watch new film ‘the lost forest’ covering Julian Bayliss’ latest tropical rainforest discovery and read his advice on how to succeed in conservation

julian bayliss and The Lost Forests

‘There’s something about mountains, there’s something about walking up a mountain, there’s something about being at the top of a mountain, there’s something about the air on a mountain and how fresh the air is on a mountain. And there’s also something about the nature of a mountain, the wildlife that you find on the mountain.’

Julian Bayliss’ love for mountains has led to him transversing inaccessible shear mountain faces in northern Mozambique resulting in the discovery of not one but two tropical rainforests to the international community (I’m currently on zero, how about you?).

The Lost Forest: Mount Lico

‘There’s a particular drive and energy about a mountain’.

Julian’s latest discovery atop Mount Lico has been made into a film on the National Geographic Channel that you can watch below! Julian and his team of scientists were joined on their expedition by a production crew from Grain Media to create a film commissioned by the Nobel Prize Foundation.

Read on for more details of the Mount Lico expedition and Julian’s advice for developing a career in ecology, conservation and exploration.

At Mount Lico, the team discovered new species of animals, including a possible new species of pygmy chameleon. So far, Julian has discovered a new species of pygmy chameleon on almost every mountain in Mozambique that he has traversed. And after 15-20 years of biological surveying, he and his colleagues have found something astonishing about these mountains:

‘There’s enough evidence there to link these mountains together and say that they share the biodiversity, they are a unique assemblage of plants and animals found nowhere else in Africa’.

‘Mount Lico is inaccessible’, explains Julian, ‘you cannot actually get there’. This means that the mountain provides ‘a very rare baseline of how nature should be without the influence of human kind’.

This means something very exciting for climate change science, as Julian explains, ‘you can compare sites such as Mount Lico to sites which have had human disturbance and then you can extract that difference… Then, what is left will be as a result of a man made global climate change as opposed to man made influence in the field and on the ground, such as farming’, which ‘shapes and disturbs the forest to some extent’.

The lost forest: Mount Mabu

I first heard of Julian Bayliss and his work after seeing a Google Earth advert on TV involving his discovery of a tropical rainforest atop an inaccessible mountain in Mozambique called Mount Mabu.

By using Google Earth, Julian suspected that a rainforest may exist here, and led an expedition to find out if this was the case. The forest at Mount Mabu turned out to the largest rainforest on southern Africa. 

Are there more lost forests waiting to be discovered?

‘The journey continues - we have new sites that we still need to get to, there are other mountains that we have not yet been to, so there will be more scientific expeditions to northern Mozambique and there will be more scientific discoveries. There will be more new species that we will find.’

However, an important element to these expeditions is raising the awareness of these sites to have them protected before they are destroyed. This is particularly true for his next site – Mount Nallume. Late last year he undertook a recconassance expedition to this site in preparation for a much larger expedition later this year or in 2021.

A passion for nature

When I call Julian, he has swapped the mountains of Mozambique with those of his native Wales, where he lives with his family. This is also where Julian’s passion for nature was first ignited. Growing up on a farm in rural Wales, he discovered a moth trap that had been left behind by the previous owner,

‘There wasn’t that much to do on a mountain in North Wales as a young lad, and so I turned on the moth trap at the age of seven and started collecting moths.’

Julian went on to get involved with other moth enthusiasts in the local area, which led to a fascination for natural history and the environment in Britain. He explains that growing up surrounded by the mountains in Wales inspired the conservation and ecology work that he is now known for,

‘When you’re brought up in a mountainous area, you feel an attraction for mountains, you have a respect and an appreciation, and a love for a mountainous area.’

Wildlife conservation Career advice

‘It’s a step-by-step process, you have to have a passion and a love… really, it’s all about following a passion, following your heart.’

So what advice does Julian have for those wanting to develop a career in habitat and wildlife conservation? Take a look below.

1. Be flexible

Julian emphasises that the career he has now is not one that he had carefully mapped out, but one thing led to another and here he is, ‘don’t expect things to work out as you expect them to.’

‘One of the lessons of life that I’m always reminded of as i go through is that nothing ever works out as you think its going to work out, and that’s for better and for worse, sometimes it’s much better than you think sometimes it’s much worse than you think, but I mean, that’s the beauty of life!’

2. Specialise

‘Try and find a speciality, a group. If you’re going to go into zoology, you want to go into some form of taxonomy, or if you want to go into some sort of biological survey, then try and find a group or a particular element of that, that you can start to become an expert and start to specialise in… It makes a big difference if you have a specialist interest’.

Julian emphasises the importance of finding your niche, so that you can be sought out for your expertise, ‘becoming a specialist in any topic is not a fast endeavour, particularly if you are aiming to specialise in one location; it happens over time’.

For example, Julian specialises in protected area management; the creation of new protected areas, the protection of existing ones, and improving management in terms of the conservation of wildlife and habitats. He runs scientific expeditions between these roles and has a host of different roles under the umbrella of African ecology.

‘Becoming a specialist in something takes time, dedication, and experience’. Julian advises focusing on a particular location and looking at a particular habitat. For him, this has become tropical rainforests in East Africa.

3. Keep your expectations low, but know that things will change

‘Don’t expect things to happen quickly… You never quite know how it’s going to work out, but life is surprising like that, and don’t be put off by the down times when it doesn’t work out, because there will be good times and it will work out.’

Julian lays out the cold, hard truth, ‘don’t expect lots of money’. He made very little money at the start of his career, which is something that anyone starting out in conservation will be able to relate to. But, he stresses that this situation will change over time.

When Julian started out, he primarily worked with conservation organisations. Then, governments, the world bank, and even the UN began to seek him out for his knowledge and experience, ‘over time, you move from one sphere to another, and your degree of speciality changes’.

4. Take all the experience you can get your hands on

At the start of his career, fresh out of university with a Bachelor’s in Zoology, Julian worked for three and a half years, running scientific expeditions in Tanzania (three expeditions a year, three times a year!) so spent nine months of every year working as a Science then Project coordinator in extremely rudimentary conditions in rainforests. This taught him how to live and survive in the rainforests of Africa, and prepared him well for the work that he does now.

Julian advises that you start out as a Volunteer or Assistant and get experience under your belt, ‘that experience is your first step to becoming a specialist and developing a niche.’

5. Keep your passion alive

‘If and when you become more successful, don’t forget the reason that you loved getting into this environment in the first place… don’t get stuck behind a desk writing reports because that’s what i have to do for a lot of my time but I make sure that I run expeditions as well and I still keep a foot in the field.’

6. Be patient

‘You’ve just got to be patient and you’ve just got to keep going at it and it will happen eventually.

at the beginning of your career just have a passion, have patience, don’t necessarily expect things to work out straight away, there’ll be good times, there’ll be bad times, don’t expect to earn money for a while, but it will happen, you will eventually start to get paid! Just keep at it.’

Find out more

• Julian’s website

• Read more about the Mount Lico expedition in articles at: Lonely Planet, The Verge, Alliance Earth, Quartz Africa, The Guardian, The Conversation, DMM Climbing, and Marmot.

• Read more about the Mount Mabu expedition in articles at: The Guardian, Conservation Careers, BBC, Fauna and Flora International, and African Conservation Foundation.

If this article has inspired you to pursue a career in conservation, or if you’re a conservationist stuck at home rather than in the field, check out these free online wildlife conservation courses or find out how to volunteer for wildlife online from home.