Australian Wildlife Society Blog Series

Overview

You are invited to write a blog for the Australian Wildlife Society’s newly established student blog page. Alternate formats – such as podcasts and vlogs are also welcome; we encourage you to express your ideas in a format suitable to you. The Australian Wildlife Society (AWS) is committed to wildlife conservation education amongst its varied audiences. To cater to its student members, AWS aims to establish a blog page dedicated to student content. This blog page will provide students with the opportunity to publish and promote their work whilst providing new and interesting perspectives for the broader AWS community. 

Requirements

• The blog should relate to the conservation of Australian wildlife
• 600-800 words (flexible)
• 3-5 good quality images with captions
• Provide a short (~100 words) blurb about yourself to add to the blog’s footer (see an example here)
• You must be registered as an AWS member (student membership is free – register here)

Thought starters

The idea of the blog is to provide readers with something light-hearted and easy to read, which shares some interesting stories and perspectives based on your experience while studying and working in the area of wildlife conservation. You are invited to explore a topic of your own choosing, some suggestions are provided below:

• Your research experience/project and key lessons.
• Challenges and successes. A challenge or success story is a great way to share experiences and things that you have learned.
• Any big moments, breakthroughs and/or light bulb ideas that you have had or experienced while working/studying wildlife; these may be helpful for other people.
• Insightful opportunities, tools and/or lessons for other students, g. conference reflections, online courses, training programs, how to get the most out of networking, how your career started, research tools (programs, statistical packages, equipment, etc.)
• Topical wildlife conservation issues, g. do feral horses belong in national parks, how can agriculture incorporate conservation values, how can community groups and governments work together on conservation initiatives, etc. We encourage students to highlight interesting and conversational topics that initiate discussion. However, if authors are discussing controversial topics, we ask that they be somewhat bipartisan and present information acknowledging the different points of view.
• Interview a respected scientist/mentor/advisor to contribute to our “Five minutes with…” blog series. A template of suggested questions is provided here.

Tips

• Find the right balance between telling a story and educating the reader; consider, what is your take-home message?
• High-quality photos, interesting captions, quotes and anecdotes help create an engaging blog
• Integrate links and references to relevant articles