Past events

A CHANGING WORLD THROUGH THE LENS OF LANTING This year’s Future For Nature Award Week has officially started, and wow! The first of multiple online events was a lecture by internationally renowned nature photographer Frans Lanting. For over an hour, 100+ of us sat on the edge of our chairs as he shared with us ‘the changing world through his lens’. Frans’ love for nature started in a Dutch village near Rotterdam. He later moved to California, where his inspiration…

EJ Milner is one of the founders of ‘Conservation Optimism’, an initiative that aims to make conservation more inclusive to everyone. In her lecture she transported us to Cambodia where we were able to hear the sounds of the forest and the stories about her wide experience. She told us about the various threats the forest is facing, from deforestation to death threats for rangers. Watch the recording of EJ’s presentation

Is it too hot for Zazu? Hornbills’ popularity is partly due to Zazu from the Walt Disney Picture film, The Lion King, but also due to their peculiar breeding strategy, in which the female seals herself inside the nesting cavity. Their characteristic long, down-curved and brightly colored bills make them one of the most striking birds to sight, to birders and non-birders alike. Although their breeding strategy is well known, the effect of climatic variables on their breeding success have…

Panel Discussion Dutch Forestry Three visions on Dutch forest management discussed Climate change is one of the biggest future challenges of forest management. Experts are still divided about how to manage Dutch forests towards climate adaptation; should we interfere with natural forest processes or not? On March the 17th, Future For Nature Academy organized a panel discussion about Dutch forest management with 3 professionals; Harrie Hekhuis (Staatsbosbeheer), Liesbeth Bakker (Wageningen University) & Leo Linnartz (ARK Natuurontwikkeling). After a short introduction,…

Crocodile Conservation It is one of the most worshipped and at the same time, most feared animals since time immemorial. Its rough skin and hazel eyes remind you of the ancient dinosaurs. It is an utterly fascinating creature that is threatened by the impact humans have on its environment.   On the 25th of February, Matthew Shirley, the 2016 FFN award winner, gave a guest lecture during which he presented different facts about crocodiles and pangolins as well as his approach to…

TNOC Festival FFNA went worldwide! From Melbourne to Mexico to Sweden, people participated in FFNAcademy’s workshop during The Nature Of Cities Festival (22-26 February). This being a rather large festival, our participants were likewise spread over different time zones, and while it was rather dark at 10 PM in the Netherlands, we even had someone joining us from their sunny garden in the USA! In our workshop “Future For Nature: a toolkit to inspire and mobilize youth for conservation”, on…

Saving the Scottish wildcat The first wild cats that pop up in your mind are probably medium to large-sized species like tigers, lions and cheetahs. But what about the smaller ones, like the flat headed and black footed cat? Or the Andean mountain cat and the Pallas’s cat? These smaller cats, which are around the size of your average domestic cat or even smaller, represent the biggest percentage of all the wild cats around the world! Did you know that…

excursion: Ecology of the rhine floodplains For Seriously Sustainable week of Wageningen University we wanted to show the beauty of nature close to our homes. Therefore we organised an excursion to the floodplains of the Rhine in Wageningen! Our special guide, inspirator and professional-friend from ARK Natuurontwikkeling Caroline van der Mark showed us around these ‘uiterwaarden’ (dutch for floodplains) and treated us with her wonderful stories. She started her story about why Wageningen University was based in Wageningen. After that…

Zooniverse Scrum “The Zooniverse” is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research, as they describe themselves. Most projects include large databases of camera trap or other pictures, and as you can imagine: if you have quadrillions of those, it could speed up the process of analysing quite a bit, if you include many people! That is exactly what we did in the most recent Zooniverse evening, which took place on the 10th of December, and focussed on…

FFN Award ceremony 2020 An afternoon full of digital conservation inspiration On Friday the 30th of October, hundreds of people logged in to the Hopin platform to get in touch with this year’s Future For Nature Award winners. For the first time ever, the award ceremony took place in different spots all around the world at the same time, making us feel truly connected in this difficult era. Iroro Tanshi, working on the conservation of the short-tailed roundleaf bat in…