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September 1999 - present
Publications
Publications (61)
Tourism accounts for 9% of global GDP and comprises 1.1 billion tourist arrivals per annum. Visits to wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) may account for 20-40% of global tourism, but no studies have audited the diversity of WTAs and their impacts on the conservation status and welfare of subject animals. We scored these impacts for 24 types of WTA...
The global wildlife trade is a growing threat to biodiversity, species conservation and animal welfare. A major driver is consumer demand for exotic pets, and there have been calls for information campaigns to combat this. We created a novel, online survey to assess whether such campaigns could be effective. Our website 'matched' individuals with a...
Several lines of evidence suggest that the effects of invasive species may be greater in aquatic freshwaters than in terrestrial ecosystems. We argue that freshwaters are significantly more invasible—from a number of poorly regulated sources—and also more susceptible to negative biodiversity, physical ecosystem, and socioeconomic impacts when invad...
Radio‐tracking is used ubiquitously in studies of wild vertebrates, a fundamental assumption being that tagged animals do not significantly differ, behaviourally or otherwise, from untagged animals.
We studied two populations of water voles Arvicola terrestris : one population was live‐trapped from April to September for 2 years (2000, 2001) and th...
Invasive species are a major cause of species extinction in freshwater ecosystems, and crayfish species are particularly pervasive. The invasive American signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus has impacts over a range of trophic levels, but particularly on benthic aquatic macroinvertebrates. Our study examined the effect on the macroinvertebrate...
Trophy hunting is a contentious practice often associated by the public with charismatic African megafauna, especially lions (Panthera leo). Public pressure could potentially end trophy hunting in the near future, which many stakeholders argue could lead to negative impacts, including on species conservation and on the livelihoods of communities th...
In the absence of sufficient regulation of wildlife tourism attractions (WTAs), standards of treatment of animals are typically determined by what tourists find acceptable. Under this model there is little motivation for operators to improve standards if tourists do not leave reputationally damaging feedback. Given this current state, the objective...
An important sector of animal-based tourism is wildlife tourism, which includes a diverse base of attractions in captive, semi-captive and wild settings. We argue that actors (tourists, tourism operators, and academics) must have the prerequisite knowledge of animal welfare to assess animals’ conditions in tourism settings. To this end, this paper...
The global trade in wildlife affects ~24% of terrestrial vertebrates, and demand for traditional Chinese medicinal materials, is a high profile driver. Among key hopes for reducing the impacts of “TCM” on wildlife are strategies to redirect demand onto plant-origin alternative medicines. Studies demonstrate substantial support such alternatives amo...
The use of plants and animals for traditional medicines is a high-profile driver of the global trade in wildlife (Baker et al. 2013). Among traditional medicines, the sourcing of wildlife-origin medicinal materials for Traditional Chinese Medicine (“TCM”) gives rise to an international trade that can negatively impact upon a substantial diversity o...
Abstract Attitudes, which can be thought of as the sum of individuals' thoughts, feelings, and beliefs concerning an attitude object, inform how people interact with the world around them. An understanding of attitudes may play an important role in promoting desirable human behavior, and attitudes studies should be incorporated into any behavior‐ch...
Wildlife tourism has huge potential to benefit local human populations, and animal welfare and conservation objectives. A substantial proportion of wildlife tourism experiences, however, negatively impact on animals’ welfare and their species’ conservation status. An emerging goal of conservation research is to test conservation social marketing in...
The global trade in wildlife affects ~24% of terrestrial vertebrates, and demand for traditional medicinal materials, especially for traditional Chinese medicine, is a high profile driver. Much research has established a causal link between demand for medicinal materials for "TCM" and negative impacts on species conservation and on individual anima...
The global trade in wildlife affects ~24% of terrestrial vertebrates, and demand for traditional medicinal materials, especially for traditional Chinese medicine, is a high profile driver. At present the relative extent to which demand for wild-animal-origin medicinal materials arises from different markets (OTCM, zhongyi and CMP, see companion pap...
Social influence impacts individuals’ behavior through norms – the perceived appropriateness of behaviors – and social referents, whose behavior is copied by others. Interventions using social influence may help promote conservation-friendly behaviors. We explored how perceptions are influenced by descriptive norms (what people do) and social refer...
