Voting has opened in our People’s Choice categories. This gives you the chance to vote for your favourite artwork and favourite photographic image in our collection this year. To vote for your favourite artwork CLICK HERE To vote for your favourite image CLICK HERE Last year’s winner in the Leisure Painter’s Sketch for Survival People’s Choice Award was Sue Sidley. As well as receiving her award at the Royal Geographical Society, Sue was featured in Leisure Painter. You can see the article in full below. We had the pleasure of meeting Sue during last year’s touring exhibition, at London Olympia....
What’s it like to travel abroad during Covid?
In August I booked a last-minute villa in the Peloponnese in Greece, and flights with Ryan Air. I travelled with my immediate family. We had a brilliant week away and felt thoroughly refreshed. I understand many people are reluctant to travel during the pandemic but for us, the chance to get away for a week as a a family outweighed the risks of getting there. We’re not in a high-risk group and were happy to follow advice with regards to wearing face masks and social distancing. Here is a brief summary of my personal experience of travelling abroad during Covid:...
Beginners Guide to Bidding
The Sketch for Survival online auctions open today. This year is twice as nice – we have TWO AUCTIONS running on consecutive Sundays. This is our biggest fund-raiser of the year, making important conservation projects possible. In 2020 we’ve pledged to rescue bears incarcerated by the bear bile trade in Vietnam; to fund community wildlife patrols in Zambia and important scientific research in Central Africa focusing on elephants, giraffes, carnivores (primarily lions, leopards and hyenas) and chimpanzees. WHY SHOULD I GET INVOLVED? THE BIGGER PICTURE. ALL the profit from the online auction goes to the Explorers Against Extinction project fund...
World Rhino Day 2020
The 22nd of September marks World Rhino Day. Close to 10,000 rhinos have been lost to poaching in the last decade alone. The peak of poaching was just five years ago in 2015 when 1,349 rhino were recorded as poached. This demand for rhino horn is driven by the Far East where the horn is believed to have medicinal benefits and is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In places like Vietnam, rhino horn is considered a status symbol. There have been reports of horn being crushed and added to drinks at parties, being used as a hangover tonic, or...
The SFS Introducing Wildlife 100 Artist of the Year – Short-List Announced
From an intricate geometric Tiger-Tail Sea Horse, one the most heavily extracted seahorse species in the world, to a beautiful oil painting of a critically endangered Orangutan, this year’s short-listed artists in the Sketch for Survival Introducing Wildlife category have just been revealed. From left: Christian Azolan; Lee McManus; Jess Ridley; Stephanie Clarke, Bianka Hudson All 100 SFS Introducing finalists have something in common: they have all depicted species vulnerable to extinction and will feature in a special fund-raising exhibition celebrating the beauty and colour of the natural world whilst also helping to highlight threats posed by human activity. One...
The 7 most beautiful treks in Asia
Forget the Alpine hut trips. The real mountain goats knew it of course a long time ago, but little by little a larger public that wants to explore nature and also discover the unspoiled beauty of Asia. The Himalayas is not only for mountaineers who want to conquer Everest but also for hikers. How about the Everest Base Camp Trek? Trekking Nepal is the summit, but how about Georgia, not the state but the country. The Caucasus is a fantastic destination for your next hike. Not to mention Pakistan. In this blog we introduce you even more: Jungle Trekking in...
Double Trouble – bear cubs rescued in Vietnam
This year we have partnered with Animals Asia to support their work and help raise awareness about the bear bile trade in Asia. Animals Asia is devoted to ending bear bile farming and improving the welfare of animals across Asia. They have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Vietnam Government to completely end Bear Bile Farming in Vietnam by 2022. The team has rescued over 600 bears but there are still more than 400 suffering in terrible conditions in Vietnam. Rescues can be time consuming and complex and the bears need specialist veterinary care and a long rehabilitation process...
Project Update: Tapanuli Orangutan Surveys, Sumatra
In 2019 we partnered with Ape Alliance to raise awareness about the plight of the world’s most endangered great ape – the Tapanuli Orangutan. The Tapanuli is one of three known Orangutan Species – all are critically endangered. Tapanuli Orangutans are exclusively aboreal and planning for a hydro electric dam in Batang Toru Sumatra, home to the largest population of Tapanuli would be catastrophic, fragmenting the existing population. The orangutans would be unable to navigate manmade structures such as roads and power lines serving the dam development and this would subsequently lead to inter-breeding and extinction of the species. The...
GCF Giraffe Rescues in Uganda
Last year we partnered with Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) in order to help them translocate 15 critically endangered Nubian Giraffe from Murchison Falls to Pian Upe, a park in the north of Uganda. Nubian Giraffe are genetically identical to Rothschild’s Giraffe and there are estimated to be 3,000 of this sub-species of Northern Giraffe in total in Africa – mainly in Kenya and Uganda. The easiest way to identify a Nubian giraffe is to look for its white legs – there are no markings on the lower leg. The giraffe’s patches are large, rectangular and chestnut-brown. The giraffe were successfully...
Selection is under way for this year’s Sketch for Survival Introducing competition. The selection process consists of a number of phases and involves a panel of six comprising both professional artists and charity trustees. The panel is led by Gary Hodges and we are delighted to be joined this year by Sevina Yates and Alison Nicholls. Find out more about the panel: Gary Hodges Sevina Yates Alison Nicholls Over the past few weeks we have successfully catalogued all the artwork by size (A3 or A4) and category (wildlife or wild space) ready for selection. This ensures each artwork is easy...