Brown hyenas & crayfish, great white fear mongering, community optimism, lethal owl control & celebrating female rangers

Zoology Ramblings

Welcome to episode 26 of Zoology Ramblings!

This week, we are back to our regular podcast structure and begin by sharing some quick nature news followed by our animals of the week.

Robi talks about brown hyena phylogeny, and how new research may see it re-classified into an extinct genus. Taxonomy nerds, this one's for you! I talk about the invasive American signal crayfish and how it's come to spread an dominate across UK waterways.

We then share our local news, which mean both of us sharing UK-based stories while Robi and I are in the same country. I talk about the hopeful community-based stories of people drawing inspiration from taking action for nature locally. Robi un-packs a fear-mongering article about great white sharks spotted in Ireland, and how this continues to give these amazing predators a bad reputation.

We then move onto our global conservation stories, where Robi talks about the proposal to kill 1.5 million barred owls in the USA, and I celebrate the amazing female rangers of North Luangwa.

Please let us know which species you'd like us to talk about in our upcoming Rewilding deep dive.

As ever, thanks to Allie for the lovely piano interlude and thanks to you amazing listeners for sticking with us on our long rambles.

We hope you enjoy our latest ramble,

Emma and Robi

To see what we're up to elsewhere check us out on:

@emma_hodson_wildlife

@robi_watkinson_wildlife