On July 20, 2013, Sadie Renee Johnson threw a firework into a bush on the side of the road near her home in Warm Springs, Oregon. The fire was found relatively quickly but spiraled out of control, spreading over 51,000 acres and costing $8 million to contain. She was arrested after she posted “like my fire?” on her Facebook page. When she pled guilty to the crime, she said she did it because she was concerned her firefighter friends were bored, but insisted she didn't think it would grow so quickly.
On the edge: Disease and habitat loss is decimating wild amphibian populations globally, with more than 200 species needing urgent intervention through captive breeding, says Dr. Simon Clulow. In a south-eastern suburb in Melbourne, there’s a zoo. It has no visitors, and there are no animals anywhere inside it. Rather, the Australian Frozen Zoo houses living cells and genetic material from Australian native and rare and exotic species. This place, and others like it, could be a big part of the future of conservation. Department of Biological Sciences’ Simon Clulow and his colleagues make the case for ‘biobanking’ in a recent piece in Conservation Letters. Clulow is keen to stress that this doesn’t mean getting rid of conventional zoos or captive breeding programs. “Captive breeding has had some wonderful successes, and there will always be a huge place for it,” he says. PhD student and lead author Lachlan Howell agrees. “It was captive breeding that brought the giant panda back f...

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