The next European Congress of Mammalogy (ECM9) will be held in Patras, Greece in 2025 (31 March – 04 April). Mammal Conservation Europe is one of the organisers of the Congress, along with the Hellenic Zoological Society and the European Mammal Foundation!

The five-day conference will be held at the Conference & Cultural Center of the University of Patras, at the outskirts of the city. It will cover all aspects of mammalian biology, such as Genetics, Evolution and Phylogeography, Conservation Biology and Management, Landscape Ecology, Population Dynamics, Diseases, Zoonoses and Parasites, Adaptations to Climate Change, Behavioural Ecology, Human-Mammal Interactions, Urban Ecology, and New Methodologies for Mammal Monitoring.

Some initial information about the congress, the city and the venue is available at the official ECM9 webpage, which is currently under construction. Please check back regularly for updates and important announcements.

To express your interest in the congress and ensure that you receive further updates as the preparations advance, the organisers have provided the option of Pre-registration.

Please feel free to forward this announcement to anybody who might be interested in attending ECM9.

The 12th International Dormouse Conference is taking place from the 2nd until the 6th of September 2024 at the Hessian Nature Conservation Academy in Wetzlar, Germany.

Registration will be open until June 16, 2024.

For more information, please visit the 12th IDC webpage.

Please join us in the first annual meeting of Mammal Conservation Europe, which will be held online on March, 27th, 2024.

The meeting will start with an open session from 13:00 to 14:00 (CET), which will include a talk by our guest speaker Prof. John Linnell on the wolf conservation in Europe.

You can download the invitation to the meeting HERE. Please do not forger to REGISTER!

The NRL is at the risk of getting shut down!

MCE was informed that, unfortunately, Hungary intends to vote against the NRL, with “political power plays” taking place at the highest level of the Council (Head of States).

For that reason, the Belgian Presidency removed the NRL from the Coreper agenda yesterday. It will need to be discussed in the next Coreper meeting, taking place tomorrow, if it is to be included on the ENVI Council agenda on Monday. For that to happen, in the next hours Member States need to be pushed to stand up clearly, defend the NRL and hold their colleague Member States fully accountable for it.

The EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION PACKAGE contains additional information and communication material that you can adapt and use according to what would work best for your country (check which messages are paired to your level/country).

MCE is one of nearly 30 organisations to have signed an open letter addressed to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to put the nature-based EU water resilience initiative back on the agenda before the 2024 EU elections.

You can download the letter HERE.

MCE has watched closely the process towards the ratification of the Nature Conservation Law (NRL).

UPDATE: On February 27, 2024 the EU Parliament finally adopted the Nature Restoration Law. You can download the adopted texts HERE.

While we are disappointed that many of the actions originally included within the bill have been dropped or watered down (for example, the removal of 10% of farmland to be dedicated to habitats favourable for wildlife), the legislation is nevertheless a major step forward for nature conservation in Europe.

Mammal Conservation Europe is very concerned about the European Commission’s Press Release on wolves in Europe (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_23_4330).

We have therefore written to the President, and the Head of the Directorate General for Environment at the Commission. You can find out more about our response HERE.

Click HERE to learn more about MCE’s conservation initiative for the Garden Dormouse.

Attribution: © Jan Ebr; some rights reserved. Source: iNaturalist