ENHG Special Lecture Oct 8: Madagascar pochards and ploughshare tortoises – Protecting the rarest of the rare in Madagascar

Special ENHG Lecture October 8th, 2019: Madagascar pochards and ploughshare tortoises – Protecting the rarest of the rare in Madagascar

A talk on conservation projects in Madagascar supported by the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund

Speaker: Dr. H. Glyn Young,  Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (Jersey Zoo)

Date: Tuesday, 8th October

Time: 7.00 pm – 9.00 pm

Membership sign up from 7pm, talk begins at 7:30pm

Location: UAE Foreign Correspondents Club, Building 6, twofour54(Park Rotana Hotel Complex), Eastern Ring Road, Abu Dhabi (near Khalifa Park)

Meeting co-sponsored by Emirates Natural History Group, Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund and Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi, EAD, with the support of the Foreign Correspondents Club of the UAE.

About the Speaker: Dr. H. Glyn Young grew up in Hampshire, England and has worked for the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust at Jersey Zoo since 1983. Now Head of the Birds Department at Durrell, he has worked on and has led conservation projects with the some of the rarest species on Earth in Mauritius, Madagascar, Galápagos and the Caribbean. He has also worked extensively on bird conservation projects in Jersey.

He has a Master’s degree and a PhD on the ecology of Madagascar’s endangered ducks and is Assistant Co-ordinator of the IUCN Threatened Waterfowl Specialist Group.

The Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund has supported research on a number of projects in Madagascar, including work on the Madagascar Pochard and the Ploughshare Tortoise.

About the talk: Madagascar is renowned for both its remarkable degree of plant and animal endemism and the extreme threats facing the wildlife, habitats and people of this island country. I will look at possibly two of the rarest and most threatened species and Durrell’s long term projects to ensure their continued survival. Both the Madagascar pochard and the ploughshare tortoise have long histories of puzzling us and their conservation strategies have never been straight forward. We are indebted to many partners and collaborators in these projects including the Mohammed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund. I will talk about the challenges we have faced along the road and give hope for the future.