Here’s a sobering fact: Even if the entire world transitions away from fossil fuels, the way we farm and eat will cause global temperatures to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the critical threshold set in the Paris Climate Agreement. The further we go above that limit, the more intense the effects of […]

A new analytical method is revealing how conservationists can further boost breeding programmes dedicated to saving some of the world’s most threatened species, according to new research led by the University of Sheffield and ZSL.  Conservation zoos, and the global breeding programmes they facilitate, are vital to maintaining or restoring populations and boosting genetic diversity of threatened birds. But not every egg produced in a breeding programe hatches into a chick.  New research by an international team of scientists - from ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, the University of Sheffield, University College London, University of Canterbury and the Department of Conservation in Aotearoa New Zealand - has shown that new diagnostic methods could help amplify the success of conservation breeding programmes, by offering a better understanding of why eggs don’t hatch.