Wildlife commodification can generate benefits for biodiversity conservation, but it also has negative impacts; overexploitation of wildlife is currently one of the biggest drivers of vertebrate extinction risk. In the present article, we highlight 10 issues that in our experience impede sustainable and humane wildlife trade. Given humanity's incre...
We wished to assess whether the COVID-19 pandemic, thought to have a zoonotic origin, may lead to a reduction in consumer demand for wildlife products. In 2018, we surveyed the effect of demand reduction messaging on consumers' desire to own exotic pets with 1,000 respondents in each of Brazil, China, the USA, and Vietnam. In July 2020, during the...
Demand for exotic pets is a substantial driver of the illegal wildlife trade. Previous work has suggested that this demand could be reduced by conservation marketing messaging highlighting the potential consequences to individual purchasers, in the form of zoonotic disease risks, or legal ramifications. Such work, however, has been limited only to...
Human behavior often determines the success of conservation projects, and the emerging discipline of conservation psychology focuses on understanding and influencing this behavior. Social norms (a group's perception of the appropriateness of behaviors) are a key influence on human behavior, and social norms campaigns can often engender population‐w...
A controversial, multifaceted debate surrounds the trade in commercially captive-bred (farmed) lion skeletons. A prominent topic relates to relative preferences for tiger and lion bone in Asian consumer countries. To contribute preliminary information on this subject we conducted the first quantitative study to assess the consumer preferences of th...
Conflict between people and carnivores can lead to the widespread killing of predators in retaliation for livestock loss and is a major threat to predator populations. In Kenya, a large, rural, pastoralist population comes into regular conflict with predators, which persist across southern Kenya. We explored the social and psychological backdrop to...
The global trade in wildlife is a threat to species conservation and animal welfare. A key driver is demand for traditional medicines (TMs). We present an initial experimental survey of demand reduction and demand redirection interventions aimed at changing the behaviour of TM consumers in China and Vietnam. Treatment respondents (n = 1600) were sh...
Many wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) have negative impacts on animal welfare and species conservation. In the absence of regulation, raising standards requires tourists to create market pressure by choosing to attend WTAs with benefits for wildlife. We surveyed respondents from five countries–China, Australia, Canada, UK, and USA–to quantify ho...
We provide an initial insight into the extent, occurrence and characteristics of wildlife tourism involving close interactions with free-ranging, non-domesticated, animals outside of formal captive environments across Latin America. Using information provided online via TripAdvisor, we found this type of tourism was occurring across the region (adv...
We utilise a volunteer survey recording roadkills between 2001 and 2011 to examine the factors affecting hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus abundance and decline. Hedgehogs were most abundant in the North and East of England and in Scotland, regions characterised by low badger numbers. Hedgehogs selected arable land and urban areas relative to their avai...
Many wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) have negative impacts on animal welfare and species conservation. In the absence of regulation, raising standards requires tourists to create market pressure by discerning the likely impacts of WTAs, and choosing to attend those with benefits. We created a novel, experimental survey to examine whether primin...
Although residential areas are often unfavourable for wildlife, some species can take advantage of the available shelter and anthropogenic sources of food such as supplementary feeding. The European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) is increasingly associated with gardens and villages and less so with arable farmland. Suggested drivers for this includ...
Failure to balance daily energy expenditure (DEE) with energy intake can have animpact onsurvival and reproduction, and therefore onthe persistence of populations. Here we study the DEE of the European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), which is declining in the UK. We hypothesise that there is a gradient of suitable habitat for hedgehogs in rural are...
Wildlife tourism is a huge global market, the revenue from which can promote local livelihoods and tourist education, enact conservation, and improve animal welfare. Such benefits arise if wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) prioritise ethical deliverables above financial profit, but recent work has shown that the majority of WTAs have substantial neg...
'Rewilding is the mass restoration of ecosystems and natural processes, accompanied or driven by the reintroduction of missing species' (George Monbiot, quoted in Sandom et al., forthcoming).
Semi-natural agricultural habitats have declined in northern Europe since the 1950s, to the detriment of habitat connectivity and biodiversity. European agri-environmental schemes to restore them should target the habitats most likely to remedy these impacts. We employed a stochastic individual-based simulation model to predict movements of a model...
Despite increasing recognition of the potential of aquatic biota to act as ‘geomorphic agents’, key knowledge gaps exist in relation to biotic drivers of fine sediment dynamics at microscales and particularly the role of invasive species. This study explores the impacts of invasive signal crayfish on suspended sediment dynamics at the patch scale t...
