Funded by an ERC Starting Grant to Nils Bunnefeld for 5 years from 1st September 2016
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STICS - Stirling Conservation Science
Stirling University
Mosquito nets are often used for fishing. A smart response is needed
Emma Bush, University of Stirling and Rebecca Short, Zoological Society of London
The human race is extremely resourceful, particularly when resources are limited. Inevitably, when poor rural communities are given access to a new asset they will find a number of uses for them. Anti-malarial bednets – the fine-mesh nets used to protect people from mosquito bites while they sleep – are a good case in point.
“I arrived confused about this topic and I will leave as confused as ever.” This was the parting comment from the only MP in the room and not the outcome we were hoping for! The event was a scientific briefing about neonicotinoid pesticides and pollinators, organised by the Soil Association in a classy venue in Westminster. Unfortunately, such confusion seems typical of the political response to an issue that has generated passionate controversy in many other sections of society. Read More
Resolving conflicts between food security and biodiversity conservation under uncertainty (ConFooBio)
Applications now being received for the 2016 Interdisciplinary Conservation Network (ICN) workshop!
Date of workshop: 26-28 June 2016
Application deadline: 31 March 2016
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science (ICCS), Stirling Conservation Science (STI-CS) and the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science (CBCS) are pleased to invite PhD students and early-career researchers in the field of conservation science to apply to participate in a three-day workshop to be held at the University of Oxford, UK.
The aim of this workshop is to provide early-career researchers with an opportunity to collaborate with other researchers from around the world, including leading figures in their field, and to learn key skills for the development of their careers.
More information about the workshop and how to apply is available here.
Luc Bussiere, University of Stirling
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
In a post-apocalyptic future, what might happen to life if humans left the scene? After all, humans are very likely to disappear long before the sun expands into a red giant and exterminates all living things from the Earth. Read More
Katie Murray and Zarah Pattison
We recently held our departmental lunchtime “Conservation Conversation”, discussing whether or not invasive non-native species (INNS) are really that bad after all. This is an interesting concept to think about, especially for Zarah Pattison and myself who both work on different groups of invasive species in Stirling University’s Natural Sciences department. This is particularly in light of the flurry of books, namely Fred Pearce’s “The New Wild” and Ken Thompson’s “Where do camels belong?” which are promoting INNS. There has been a storm of surrounding media attention and outrage of invasion biologists worldwide. But who is right? And if they are “Nature’s Salvation” (Pearce, 2015), then are we wasting money on biological control of these organisms? Read More
Who migrates further, the eel or the person trying to conserve them?
Not that it’s a competition, of course, but I do think that I win.
European eel
The Sargasso Sea
The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) – the species of Anguillidae that has the longest migration; at a generous estimate, might travel up to 20,000km in its lifetime, if it visited Norway or Turkey during its lifetime before migrating back to the Sargasso Sea to breed.I did over that distance during a trip to the Philippines to visit a project aiming to conserve a number of these species. Read More
By Kathleen Stosch @KathleenStosch
Our brains naturally compartmentalise things. Germans call this ‘Schubladendenken’ which translates as ‘drawer thinking’. We have drawers for different species, different people and different scientific disciplines. This may help us understand separate drawers and their differences, but it can also mean we lose the whole picture of how the drawers are connected and are being influenced by one another and other drivers.
By Tom Bradfer-Lawrence @_EcologyTom
Lost in the steppe
The heat haze is intense. Not only is the sun burning in the sky, but an incessant desert wind is blowing straight out of the Gobi. And, if the sun and wind weren’t already enough, the radiator in our aged minibus is packing up. The only way to avoid the engine overheating is to have the fans on at full blast. Even then, every few miles we have to turn the van into the wind and open all of the doors in an attempt to reduce the engine temperature from incandescent to merely roasting. There isn’t a sign of another human. Every five minutes or so we pull up next to a barrel on top of a pole and I look inside. Between the heat, the emptiness, and the repetitive task, I feel like I’ve entered another world. Read More
In 1984 Jarod Diamond synthesised the threats facing biodiversity and famously came up with his “four horsemen of the ecological apocalypse” – 1. Over-exploitation, 2. Introduced species, 3. Habitat destruction and 4. Chains of linked extinctions – with the recent addition of a fifth, 5. Climate change. While these threats are not independent of each other, it can be useful to identify which are the most urgent in order to prioritise conservation actions.
At October’s Conservation Conversation here at Stirling I asked researchers, “What is the top threat to biodiversity?” Most attending the discussion said “habitat loss” or “habitat degradation”. I was surprised that not one person said “climate change”. I grew up in the 1990s as an environmentally aware kid and was inundated with campaigns from my favourite NGOs about the imminent threats of deforestation and large-scale land-use change across the world. However it appears the environmental agenda has moved on, and in the 2010s talk of deforestation and land-use change has been replaced with climate change. Clive Hambler, in a provocative article for ECOS in 2013, argues, “… some NGOs have lost perspective and now obsess with preventing climate changes…” In anticipation of the COP21 climate talks in Paris this November, I set out to understand this a bit more and explore the relationship between habitat loss and climate change as threats to biodiversity.
STICS - Stirling Conservation Science 