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Jane Reid: Playing the Ecological Long Game

Posted on October 17, 2019 by Lara Veylit 3 comments

The red-billed chough, subject on one of Jane’s long term studies of effects of the environmental on the size and structure of populations (Image Credit: Jean-Jacques Boujot, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped)

Our world is changing rapidly. Yet our perception of just how much it has changed is often dulled by our inability to compare what we see around us to what was around fifty years ago with enough clarity. This is one of the reasons that long-term scientific studies are so important. They give us a tangible assessment of just how much our world has changed, whether that be in the climate, how species have evolved, our how populations fluctuate.

Jane Reid is the new International Chair Professor at the Department of Biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Jane has spent years working with several long-term studies, some of them successful, others not so much. Sam Perrin and I spoke to Jane about the importance of long term studies in ecological science.

The Forefront

Ian Winfield: Advancing Scientific Communication Through Cultural Anthropology

Posted on July 26, 2018 by Sam Perrin 3 comments

Ian Winfield, a freshwater ecologist, has been using methods rooted in cultural anthropology to conserve freshwater ecosystems in northern England

Image Credit: Ian Winfield, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped

Scientific methods of communication with the public have been evolving ever since the first Universities were opened in the 1200s. Recent times have seen communication evolve in step with the digital age. But given our lack of progress in key areas in which scientists have long known we face problems, such as climate change, biodiversity and ocean pollution, one wonders if we’re doing our job well enough.

Ian Winfield is a freshwater ecologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Lancaster, UK. Ian has spent years working in Northern England in an effort to conserve its populations of the Arctic charr, a common environmentally-demanding fish which has seen many of its populations in the polar regions come under increasing pressure. I took the chance to sit down with Ian at the recent International Charr Symposium in Duluth, Minnesota, and we discussed his experiences using cultural anthropology to encourage ecological action outside of the scientific community.

The Forefront

Bringing Back the Wolverine

Posted on July 4, 2018 by Sam Perrin One comment

The Swedish government changed tactics at the end of the 20th century, giving incentives to farmers when there were successful wolverine reproductions in their area (Image Credit: Vojtěch Zavadil, CC BY-SA 3.0, Image Cropped)

Paying for an Endangered Predator Leads to Population Recovery (2015) Persson et al., Conservation Letters, https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12171

The Crux

Humans have a long history of driving dangerous predators out of their backyard. Wolves and wolverines have been driven out of different parts of Europe at different points in history at the behest of farmers looking to protect their livelihood, and the Tasmanian Tiger was driven to extinction for the same reason. But with the realisation that these predators bring enormous ecosystem benefits, governments have been searching for ways to bring about co-existence between predators and locals.

This study looks at a scheme introduced by a Swedish government in 1996, where reindeer herders had previously been compensated for any wolverine related losses. The new scheme introduced compensation for successful wolverine reproductions in the area. Persson et al. decided to have a look at how it fared.