George Holmes
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georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes
@georgeholmes.bsky.social
670 followers 74 following 91 posts

Professor of Conservation and Society @envleeds.bsky.social. Known to students as Dr. Evil. Biodiversity conservation. Human geography. Political ecology. Protected areas. Social impacts of conservation. Human-wildlife coexistence. Rewilding. Sarcasm. .. more

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George Edward Thomas Holmes is a British academic administrator, previously serving as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greater Manchester (2006-2025).

Source: Wikipedia
Environmental science 47%
Economics 14%
Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Floriane Clément

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 1d
Fieldwork can be a unique opportunity, but it can also be a very significant challenge to well-being. My colleagues have developed this interactive reflection tool to help manage well-being whilst on fieldwork, preparing to fieldwork, and when you get back
inclusivefieldwork.leeds.ac.uk/wellbeing/
Wellbeing Reflection Tool | Inclusive Fieldwork Hub
inclusivefieldwork.leeds.ac.uk

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 5d
go to POLLEN, load up on radical ideas around coexistence. Then go to ECCB and Pathways, release the ideas and cause absolute havoc?

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 6d
They go to the same place as pens, tupperware lids, and exactly one sock from each pair.

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 7d
when leaving comments on an early draft of Dr @sicilyfiennes.bsky.social amazing thesis, I described a sentence in it as “so good it should be embroidered on a tea towel”. As a end-of-PhD present, they gifted me this amazing tea towel, with that sentence embroidered on it! Best academic gift ever!
Tea towel with embroidered sentence

Reposted by George Holmes

serenath.bsky.social
Serena T-H @serenath.bsky.social · 8d
Are you an ecologist? Do you collect biodiversity data for your role in a charity, research, a government body, or a specialist organisation?

Read on for a thread that might interest you… 🧵 [1/6]

#biodiversity #forests #darkextinction #ecology #research
Photo shows the yellow myxcomycete, Fuligo septica, on deadwood

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Garry Peterson, David L. Roberts , and 5 more

danbrockington.bsky.social
Dan Brockington @danbrockington.bsky.social · 14d
Profits from scientific publishing are eye-watering, costing us billions. In ‘The Drain of Scientific Publishing’ (arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820), (building on ‘The Strain of Scientific Publishing’ doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00327) we show how it is harmful – and unnecessary.
The Drain of Scientific Publishing
The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science. We need the most powerful members of the research community, funders, governments and ...
arxiv.org

Reposted by George Holmes

leverhulme.ac.uk
Leverhulme Trust @leverhulme.ac.uk · 15d
@extinctionleeds.bsky.social is an interdisciplinary doctoral training programme focusing on topics relating to extinction and its meanings, histories and legacies.

Watch the whole🎬👉 media.leverhulme.ac.uk/video/extinc...
@katatrepsis.bsky.social @universityofleeds.bsky.social

Reposted by George Holmes

s-pooley.bsky.social
Simon Pooley @s-pooley.bsky.social · 15d
A curious thing I share about #okapi is their long history with the U.S., esp. New York: @amnh.org, Bronx Zoo, @wcs.org. Deals w Belgian Congo, Lang's Congo trip, Gilman's philanthropy, #Warhol & Anne Eisner Putnam's art, & Madison Square Gdns where Mr G, the only circus okapi, died. Book out today

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 20d
this paper in @consletters.bsky.social is a superb primer on what power means in conservation - a big job to summarise centuries of social theory and decades of conservation social science research into a few thousand words!
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Naming It Is Not Enough: An Orienting Map for Understanding Conservation's Entanglement With Power
Power is frequently acknowledged in conservation as a limiting factor, something to be cited, problematized, or managed, less frequently is it engaged with as a lived, situated, and multidimensional ....
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reposted by James M. Bullock, Dolly Jørgensen

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 21d
Fancy coming to POLLEN in Barcelona and joining our panel on "Political Ecologies of Restoration: Reintroduction, Assisted
Migration, and Rewilding"? Then submit an abstract via the link below!

pollenpoliticalecology.network/pollen-2026/...
Programme - POLLEN
Login
pollenpoliticalecology.network

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 22d
thanks- the first draft mentioned infant Ibex goats being "kid-napped", but the reviewer didn't like it. It's my mission to put dad jokes and puns into all my papers.

Reposted by Dan Brockington, Lesley A. Hall, Esther Turnhout , and 3 more

georgeiorda.bsky.social
Dr George Iordachescu 🏳️‍🌈 🟥 @georgeiorda.bsky.social · 23d
🚨 We are looking for 3 new colleagues to join the GreenFrontier team as Postdoctoral Researchers!

Deadline for applications: 25 Nov 2025

Each of the 3 openings will involve extended ethnographic fieldwork + plenty of opportunities to consolidate research & leadership skills!

Please share widely!

