Marco Festa‐Bianchet

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦

@marcofesta.bsky.social

1.4K followers 260 following 740 posts

🇨🇦🇨🇦 Retired ecology prof in Sherbrooke, Canada. Evidence-based wildlife conservation, mountain ungulates, kangaroos, ice-free fishing. 🇨🇦🇨🇦 elbows up!

Videos

Environmental science 41%

Biology 27%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 16h

TNR remains a costly scam
1. Single-injection contraceptive 🤔
2. There are between 30 and 80 million feral, cats in U.S., 1.4 to 4.5 million in Canada 😱
Folks, this ain't going to fix anything at that scale, you need 80-90% contraception to reduce populations. www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks...

New cat contraception method using gene therapy could help manage feral populations | CBC Radio

Controlling feral cat populations is controversial and often involves capturing, surgically sterilizing and releasing the animals, which is complex and expensive. U.S. scientists have developed a new ...

www.cbc.ca

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet, Sebastián Roché, Michel Lussault , and 5 more Marco Festa‐Bianchet, Sebastián Roché, Michel Lussault, Alan Richardson, Martin Turbet, Césari Laurent, Carlos Moreno, Ludovic Lestrelin

Le Gorafi @legorafi.bsky.social · 1d

Nicolas Sarkozy reçoit le “prix de littérature” de la FIFA https://www.legorafi.fr/2025/12/12/nicolas-sarkozy-recoit-le-prix-de-litterature-de-la-fifa/

Nicolas Sarkozy reçoit le “prix de littérature” de la FIFA

Toute l'information selon des sources contradictoires.

www.legorafi.fr

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 1d

Meanwhile in Alberta...
Yes, that is the Make Alberta Great Again oil company sticking it to taxpayers
thenarwhal.ca/alberta-ener...

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet

Andrew Iwaniuk @evoneuro.bsky.social · 1d

Canadian scientist here. I don't want this. I want you to fund our excellent early career scientists who do great work in Canada. Fund them properly and that will help 1000x more than recruiting handfuls of cherry picked bigwigs from Harvard, Stanford and MIT who will leave after a few years.

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 1d

Canada already has plenty of top researchers, it just sees them as a very low funding priority. Instead, let's blow a billion to entice people from abroad, with no long-term plan to support them and researchers already based in Canada. Optics over substance.

Mark Carney @mark-carney.bsky.social · 1d

Canada’s new government is investing big to attract world-class talent in science and technology — and become an innovation powerhouse.

Screenshot from an article of the Financial Post. The headline reads: Canada launches billion dollar plan to recruit top researchers.

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet, Anthony Ricciardi, Michael A. Clemens , and 2 more Marco Festa‐Bianchet, Anthony Ricciardi, Michael A. Clemens, Zen Faulkes, Matthew Lebo

Mark Carney @mark-carney.bsky.social · 1d

Canada’s new government is investing big to attract world-class talent in science and technology — and become an innovation powerhouse.

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 2d

The study concludes that killing wolves would have almost no effect on moose populations, and recommends against it.

Reposted by Benjamin Larue

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 2d

DeCesare: weak effects of predation on moose pop dynamics in Montana. Age, nutrition affect both adult ♀️ survival and reproduction. Surprising +ve effect of summer temp on survival, no effect of ticks but -ve effect of arterial worms 🧪 wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

TWS Journals

Despite concerns surrounding the dynamics of moose along their southern range extent in North America, population growth rate estimates indicated stable to increasing trends within 3 study areas repr...

wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 2d

Mittel: negative genetic covariance of lamb survival and adult size explains why feral 🐑 do not evolve larger size despite clear advantages for adults, higher survival of larger lambs. Cost of growing large leads to missing fraction? Highly relevant for wild ungulates 🧪
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet

ZSL @zslofficial.bsky.social · 2d

The Frink Award, ZSL’s lifetime achievement award goes to Professor Josephine Pemberton, @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social, for contributions to behavioural ecology, evolutionary genetics, and long-term field research that have transformed our understanding of wild animal populations 🏆

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 3d

As 'right wording' in this case, F**k-you comes to mind.

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet

Alexandre Klein @alexandreklein.bsky.social · 3d

Ottawa libère 1,7 milliard pour recruter 1000 chercheurs d’exception à l’international.

