The annual symposium 2011 of the British Ecological Society 2011 on Forests and Global Change will be held between 28-30 March at University of Cambridge, UK. It's an international conference of temperate and tropical forest ecologists, providing an opportunity to integrate perspectives on the changing nature of forests across biomes. The conference will address emerging themes in forest ecology based on new data from spatially dispersed permanent plot networks, fully mapped stands and satellite imagery. As well as plenary sessions featuring keynote speakers there will be opportunities for contributed talks and posters.

Sessions will cover:

• Forest dynamics, functional traits and species coexistence mechanisms - integrating new data-sets to develop a global perspective
• Community assembly and biogeography - the evolutionary history of forests across biomes
• Ecosystem services and forest conservation - the future of forests in a changing world

Serengeti Shall Not Die (German: Serengeti darf nicht sterben) is the title of a documentary written and filmed by Bernhard Grzimek. A half-century after the documentary won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, it's still actual and was the title of an article by Jafari R Kideghesho in Tropical Conservation Science September 2010 issue. The author reviewed the challenges the Serengeti ecosystem is today facing such as illegal hunting, destruction of wildlife habitats due notably to agriculture, unplanned fires, settlements, overgrazing, and mining, and demographic factors, associated with poverty, human-wildlife conflicts, and failure of all stakeholders and conservation policies to address the costs induced by wildlife. To those threats, one may add a road. Those threats will likely be debated at the Joint ATBC-SCB Africa Meeting in 12-16 June 2010 at Arusha, Tanzania.

• 'Serengeti shall not die': transforming an ambition into a reality by Jafari R. Kideghesho
• First International Serengeti Day hopes to halt road project by Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com - February 23, 2011

The Annual Conference of the Society for Tropical Ecology entitled "Status and Future of Tropical Biodiversity" was held between 21-24 February 2011 in Campus Bockenheim, at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany. It was the first meeting since the ATBC-Gtoe meeting in Marburg in July 2009. There, 250 participants from 22 countries attended and presented oral presentations and posters. High-profile plenary speakers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, France and Germany have greatly contributed to the success of this International European-based tropical-focused meeting organized by the Society for Tropical Ecology. In addition to assisting to many talks, participants were able to freely visit the Senckenberg Nature Muséeum and its fantastic fossil collection, as well as the Zoo, the inheritage of Pr. Grzimek. The Frankfurt Zoo is today directed by Prof. Dr. Manfred Niekisch, also the President of the Society for Tropical Ecology. European-based ATBC members should not miss the next Annual Meeting scheduled in late February 2012 in Erlangen.

A new pluri-disciplinary, pluralist and international organization of researchers "Chercheurs sans Frontières-Free Science" has been founded in France. Chercheurs sans Frontières (CSF) proposes to provide financial and legal assistance to researchers who may be physically or morally under threat. The Association CSF will be officially launched at 4-7 pm on 25 February at the National Assembly, Paris, France.  CSF  communicates "The freedom to research, to think critically and to express one’s ideas is no longer guaranteed anywhere in the world. A range of threats against scientists and scientific activities has recently appeared. The ability of researchers to operate autonomously is less and less assured as they are faced with the encroachments of political and economic powers."  More at CSF website.