Conservation
VSNi is committed to supporting the protection and sustainable development of our world. We are proud to work with scientists throughout the world on projects aimed at conserving and protecting the natural environment; from understanding animal or plant behaviour to sustainable agriculture. Here’s a short list of the projects we are supporting and working with. If you are working on a conservation programme using some of our software, then please let us know so we can help promote your work. You can view a world map of our software being used in Conservation: View Conservation in a larger map
GPS tags for tortoises
Giant Tortoises of the Galapagos Islands are the latest project to benefit from the statistical analysis techniques available in GenStat. VSNi are delighted to be working with Stephen Blake and his colleagues in their study on the movement ecology of the Galapagos Tortoises. These amazing creatures are being fitted with GPS tags to track their movements as a part of a research programme and educational and outreach programme to increase our understanding of them, and to enable an appropriate conservations programme. For more information on this fascinating project and these beautiful creatures please visit www.gianttortoise.org.
Sumatran tiger secrets unravelled using ASReml
Zoos have come a long way since the original Zoological Garden in Regent’s Park, London. They are not just a collection of animals for people to look and scientists to study; evolving into centres of research and play a vital part in wildlife conservation and protection. Certainly in the UK you would be hard pushed to find a zoo that doesn’t have some form of conservation programme. Read more. 
Capturing Nature’s Value
Conservation is becoming one of the most important, topical and contentious issues of our day. Historically most people understand conservation in the sense of an area set aside to protect local wildlife. Typical examples of this would be the game reserves of Africa, and other such national heritage sites across the world. But conservation, as we are beginning to understand, is not so simple as roping off an area to protect flora and fauna within it. This is perhaps a simple way of protecting our environments, but we equally need to protect privately owned areas of land. A system known as payment for ecosystem services (PES). Read more. 
Elephants, bees and crop protection
The conservation of the African elephant provides tremendous opportunities for simultaneously conserving biodiversity and increasing benefits to local communities. Their role as a flagship species of global significance helps maintain biodiversity of the ecosystems they inhabit. In addition, the cultural and aesthetic values of elephants are also important, not only to African societies, but to the world at large. But this needs to be balanced against the fact that as the African elephant range becomes more and more fragmented and elephants get confined into smaller pockets of suitable habitat, humans and elephants are increasingly coming into contact and in conflict with each other. Read more. 
Can you imagine a world without elephants?
Elephants – their sheer size, incredible looks combined with intelligence, shyness and gentle nature are awe inspiring to most people; indeed is there a child in the world who is not wowed by them…so can you imagine a world without them? Read more……
