This issue of Current Conservation brings together a variety of pieces. While conservation focusses on its charismatic mega-fauna, usually vertebrates, the astonishing diversity of many small fauna is often missed. Matt Creasey aims the spotlights at the world of marine bacteria, nematodes and insects such as beetles and ants, showing that there is much wonder in little things. Turning to charisma though, Caitlin Kight finds shades of pink the world of flamingos, with some doing
quite well while others are of serious conservation concern. And Anna Busse looks at an animal that has been both reviled and worshipped over the centuries—wolves—and examines the ecological role that such apex predators play. Dave Hodgson reports on a student tour of Kenya, cutting across a range of land use types and conservation approaches. In a new section, Anisha Jayadevan writes about a field trip along the west coast of India in search of elusive cone snails.
Current Conservation conducted a science journalism contest during the Student Conference on Conservation Science, Bangalore, 2014 where participants were asked to send 250-300 words summary of two papers- one on celebrity advocacy
by Daniel Brockington and one on small drones for forest monitoring by Lian Pin Koh, both plenary speakers at the conference. The 25 entries we received were evaluated by a panel of judges and the winners were Anjali Vaidya and Karthik
Teegalapalli whose articles have been included in this issue of CC.
Editor’s Note: Kartik Shanker