I was interviewed for the environmental website Mongabay.com on the potential for using marketing techniques to improve the way conservationists do outreach. In this piece I dwell on how marketing can offer a set of important tools to conservationists and on what can be improved in the way we do outreach (spoiler: there is LOTS)! … [Read more…]
The Fifa World Cup host, Brazil, has been criticised for failing to make environmental policy changes it promised ahead of the championships. Even the Fifa mascot, Fuleco the armadillo, is under fire. The furry mascot, whose name combines the Portuguese words for football and ecology, is failing to promote the conservation of the latter. In this piece in the … [Read more…]
A few weeks ago I had my PhD viva and got a pass with no corrections! My thesis title was Advancing the flagship concept through conservation marketing and was apparently not that bad! Thanks to Prof- EJ Milner-Gulland and Dr.Dave Roberts for that great experience that is a challenging but fair viva (and for all the food)! Stay tuned … [Read more…]
Following on from the formidable success of the Facebook page “I fucking love science” I thought how powerful something similar could be to raise awareness of the incredible biodiversity living alongside us in our Planet. And thus was born “I fucking love biodiversity”. While we are still very much in the beginning the about 120 … [Read more…]
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.
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% … [Read more…]
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!
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 … [Read more…]