• images of wildlife caught on camera
• download the Wildlife Spotter video [9 MB]
• spokespeople available for interview

Scientists are thanking the 30,000 Australians who have gone online and spotted more than 800,000 animals in 680,000 images through the ABC’s Wildlife Spotter project, helping scientists monitor Australia’s wildlife, their predators and pests.

But there’s still more work to be done, with hundreds of thousands of pictures of animals taken by automated ‘camera traps’ needing to be done.

“You’re helping us save bandicoots and other animals,” says Deakin University ecologist Euan Ritchie. “And you’re literally saving us years of work, so we can get ahead with understanding and protecting our wildlife.”

Anyone with a tablet or computer and an internet connection can join – head to www.wildlifespotter.net.au to start spotting and identifying the wildlife caught on camera.  [continue reading…]

• images of wildlife caught on camera
• download the Wildlife Spotter video [9 MB]
• spokespeople available for interview

Australian wildlife scientists need your eyeballs this August to help them study where Australia’s wild things are for Wildlife Spotter—the ABC’s citizen science project for National Science Week.

Australia is a vast country. Researchers have set up automatic cameras that are snapping wildlife day and night. Now they need your help to analyse the millions of photographs they’ve captured in tropical rainforests, the dry rangelands, and around our cities.

From superb lyrebirds to common wombats, from bettongs to bandicoots, from brush turkeys to Tassie devils, and even feral cats and foxes—scientists want to know which species are roaming both in the wild and in urban areas. Participants will help answer questions including: how many endangered bettongs are left; how well native predators like quolls and devils are competing with cats for food; and how common are common wombats.

You can join in by heading to the Wildlife Spotter website at www.wildlifespotter.net.au. [continue reading…]

Seventeen scientists, science communicators and wildlife experts are available for interview in Victoria, Northern Territory, NSW, Queensland and Tasmania.

More information and contact details for each spokesperson are below.

Or you can contact:

• Ellie Michaelides on ellie@scienceinpublic.com.au or 0404 809 789
• Tanya Ha on tanya@scienceinpublic.com.au or 0404 083 863

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Why everyone (except you) is an idiot.

Live show on tour

Daniel Keogh, reporter for ABC’s Hungry Beast and Radio National’s Science Show, is on tour for National Science Week to show why human stupidity is unavoidable.

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“Our failure to act on climate change could encourage an underground movement to take action and fix climate change through geo-engineering. It’s a real threat according to leading academics. And the ethics of geo-engineering were explored at a Victorian government backed conference in California earlier this year,” says science commentator Tim Thwaites.

Shock? Horror? Why should we be surprised? As climate provocateur, Bjorn Lomborg pointed out to Robyn Williams recently on the ABC’s Science Show, many geo-engineering possibilities are inexpensive enough to be with the reach of a billionaires like Bill Gates and Richard Branson —and Governments seem hamstrung about coming to agreement on any other action. This makes the ABC online drama project Bluebird timely, as it explores these very issues. [continue reading…]

11 am, 27 April 2010

From Australians stranded in Europe to fresh vegetable growers in Africa, people dependent on the world’s airlines have done it hard in the past two weeks.

If the eruption of one volcano in Iceland can disrupt us so badly, what could the Bluebird project do? You are about to find out.

From today, the ABC invites you to enter the world of the experimental science of geoengineering—the deliberate manipulation of the Earth’s atmosphere to counteract climate change. Bluebird AR, an interactive alternative reality story about geoengineering, will play out on websites, in the social media, on ABC programs, and all around you. [continue reading…]