Welcome Maria Wang (PhD), Callum Nixon and Tom Pearson (MRes), and Gianluca Cerullo (MBiolSci) to the Lab!  We’re also delighted that Luke is rejoining and Patrick (Paddy) is staying on as PhD students.

PhD student Felix Lim has published his work on perverse market consequences of conservation actions in Conservation Letters.

The unintended consequences brought about by market feedback effects are often overlooked, yet perverse market outcomes could result in reduced or even reversed net impacts of conservation efforts. Felix and coauthors develop an economic framework to describe how the intended impacts of conservation interventions could be compromised due to unanticipated reactions to regulations in the market: policies aimed at restricting supply could potentially result in leakage effects through external or unregulated markets. Felix reviews how various intervention methods could result in negative feedback impacts on biodiversity, including legal restrictions like protected areas, market-based approaches, and agricultural intensification, and offers suggestions of how to design conservation actions to ensure the risks of perverse market outcomes are detected, if not overcome.

Click HERE for the full article

Three PhD students and an MRes student have joined the lab.  Huge welcome to Cindy, Emma,  Simone, and Carlos.

Emma gave a great short presentation yesterday at the Annual ACCE Conference

New research suggests that soaring demand for natural rubber threatens large expanses of tropical forests in Southeast Asia.  Natural rubber — used primarily in car tyres — is replacing forest with big costs for biodiversity.  We urgently need an industry sustainability initiative to prevent the loss of forests and uptake from the largest tyre manufacturers.

Read more on the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32350985

Or the real article here