January 8, 2013 in Publications
In a recent Editorial I co-authored for the Asian Journal of Conservation Biology we touch on the issue of wildlife trade in Asia and discuss how the consumer must be the central part of our strategies to manage this trade that threatens many species worldwide . Read it here.
December 16, 2012 in Uncategorized
Last week I attended the first ever European Social Marketing Conference, which took place in Lisbon, Portugal. Social marketing can be broadly defined as “the systematic application of marketing concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioural goals for a social good”.
The meeting gathered more than 100 delegates from around 25 countries to discuss the application of social marketing in the European context. Although largely dominated by the health sector I did my best to represent the environmental sector through my presentation “Branding Biodiversity: What environmental conservation can learn from social marketing”. This meeting also saw the launch of theEuropean Social Marketing Association (ESMA), which began shaping itself about a year ago and of which I am a proud founding member. All in all the conference was a great opportunity to learn about what is being done in Europe in terms of social marketing and build networks with some leading academics and practitioners. Plus the food was great.
December 2, 2012 in Publications
The snake Bothrops muriciensis is a little known Brazilian viper that until recently was only known from the couple of records that were used to describe it. I paper I co-authored in the open-access North-Western Journal of Zoology presents six more records and looks at applying the IUCN Red List criteria to the species until now classified as Data Deficient. Get it here!
October 2, 2012 in Good news, Publications
The magazine “the Ecologist” published my essay: ”Greening” the Crisis: Turning Trouble into Opportunity which won the IUCN-Thomson Reuteurs Media Award 2012. You can read the article and the entire essay on: http://www.theecologist.org/a-student-writes/1615763/greening_the_crisis_turning_trouble_into_opportunity.html
April 12, 2012 in Publications
Images of tigers and elephants are among the most common threatened mammals used by conservation organisations as ‘flagships’ to promote fundraising – but new research led by the University suggests that other threatened ‘Cinderella species’ could prove equally effective.
At the moment, only 80 flagship species are used by these NGOs, and more than 60% of their campaigns only raised funds for that species itself, the study found. These flagship species tend to have a high body mass and forward-facing eyes – because people find large animals with a human-like face more appealing. But, by using a similarity score approach, the a team led by Dr. Bob Smith identified that there are other species which, like Cinderella in the children’s story, share this aesthetic appeal but are currently overlooked.
You can find my latest publication at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00229.x/abstract
Full press release: http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/homepagestories/mammalspeciespromotingconsevationfunding/2011
March 4, 2012 in Publications
Two short notes on the distribution of two Brazilian lizards have recently been published by the journal Herpetological Notes. Both can be access for free at the journals website or in the links below:
February 16, 2012 in Publications
Two articles on different aspects of the herpetology of the Brazilian Northwest came out in the latest issue of Check List:
Enjoy!
February 8, 2012 in Publications
In response to the editorial “Whales for sale” published in Nature, me and Kristian Metcalfe wrote a letter to the editor detailing why we believe the proposed trading quota scheme will not work. Access it here!
February 1, 2012 in Publications
In a newly published article in the peer-reviewed blog Biodiversity Science I argue for the need to include marketing principles in our strategy to preserve biodiversity and discuss some of the most important pitfalls of engaging with stakeholders outside the scientific community. Read it here!
January 2, 2012 in Publications
I was the lead author on a correspondence piece entitled “Selecting marine invertebrate flagship species: Widening the net”, published in the lastest issue of Biological Conservation. This piece is a reflection on the selection of conservation flagship species for groups traditionally deemed less charismatic. Read it here!
This correspondence piece was a reply to the article “The giant squid Architeuthis: An emblematic invertebrate that can represent concern for the conservation of marine biodiversity” published in July also in Biological Conservation