Les chercheurs canadiens pendant ce temps :

Reposted by Benjamin Larue

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 3d

Short-term gain for long-term pain: after the feds, Quebéc's provincial gov't proposes a law stating that major projects can bypass Environmental and Endangered Species laws. These projects may be examined and amended, but WILL be approved.

Alexandre Shields @alexandreshields.bsky.social · 3d

Projet de loi de la CAQ pour accélérer des projets majeurs: le gouvernement Legault se donne le droit de ne pas appliquer des dispositions des lois qui sont censées protéger la faune et la flore, dont les espèces menacées:

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet

Alexandre Shields @alexandreshields.bsky.social · 3d

More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 4d

Jimmy Fallon: "And do you use ChatGPT when raising your baby?"

Sam Altman: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT."

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet, Hansraj Gautam

Phyllis Lee @pili-scotland.bsky.social · 4d

sad news that Iain Douglas-Hamilton has died. A great and wonderful champion of elephants over a long life! He has changed the world for the better, especially how people view elephants.

Iain D-H in Oxford with elephant colleagues

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 5d

Not sure what this is but it jumped so I'm thinking some kind of grasshopper. Near Walls Lookout, Blue Mountains, NSW

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 5d

A currawong in its habitat.

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet

David Hamer @davidhamer1951.bsky.social · 6d

Mr. Coyne’s latest jeremiad against Trump is one of his best ever, in this weekend’s @theglobeandmail.com.

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 6d

Having been told for decades that wild boars farms are a huge problem, Alberta closes the barn door after the pigs have left. Banning sport hunting counterintuitive but essential. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

New restrictions placed on hunting, farming 'incredibly destructive' wild boars in Alberta | CBC News

Wild boars have been declared "a pest in all circumstances" by the Alberta government effective Dec. 1, meaning new restrictions have been placed on keeping them in captivity and hunting them in the w...

www.cbc.ca

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 6d

White: strong fitness costs for young (3-5 yrs, many primiparous), and senescent (11+ yrs) mountain goat ♀️, almost no cost for prime-aged ♀️. Reproduction also reduced by winter snow. No impact of reproduction on ♀️ survival 🧪https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70137

Life‐history trade‐offs and environmental variability shape reproductive demography in a mountain ungulate

Alpine ecosystems are changing rapidly with implications for the demography of alpine organisms. Through long-term study, we reveal novel insights about the interplay between life-history trade-offs ...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet

Predatory Journals @predatoryjournals.org · 6d

🧪 After 25 years, a landmark study claiming the herbicide Glyphosate (and Roundup) was “safe” has been officially retracted — due to ghost-writing and clear conflicts of interest. What was once scientific “proof” now collapses. #Science #Glyphosate #Retracted ☣️
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Science journal retracts study on safety of Monsanto’s Roundup: ‘Serious ethical concerns’

Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence

www.theguardian.com

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 6d

Gulotta: hunters tend to kill male turkeys that are more active and unpredictable, natural predators tend to kill those that are less active and more predictable. Potential for hunting-induced selection on behavior. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Harvest and natural predation shape selection for behavioural predictability in male wild turkeys

Male wild turkeys with riskier behavioural types were more predictable in their behavioural expression and more likely to be killed by both hunters and predators. If risk-taking behaviour is heritabl....

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 7d

King parrots, Orange, NSW

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 7d

Pukeko, Jerrambomberra wetland.

Reposted by Marco Festa‐Bianchet, Ryan K. Brook

Chris Ingraham @cingraham.bsky.social · 8d

Pretty wild stuff here. How did the peer reviewers not realize that the figure was total nonsense? This is a Nature journal, for pete's sake

The Editors have retracted this Article.

After publication, concerns have been raised about the content of Fig. 1 as well as description of the methodology in the paper. Post-publication investigation confirmed that the paper does not contain an adequate description of the framework it proposes, uses an AI-generated figure containing nonsense to demonstrate the framework, and does not include code underlying the model developed. Additionally, the study claims to have used the dataset from Ref 24. for training of the model, but Ref 24 does not include such data within the paper, nor does it signpost the dataset. The study also claims to have used another dataset for validation, but this dataset is also not identified or signposted. The Editors therefore no longer have confidence in the integrity or conclusions of this Article.

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 8d

Water dragon, Canberra botanic garden.

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 8d

Spent a couple of days in and near Canberra, visiting friends from my sabbatical at ANU 7 years back. Was welcomed by a welcome swallow at Jerrambomberra wetland.