Remy Tarasin

I’m a wildlife and expedition filmmaker from Australia and my passion is for telling inspiring wildlife stories in a way that captures people’s attention and ignites a sense of wonder for the natural world. My background is in environmental science, and I worked for several years as a consultant on large scale industrial sites however I decided to move into natural history filmmaking as a means to excite and educate people about the natural world. I’ve been fortunate enough over the years to have travelled across the world and made exciting films about incredible nature stories in America, New Zealand, the UK and Australia.

It's no secret that the natural world has been hurting over the last century, and as human’s it’s primarily our fault; but we are fortunate to also be the solution. The worldwide community has been bombarded with a sense of warning, fear and defeatism about climate change and biodiversity loss, and unfortunately, it’s bred a sense of helplessness and inaction. What I’m excited about sharing in my filmmaking are simple, cheap and effective local solutions to combating these big problems, because it’s everyday people living with our wildlife that hold the power to make real positive change.

LOCATION:	Sydney	AREA OF STUDY:	Platypus
NATIONALITY:	Australia	SPONSOR:
FILMMAKER:	Elliot Connor

START DATE:	27th August
END DATE:	2nd September
LOCATION:	Sydney
END POINT:	Australia

AREA OF STUDY:	Platypus
SPONSOR:
FILMMAKER:	Elliot Connor

Area of Study: Protecting platypus

In this project we are studying the Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) and investigating the status of the population. The investigation was based in Sydney and to help us we had Dr Gilad Bino from UNSW who has been conducting Platypus research for over a decade up and down the east coast of Australia. While Platypus are not currently labelled as a threatened species, their numbers are declining, and local extinctions are occurring at an alarming rate. The scientific consensus is that if proper action is not made to rectify the pressures faced by Platypus today, they too could soon become a threatened or even endangered Australian species.

At present, the Platypus face similar pressure’s to most native animals including hunting by invasive species (cats/dogs/foxes), pollution, land clearing and habitat loss / degradation. The primary problem with understanding the impact of these pressure’s and enacting positive change, is data. Platypuses are one of the most elusive and difficult species to study. Due to their small size, broad distribution, habitat choice and primarily nocturnal behaviour, most people have never even seen a Platypus in the wild, let alone been able to study it. Scientists like Gilad have performed capture and release studies with acoustic monitoring devices to try and track the platypus and while that provides crucially important data, we need more information about their behaviour and lifestyle to be able to effectively protect