Please join us for the second General Meeting of Mammal Conservation Europe, which will be held online on March, 3rd, 2025.

The meeting will start with an open session from 12:00 to 13:00 (CET), which will include:

A) A talk on the highly threatened Blind mole-rats by Dr. Dušan Jelić and Dr. Gabor Csorba

(Please support our fund-raising campaign to save the Blind mole-rats)

B) a talk on hedgehogs and their new European Red List status by Dr. Abi Gazzard and Nida Al-Fulaij

You can find out more details about this event and register HERE! It’s free!

IX European Congress of Mammalogy (ECM9) will be held in Patras, Greece, from March 31 to April 4, 2025. Mammal Conservation Europe is proud to co-organize this event alongside the Hellenic Zoological Society and the European Mammal Foundation.

This five-day event will explore a diverse array of topics in mammalian biology, including:

• Genetics and Genomics in Mammalogy
• Conservation Biology and Management
• Landscape Ecology and Population Dynamics
• Disease and Parasite Ecology
• Adaptations to Climate Change
• Behavioural Ecology
• Urban Ecology and New Methodologies in Mammal Research

We are pleased to announce that the early registration and abstract submission deadlines have been extended once more to January 24, 2025, offering participants more time to prepare and make arrangements with registration and abstract submission.

Participants can register, submit abstracts, and find detailed information about the congress on the official ECM9 webpage: ecm9.com. Please check the site regularly for updates, including accommodation options and the full scientific program.

To ensure you stay informed about ECM9 updates and announcements, we encourage you to register as soon as possible and spread the word to colleagues and others interested in mammalian research.

We look forward to welcoming you to Patras for what promises to be an exciting event!

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.

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