Introducing... Sammy!
Hi all, as a new PhD student who will be working on MammalWeb, I thought I'd take a moment to introduce myself and talk about what my project will be on!
I've recently completed my masters degree at the University of Birmingham. I joined the MammalWeb team in October this year for my PhD. Over recent years, my passion for nature and conservation has led to my involvement in many conservation projects - both in this country and abroad. I’ve undertaken field work in Norway, Cambodia, Peru, Costa Rica and Madagascar, monitoring local wildlife and exploring what threatens it today - such as increased tourism in the forests of South Madagascar, conflict over turtle egg poaching on the beaches of Costa Rica, or increased flooding as a result of climate change in the Amazon.
More recently, my work and research has been closer to home, collaborating with UK conservation organisations and the general public. For example, over the past year for my masters degree, I have worked closely with the Canal and River Trust to set up and manage the first-ever otter survey of the Birmingham canal system. I managed a team of over 50 citizen scientists who, over the course of three months, collectively surveyed almost 200km of canal. We got some great results and I have now set up a local mammal group in Birmingham to continue the vital work of monitoring the otter population - and other mammals too!
I'm extremely excited to be joining the MammalWeb team and to build on what I have learnt in recent years about both wildlife monitoring and management, and citizen science. Mammals in this country are so vastly under-recorded and, without this information, it is very hard to put in place effective conservation management or policies to protect vulnerable species. This is why it is so important to monitor mammal populations, so we can predict how they might react to future change and then review and reflect on our actions before we cause irreversible damage. MammalWeb provides a platform via which we can monitor mammal populations effectively. The use of camera traps allows us to see these shy animals, that we otherwise rarely encounter - and, with people sending in their photos from all over the North-East and beyond, we can build up a picture of mammal distributions on a scale far larger than could be achieved with traditional surveys.
My PhD research will look at how we can use the data we have gained from MammalWeb to answer key ecological questions - such as how mammal distribution, abundance and behaviour changes over urban-rural gradients. I will look at barriers we might have to answering these questions, such as the uneven distribution of camera traps, and how we might overcome these. One of the first projects in my PhD will be launching a citizen science camera trapping survey to put out cameras all over County Durham, but in a grid-form instead of randomly. I'll be enlisting the help of many citizen scientists - so watch this space!