Understanding costs and designing creative economic instruments for shark conservation in Indonesia

“We roll on three, because ‘go’ sounds like ‘no’... 1, 2, 3...”

The Society for Conservation Biology today recognised E.J. Milner-Gulland for her contributions to the field of conservation and biodiversity protection. The Society presented the award at the closing ceremony at the 2019 International Congress for Conservation Biology in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this July.

As modern-day conservation science is said to have been born from quantitative biology, it is no surprise that it has a strong background in the use of predictive models. However, conservation today also has a prediction problem. Put simply, prediction isn’t used enough, be that in identifying future problems before they arise, working out which of a variety of intervention options might work…

In May of 2015 a Kazakh population of the saiga antelope was hit by an extreme mass mortality event, during which over 200,000 animals died.  Reporting in 2018, an international group of scientists lead by Prof. Richard Kock of the Royal Veterinary College identified the cause of death as haemorrhagic septicaemia, caused by a specific serotype (B) of the bacterium Pasteurella multocida.

Conservation is challenging and often highly complex. Researchers are increasingly required to understand the motivations and drivers of a growing diversity of damaging behaviours, in order to determine how to most effectively steer the public, governments and businesses towards more sustainable behaviours. In response, conservation researchers are increasingly drawing upon methods from the…