Former De Beers head Nicky Oppenheimer (right) and Mining Weekly editor Martin Creamer at the eighth Oppenheimer De Beers Group Research Conference, at the De Beers corporate headquarters, in Ormonde. The conference dealt with a host of important environmental issues, including the impact of South Africa’s wind farms on birds, the application of virtual fencing in a wildlife management domain free of physical barriers, research on the highly trafficked African ground pangolin and insight into the population dynamics and ecology of leopards, which the Red Mammal Book has declared ‘vulnerable’.