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Bluegrass Wildlife: Living on an island
EDGEWOOD, US, 11 October 2026 (KCPSJ) - Stuck on West Sister island in Lake Erie, with only a cockroach-infested, dilapidated lighthouse for shelter, I wondered what the future held. Islands have inherently limited resources, and any potential lifelines depend on distance from the mainland. You cannot get around the limitations of an island. These characteristics are true whether we are talking about an island in the Great Lakes or a tropical paradise near the equator, and the consequences of not understanding them can be catastrophic. What I didn’t realize at the time, however, was how islands can scale up, creating even more important implications.

DNA reveals surprising connection between Hawaii and Easter Island
NEW YORK, US, 10 October 2026 (AOL) - Hawai'i and Rapa Nui, the island also known as Easter Island, are two of the farthest-flung places Polynesian voyagers ever settled. Yet their people are each other’s closest genetic relatives among the remote island populations in a new study of Polynesian DNA. The same history left a second mark. Each new island was settled by a small group of people, and any genetic variants those few settlers happened to carry could become more common in the generations after them. Some of those variants are tied to disease.

Resurrecting a reef oasis
BUNDABERG, Australia, 10 October 2026 (ABC) - For thousands of years the tiny island at the southernmost tip of the Great Barrier Reef was alive with cacophonous birdsong. But within a decade of guano miners arriving in force with their picks and shovels in the 1860s, Lady Elliot Island was silent, denuded of all foliage and bereft of the seabirds that once lived there. It remained a barren wasteland for more than 100 years before one family decided to revive it and started planting trees.

The dispute dividing communities in one Tobago resort
ROCKY POINT, Tobago, 10 October 2026 (Guardian) - Plans for a 200-room project on an unspoiled beach have pitted developers against the conservationists fighting for smaller-scale schemes to protect the island’s habitat.

Expedition hopes to find Amelia Earhart's plane on remote island
LONDON, UK, 10 October 2026 (BBC) - A team of researchers are on their way to a remote island to inspect what they think could be the plane wreckage of famed aviator Amelia Earhart.  The group, from the US-based Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) and Purdue University, are expected to arrive at Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific Ocean by Monday in the hopes of solving the mystery of her disappearance. The American pioneer vanished while attempting to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, spawning decades of speculation on her fate.

Lone male stoat captured on Orkney island after seven-month hunt
LONDON, UK, 10 October 2026 (BBC) - A lone stoat has been caught after a seven-month hunt by trappers in Orkney. The creature, which is not native to the islands and consider invasive, was first spotted on Rousay in May. It was captured on Friday and removed from the island by the Orkney Native Wildlife Project (ONWP), which has also caught thousands of stoats on the Orkney mainland as part of a £15m eradication scheme set up in 2019.

CBD
COP16 21 Oct-1 Nov, 2024, Cali, Colombia

UNFCCC
COP29 11-22 November, 2024, Baku, Azerbaijan

ISLAND DYNAMICS
DARKNESS II conference, 20-23 January 2025, Nuuk, Greenland

JICAS
Islands And Island Studies conference 3-7 June, 2025, Jersey, Channel Islands

UNITED NATIONS
UN Ocean Conference 9-13 June, 2025, Nice, France

UPEI
3rd international conference on SIS and SNIJs 16-20 June, 2025, Charlottetown, PEI

ARCTIC COUNCIL
UArctic Congress 26-29 May 2026, Torshavn, Faroe Islands

SICRI
Island Studies International Conference 25-28 June, 2026, Tacloban City, Leyte Islands, Philippines

WORLD ISLANDS FAIR
The world’s first international event themed around islands 5 Sept-4 Nov, 2026, Yeosu, South Korea

SPREP
11th Pacific Islands Conference for Nature Conservation and Protected Areas, 7–11 September 2026, Noumea, New Caledonia  

ANATOMY OF ISLANDS
14th Anatomy of Islands symposium 15-17 Oct, 2026, Jelsa, Hvar Island, Croatia

OTIE
18th International Conference on Island Tourism  28-31 October, 2026, Trapani, Sicily, Italy 

SOCIETY OF ISLAND BIOLOGY
5th Island Biology conference 2-6 November, 2026, Atami City, Japan

IWRA
2nd Islands Water Congress 27-29 Jan, 2027, Montego Bay, Jamaica

ISISA
21st Islands of the Word Conference 6-10 June, 2027, Willemstad, Curacao