Hi. Thanks for visiting. My name is Mike Shanahan and this little corner of cyberspace is where I will be setting up home and sharing some thoughts.

The blog will mostly focus on the environment — particularly climate change and biodiversity loss — and how we communicate about these issues.

I got interested in these subjects at university and then spent a few years tramping around rainforests in Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo) and on a volcanic island off Papua New Guinea for my doctorate at the University of Leeds.

I was there to study the ecologically super-important fig trees (Ficus species) and the animals that eat their figs and disperse their seeds — hence the title of this blog.

After I left Leeds I worked on environmental and human rights projects in Asia and Latin America for the Environmental Justice Foundation — this including work on pesticide poisoning in Cambodia, bear farming in Vietnam and mangrove deforestation in Ecuador.

I then spent a couple of years as the news editor at SciDev.Net, and now work as the press officer for the International Institute for Environment and Development.

I have written as a freelancer (for The Economist, Nature, The Ecologist and the BBC and Guardian.co.uk websites) and have illustrated a biology book called Extraordinary Animals.

In my current role I helped to create the Climate Change Media Partnership and the Biodiversity Media Alliance, which both aim to boost the quality and quantity of media coverage of these issues worldwide.

This blogs gathers some of my publications, and illustration work, along with new content. I’m also working on a couple of secret projects that will eventually be unveiled here.