LATEST NEWS

BIWFC HOSTS FERTILITY CONTROL SESSION AT EPVMC 2023
BIWFC Europe Director served as Plenary Speaker

BIWFC Europe Director Giovanna Massei and BIWFC Advisory Board Chair Stephanie Boyles Griffin were among the 200 participants attending the European Vertebrate Pest Management Conference (EVPMC 2023) in Florence, Italy in September 2023. Giovanna served as a Plenary Speaker presenting “Too many? Eight reasons for Europe to invest in wildlife fertility control,” to nearly 100 conference attendees.

Giovanna also co-chaired, with Jens Jacob (BIWFC Advisory Committee member), the BIWFC sponsored session on Fertility Control which included six presentations followed by a panel discussion. Click Here for more information.

BIWFC Europe Director Featured in News Articles

Both The Guardian and The Telegraph newspapers have featured BIWFC Europe Director Giovanna Massei in recent articles on the use of fertility control in wild boar and other animals.

BIWFC Europe Director Hosts Workshop at Zoo And Wildlife Health Conference

BIWFC Europe Director Giovanna Massei co-hosted a four-hour workshop on “Challenges with fertility control in the wild” at the EAZWV Zoo Wildlife Health Conference in Valencia Spain in June 2023. More than 500 veterinarians, students, practitioners, and academics attended this conference.

The aim of the workshop, which, was co-hosted by Dr. Yedra Feltrer Rambaud, founder and vice-chair of the EAZA Reproductive Management Group, was to analyze criteria that should be used when professionals are asked to consider the use of fertility control to resolve human-wildlife conflicts. Twenty-one colleagues from 11 countries joined the workshop participating in several lively discussions. Read more about the workshop here.

EUROPEAN WILDLIFE FERTILITY CONTROL WORKSHOP SLATED FOR JUNE 2024

BIWFC Europe will host a Wildlife Fertility Control Workshop on the campus of the University of York in York, United Kingdom, on June 17 and 18, 2024.
More information will be available soon.

BIWFC EUROPE Welcomes New Intern

BIWFC would like to welcome Claudia Milani-Santarpia, a new intern working in our BIWFC Europe office based at the University of York, in York, UK. Claudia will focus on identifying and contacting organizations and individuals interested in applications of fertility control in Europe, in preparation for our European workshop on this topic to be held in York on 17-18 of June 2024.

BIWFC ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBER PRESENTS ON RODENT FERTILITY CONTROL

BIWFC Advisory Committee Member Jens Jacob, recently presented “Fertility control of rodents – progress and challenges,” to nearly 25 young scientists and post graduate students from eastern African countries including Madagascar, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Zambia. The presentation focused on options for anti-fertility agents, their delivery and a framework for research and application of fertility control in rodents. Jens’ presentation was part of “Ecological principles and the management of rodents in agricultural ecosystems,” a training course held at Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania in early May 2023. The course was designed to foster the importance of population ecology in pest management, together with an emphasis on farmer participatory research as a foundation for technology transfer. In addition to serving on the BIWF Advisory Committee, Jens also serves as Group Leader at the Julius Kühn-Institute (JKI) – Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Institute for Epidemiology and Pathogen Diagnostics in Germany.

BIWFC EUROPE DIRECTOR PRESENTS ON WILDLIFE FERTILITY CONTROL AT IUCN HWCC 2023

At the 2023 International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence in Oxford in April 2023, Giovanna Massei, BIWFC Europe Director, presented the talk “The other side of human wildlife conflicts – a global perspective on fertility control to manage overabundant wildlife.”

BIWFC STAFF VISITS UNITED KINGDOM

BIWFC Advisory Committee Chair Stephanie Boyles Griffin and Managing Director Monique Principi visited the UK in late March 2023 to meet with BIWFC Europe Director Giovanna Massei in York and attend the International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence in Oxford. They also met with colleagues working in the wildlife fertility control field. Read more.

BIWFC DIRECTOR HAS PAPER PUBLISHED IN “ANIMALS” JOURNAL

BIWFC Director Giovanna Massei’s paper Fertility Control for Wildlife: A European Perspective was recently published in the Animals open access journal. Animals is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal devoted entirely to animals, including zoology and veterinary sciences, published semimonthly online by MDPI.

REPRODUCTIVE MANAGEMENT COURSE

The aim of this e-course is to provide an overview of what reproductive management is and how it may be brought into management and veterinary decisions to improve the sustainability of in and ex situ animal management.