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Category: Books we recommend

You love nature and you love reading? This page is for you. Frederik and I will give you here some reviews of our favorite books about nature, wildlife, natural history, biology, conservation and everything animal-related we could lay our eyes on! Check out the titles and pick your next read…

The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson *****

July 21, 2025 seekingwilderness Books we recommend

Why would a talented flutist break into a British natural history museum to steal dead birds? The Feather Thief is the thrilling investigation of a journalist who wants to know why[…]

Bitch by Lucy Cooke *****

January 22, 2025 seekingwilderness Books we recommend

Females are dull. Females are subordinate. Females are shy. Or so we’ve been told. In the animal world, males have long been portrayed as the flamboyant, aggressive, and powerful ones—fighting[…]

Our fight to protect nature

For as long as we can remember, we have loved nature. We love it so much, we have dedicated our lives to protecting it.

With this blog, we want to help you experiencing nature during your travels and learn more about the science of nature conservation.

So come on and read more about how you can see otters in the Netherlands, Andean bears in Colombia or Bald eagles in Maine. Or learn about nature conservation in Bolivia and in Democratic Republic of Congo, where we now work to save gorillas.

You want to know more about the life of conservation biologists? Don’t miss our daily updates and photos on our Facebook page!

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Seeking Wilderness

A couple of passionate conservation biologists working to protect gorillas in the Congolese rainforest. Sharing our wild experiences all around the world to help you feel more connected to nature wherever you go!

Seeking Wilderness

1 week ago

In memory of the Christmas Island Shrew/ By Rhett Ayers Butler / It never weighed more than a spoonful of sugar. Five or six grams of life, soft-furred and sharp-nosed, darting among the roots and leaf litter of a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. At night, its voice—a thin, high cry, part bat and part whisper—once filled the forest of Christmas Island. Now the forest is silent. Australia’s only shrew, Crocidura trichura, has been declared extinct.Few knew it lived, fewer still that it was Australian. The shrew was a stranger in a land of pouched mammals, a migrant that arrived tens of thousands of years ago, likely clinging to a raft of vegetation from what is now Indonesia. On this isolated outpost, it built a quiet lineage of survivors. When British naturalists arrived in the 1890s, they found the forest alive with its shrill chatter. “Extremely common,” they wrote. And then, almost at once, it vanished.The black rats came first, stowaways in bales of hay. With them came a parasite, Trypanosoma lewisi, that swept through the island’s naïve mammals like a plague. Within years, both native rats were gone. By 1908, the shrew was presumed lost too. Its name lingered only in museum drawers and in the footnotes of field reports.Yet it was not quite gone. Half a century later, in 1958, two shrews appeared as bulldozers tore into the forest for phosphate mining. They were seen, released, and forgotten. Then, in 1984, came a miracle: a live female, found in a clump of fern by biologists clearing a path. For more than a year, she lived in a terrarium, fed on grasshoppers and care. A few months later, a male was caught. The world briefly held its breath for a reunion that might save a species. But the male, sickly and short-tempered, died within weeks. The female lingered alone until she, too, was gone.No others were ever found. Searches in the following decades brought only silence—the kind of silence that deepens until it becomes its own proof. When scientists dissected hundreds of feral cats on the island, not a trace of shrew remained in their stomachs. The Red List, in its latest revision, made official what many already knew in their hearts: Crocidura trichura was no more.To some, the loss of a creature so small may seem inconsequential. Yet its passing adds one more mark to Australia’s lamentable record—the thirty-ninth mammal species lost since colonization, more than any other country on Earth. The shrew’s absence is a story repeated across islands: an ancient ecosystem undone by the carelessness of arrival, by rats and cats, ants and snakes, by the unthinking traffic of an expanding world.The Christmas Island shrew had survived what many thought impossible. For decades, it persisted unseen—a shadow among roots, defying extinction. It was officially rediscovered, officially lost, and then, improbably, rediscovered again. It endured eighty years of disappearance before the recorders caught up. That endurance was its last act of defiance.In life, it asked for little: a patch of soil, a few beetles, a quiet forest. In death, it leaves questions that are larger than itself. How many other lives flicker out unseen before the world even learns their names? How many others wait somewhere in the darkness, unseen but breathing still?There is always a chance—slim but not zero—that the shrew endures yet, hidden in the damp heart of Christmas Island, trembling but alive. Hope, after all, has a long history of outliving the species it mourns. But the forest is quieter now. And if this really is the end, the last of Australia’s shrews will have gone as it lived—small, secret, and almost entirely unnoticed, save for those who loved it enough to listen for its cry.Published atnews.mongabay.com/2025/10/in-memory-of-the-christmas-island-shrew/ ... See MoreSee Less

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Seeking Wilderness

2 weeks ago

Maybe a little hope for Grey Parrots of DRC ❤️In early October, 50 African gray parrots were released into the wild by the Lukuru Foundation, after having been rescued from poachers and undergoing rehabilitation for a year at a refuge run by the foundation.The foundation’s two parrot rehabilitation centers have been joined by a third one, at Kisangani Zoo, in April, which has already received 112 African grays.As the DRC begins enforcing a July ban on the trade in African grays, authorities will need to raise awareness in communities, dismantle well-established trading networks, and ensure released birds aren’t recaptured, conservationists say.Read the full story by Didier Makal: news.mongabay.com/2025/10/rescued-african-gray-parrots-return-to-drc-forests/. Image: An African grey parrot flying. Image courtesy of Robert01 via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA-3.0). ... See MoreSee Less

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Seeking Wilderness added photos to the album: Shelter dogs photography

3 weeks ago

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Seeking Wilderness added photos to the album: Shelter dogs photography

3 weeks ago

Photos from Seeking Wilderness's post ... See MoreSee Less

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Seeking Wilderness

4 weeks ago

Morocco keeps delivering. Near Agadir, we found one of the last breeding colonies of the Bald Ibis, an extremely endangered bird species. A special moment.#seekingwilderness #wildmorocco #birdwatching ... See MoreSee Less

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