The near-exponential growth in the frequency of reintroductions surely indicates that reintroductions are now a highly effective tool to combat the increasing loss of global biodiversity. This chapter discusses the questions regarding risks, the initiation of reintroductions, the refinement of reintroduction techniques and evaluations of reintroduc...
Reintroductions are an increasingly common conservation restoration tool; however, little attention has hitherto been given to different methods for monitoring the stress encountered by reintroduced individuals. We compared ten potential measures of stress within four different categories (neuroendocrine, cell function, body condition and immune sy...
SUMMARY1. Crayfish are amongst the most frequently introduced non‐native aquatic organisms, with well‐documented negative effects on a large number of freshwater taxa. Many crayfish‐control strategies make use of manual removal by trapping, a method known preferentially to remove the largest individuals, leaving the juvenile population almost entir...
Sediment quantity and quality are key considerations in the sustainable management of fluvial systems. Increasing attention is being paid to the role of aquatic biota as geomorphic agents, capable of altering the composition, mobilization and transport of fluvial sediments at various spatiotemporal scales. In this paper invasive species are present...
Crayfish are amongst the most frequently introduced non-native aquatic organisms, with well-documented negative effects on a large number of freshwater taxa. Crayfish-control attempts often make use of manual removal by trapping, a method known preferentially to remove the largest individuals. Studies from aquaculture suggest that lowered populatio...
1. Crayfish are amongst the most frequently introduced non-native aquatic organisms, with well-documented negative effects on a large number of freshwater taxa. Many crayfish-control strategies make use of manual removal by trapping, a method known preferentially to remove the largest individuals, leaving the juvenile population almost entirely unt...
Animals captive bred for reintroduction are often housed under conditions which are not representative of their preferred social structure for at least part of the reintroduction process. Specifically, this is most likely to occur during the final stages of the release programme, whilst being housed during transportation to the release site. The de...
Reintroductions are an important tool in conservation biology but frequently fail. Factors influencing reintroduction ‘success’ are rarely tested experimentally. We examined the relationship between habitat quality and reintroduction success in an experimental reintroduction of populations of water voles (Arvicola terrestris) in the UK.We released...
Invasive species are an important driver of global biodiversity loss. Under international legislation, the UK has an obligation to eradicate or to control the alien, invasive American mink. Using a large-scale field experiment, we tested the effectiveness of a specified mink removal strategy, identified through earlier modelling work, in reducing t...
1. In populations of small mammals, food supplementation typically results in higher population densities, body weights, growth rates and reproductive rates. However, few studies have demonstrated a relationship between forage levels and demographic rates in wild populations in the absence of supplementation. 2. We examined the association of level...
In many mammalian species, females compete with each other for food and space to raise offspring, while males compete with each other for access to females. Few studies have examined the factors which limit male range sizes or the degree of overlap between male ranges. We deduced four possible responses of the range -sizes of non-territorial male s...
Re-introductions of captive-bred animals are increasingly common in wildlife conservation and it is important that they fulfil their potential. To foster this goal we examined variations in stress levels in a captive-bred population of water voles Arvicola terrestris in response to housing conditions and radio-collaring, using weight loss and leuko...
Female small mammals are often territorial. Two hypotheses explaining territoriality of females predict that females should exclude competing females from territorial boundaries. For water voles, these hypotheses allow either static territoriality, in which the geographical locations of territories remain constant, or drifting territoriality, in wh...
Oils and other surface films used against mosquito larvae may act by flooding the tracheal system with oil, by disrupting the surface forces that allow larvae to rest at the surface, by toxicity, or by eliciting chemosensory responses. In an attempt to identify diagnostic symptoms of these modes of action we treated fourth-stage larvae of Culex pip...
In a series of dawn-to-dusk studies, we examined the nature and accessibility of nectar rewards for pollinating insects by
monitoring insect visits and the secretion rate and standing crop of nectar in the British native plant species Salvia pratensis, Stachys palustris, S. officinalis, Lythrum salicaria, Linaria vulgaris, the non-native Calendula...
A survey of flowering plants, bryophytes and macroscopically recognizable algae in each 0.5-km length of River Wear in summer 1996 permitted comparisons to be made with earlier surveys in 1966, 1976 and 1986. The initial survey was made at the end of a decade in which marked environmental changes due to closure of various coal mining and coke works...