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 27d
(warning. This paper contains dad-jokes)

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 27d
This started off life as a @naturalengland.bsky.social / DEFRA England Species Reintroduction Taskforce blogpost. By the way, the amazing Gabriel Rowland has just started a PhD exploring the social and ecological aspects of illicit and unregulated translocations

Reposted by Rosaleen Duffy, Dolly Jørgensen

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · 27d
Short piece in @consletters.bsky.social exploring social, cultural, political and ecological apsects of illicit and unregulated species translocations - what others (not me, due to homophone errors) might call guerilla rewilding. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Who Let the Frogs out? Illicit and Unregulated Species Translocations
Click on the article title to read more.
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reposted by David L. Roberts

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Oct 23
The bison in Kent can be seen by some as a species 're'-introduction, because bonasus and priscus are so genetically and phenotypically close, or a taxon substitution, because they perform the same ecological function, or an introduction of another species altogether, just because it is cool.

Reposted by David L. Roberts

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Oct 23
We assume that bonasus are a forest species, because that's were the remnant populations were - but they may have preferred grasslands, and only live in forests because they are the last refuge from human pressures. So the forest bison may not be truly at home in forests in Kent or anywhere else

Reposted by David L. Roberts

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Oct 23
The Kent bison are European forest bison (bison bonasus). No bonasus remains have been found in Britain, but plenty of extinct Steppe Bison (Bison Priscus) remains have been dug up. How different these species were - genetically, phenotypically, ecologically, is contested.

Reposted by David L. Roberts

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Oct 23
A fun visit to the University of Kent, to discuss species reintroductions. Here's me in front of the campus mural of a European Bison. There's a small herd of them living just three miles from this mural, but it is not a simple story of a 're' introduction.
Two men standing in front of a mural of a bison in forest

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Oct 17
Yes. I'm presuming it was a careful choice not to quote her exact words in the letter, so I'm not going to post them here. I believe some news outlets reported those words, so you can find them elsewhere. But they were pretty mild and a MILLION miles away from anything dangerous or prejudiced.

Reposted by Anthony Burke

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Oct 17
This is an important petition on academic freedom, for a professor at Syracuse, NY, USA, who has been indefinitely suspended for a very mildly sarcastic four-word social media post relating to US politics.
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Letter of Support for Professor Farhana Sultana
As scholars within and beyond academia, we write in solidarity with academic freedom of expression with our colleague, Dr. Farhana Sultana, an internationally recognized scholar and tenured Full Profe...
docs.google.com

Reposted by George Holmes, Markus P. Eichhorn

rsmythfreelance.bsky.social
Richard Smyth @rsmythfreelance.bsky.social · Oct 14
Today I am mostly thinking about the popular inter-war literary genre 'animal stories written by fascists'. Join me.
Title page of a collection of animal stories by Henry Williamson: TARKA THE OTTER, SALAR THE SALMON, THE EPIC OF BROCK THE BADGER, CHAKCHEK THE PEREGRINE.

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Oct 3
new virtual exhibition on wetlands, exploring how people interact with their wetlands, their rhythms, dynamic changes, and flows of many kinds. www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/...
Wetland Times
www.environmentandsociety.org

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Oct 2
This paper - on what habituation does and should mean - is a must-read for anyone working on wildlife conservation, human-wildlife interactions/conflict/coexistence, translocations, in the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences.

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Sep 29
The original paper is this one, in @peopleandnature.bsky.social
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
Stakeholder consensus suggests strategies to promote sustainability in an artisanal fishery with high rates of poaching and marine mammal bycatch
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Sep 29
I've long thought of our research as artworks 😉. But now it is actually true - our research on Caspian seal conservation has been integrated into an artwork in Berlin, on ecological degradation and human-nature interactions. w/ @phoca-sapiens.bsky.social.
www.studio1-0-6.com/carried-by-t...

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Sep 26
Another productive meeting of the Defra/ @naturalengland.bsky.social Species Reintroduction Taskforce, this time at Wild Ennerdale, Cumbria. Classic Taskforce behaviour, crouching in a forest looking at a successfully translocated Hairy Wood Ant colony.

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Sep 23
Provocative but very necessary argument in @consletters.bsky.social on rethinking politics and definitions in carnivore conservation in Europe, moving away from crisis mode now that meta-populations are healthy. By @hannalp.bsky.social and von Essen
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Now What? The Conundrum of Successful Recovery of Wolves and Other Species for European Conservation
The recent decision to downlist the wolf from a “strictly protected” to “protected” status in the Bern Convention and Habitats Directive marks a turning point for European conservation. While reflect...
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Sep 23
Happy Fat Bear Week, for all of those who celebrate: explore.org/fat-bear-week
Fat Bear Week 2025
Fat Bear Week 2025
explore.org

georgeholmes.bsky.social
George Holmes @georgeholmes.bsky.social · Sep 19
along with @monicavasile.bsky.social and @hannalp.bsky.social I a huge fan of underwhelming species reintroduction videos. Here is my contribution, releasing some native ramshorn snails into my garden pond.