasn’t spotted after 1989, with some scientists claiming that no one had laid eyes on them since the 1960’s. Story goes that it was once widespread across the Ecuadorian Andes, jumping from stream […]
From saddle cover to media sensation: the story of the yellow-tailed woolly monkey
During his famous 5 year-long expedition to Latin America (1799-1804), Alexander von Humboldt collected, together with his naturalist partner, Aimé Bonpland, around 60,000 plant specimens and an unknown number of animal specimens that we can safely assume to be in the thousands. Some of these specimens were being shown and described to the scientific world […]
Un-masking the true identity of the Tasman Booby
Remote volcanic islands, ancient bones, scientists and a species brought back from the dead. It might sound like a Jurassic Park rip-off but this is the story of how a diverse team of researchers un-covered the fate of the Tasman Booby. Unearthing history On Lord Howe Island, the husk of an old volcano 1600km east […]
Now you see it, now you don’t: the troubled tale of the estuarine pipefish
The estuarine pipefish, has been playing a frightening game of hide-and-seek for decades. Not only was this pipefish thought to be extinct once, it was feared to have disappeared from the world a second time… only to be discovered yet again by scientists. You may wonder, just as we did, why this species has been […]
Finding inspiration in rediscovery
I love what I do. I’ve been a naturalist since childhood, and I was lucky enough to grow up in the wilds of west Dorset where the woodlands, coastlines and hills gave me everything I needed to explore my fascination with wildlife and the natural world. In school, the only subject which interested me was […]
On the path of the Spreadwing
We were threading on a narrow foot path, running across a rainforest leading to the Adam’s Peak mountain, the most sacred mountain in Sri Lanka and the fourth highest in the country. Our team of five naturalists was ascending the mountain slowly as we were frequently held by interesting animals, beautiful sceneries of forests, mountains […]