Director´s view

High up in Kosciuszko National Park, my Australian colleagues showed me the typical habitat of a very small, extremely interesting and endangered marsupial – the Mountain Pygmy-possum (Burramys parvus). It was a scree slope formed from huge boulders. The Burramys (as it is also known) spends most of its time under the surface...

David Hunter invited us to his home in Albury, in the foothills of the Australian Alps. I was particularly taken by the unusual decorations in his living room. Imagine pouring lead into water – then enlarging the resulting formations to half or three quarters of a metre.

As soon as we arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the director of the Great Gobi B Protected Area, our long-time collaborator, Ganbaatar, gave me the best news I have heard since our transports of Przewalski’s horses started in 2012. A third-generation foal has just been born in this reserve in western Mongolia! In 2012, we transported...

I’m trying to recall how many times I came across a trace of Czechia in Central Africa. Not many. Probably the one that stuck in my mind the most was a dilapidated Zetor tractor in the depths of the Congo. But recently, in Cameroon, a completely different Czech trace surfaced in front of me.

The wait is over! Two Chinese pangolins – a male, Guo Bao, and a female, Run Hou Tang – have been at Prague Zoo since Thursday. These are truly exceptional animals. They are the only mammals to be covered in scales, so, at first glance, they look like reptiles, and they have many other remarkable features associated with...

Last Saturday morning, the director of Mykolaiv Zoo, Vladimir Topchij, published a photo with the caption “a night-time gift for our zoo”. It depicted a cluster bomb embedded in the ground. At more or less the same time, he also sent back the signed contract that was necessary for us to be able to pay him ten thousand euros...

The driver had stashed his machine gun between the front seats of the Landcruiser, but the other Kahuzi-Biega National Park rangers held theirs in their hands, even as we turned off the main road and took the muddy, deeply rutted road to the top of the hill. The car skidded and slid until we finally came to a halt at a wooden...

There are heart-breaking reports from Ukrainian zoos.

World Pangolin Day is always commemorated on the third Saturday in February. Recently, it has finally entered the consciousness, if not of the public, then at least of those interested in nature and its conservation. Its aim is to draw attention to these mammals’ uniqueness and the threat they face from illegal hunting and trade.