Balancing making a difference with making a living in the conservation sector
We asked 2694 conservationists working globally how satisfied they were with progress toward goals important to them and examined how this varied among different groups.
Zoe Brown
Zoe's research focuses on the challenges faced by women in biodiversity conservation in New Zealand.
Impact of Tanzania’s Wildlife Management Areas on household wealth
We measure the impact of Tanzania’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), a national community-based conservation and poverty reduction initiative using a novel, cost-effective impact evaluation method based on participatory wealth ranking and Bayesian multilevel modelling.
The role of quantitative cross-case analysis in understanding tropical smallholder farmers’ adaptive capacity to climate shocks
We use empirical case studies on the impacts of El Niño on smallholder households from five countries to test the application of quantitative data aggregation for policy recommendation. Wwhile cross-study results partially align with the findings from the individual projects and with theory, several challenges associated with quantitative aggregation remain when examining complex, contextual and multi-dimensional concepts such as resilience.
PhD opportunity!
A new PhD project with FFI Cambodia, exploring the roles played by local communities in protected area law enforcement
Helena Slater
Helena’s research aims to investigate the role of formal education in shaping the views and skills of future conservation leaders.
Impacts of land use intensification on human wellbeing: Evidence from rural Mozambique
Land use intensification frequently has unintended impacts on ecosystem services. Here, we we examine three case studies in rural Mozambique. Drawing on interviews, focus group discussions, 1576 household surveys and geospatial data from 27 Mozambican villages, we assess how wellbeing and inequality change with three common land use intensification pathways.
Integrating models of human behaviour between the individual and population levels to inform conservation interventions
Conservation interventions developed with little understanding of social system dynamics can result in simplistic and misguided approaches. More effective conservation, that seeks to influence the social drivers of ecological change, requires a more nuanced and predictive understanding of these drivers. In this paper we explore how ABMs and SNAs, separately and in tandem, could be useful for understanding the dynamics of structured information flow and examine the potential benefits of promoting a cross-over between the ecological and social sciences in conservation.
Incentives and social relationships of hunters and traders in a Liberian bushmeat system
Effective management of local bushmeat systems requires understanding of their social and economic dynamics, yet social elements such as relationships between actors are often overlooked. We provide the first detailed description of a rural hunting system in Liberia.
Improving Environmental Interventions by Understanding Information Flows
Understanding the structure of information flow in a group, using tools such as social network analysis, can offer important insights for conservation interventions which aim to change human behaviour. This review introduces conservation researchers and practitioners to key concepts underpinning information flows and complex contagions for interventions targeting networks of individuals.
Predicting intervention priorities for wildlife conflicts
We surveyed conservation researchers and practitioners to explore how characteristics of conflicts and characteristics of decision makers influence recommendations to alleviate conservation conflict.
CONSERVATION SCIENCE 