Projects

Poverty is frequently perceived to be the root cause of illegal natural resource use – the hunting or extraction of wildlife not sanctioned by the state. When unsustainable, such activities threaten conservation of ecosystems and endangered species. However, understanding what motivates individuals involved is a major challenge; understandably few are willing to discuss their motives for fear of punishment. Furthermore, severe, multifaceted poverty overlaps with regions prioritised for their globally important biodiversity. This association exacerbates the problem that illegal activities pose for policy makers responsible for managing and policing the use of nature. The dominant approach to conserving biodiversity is to establish protected areas that typically restrict resource use and manage infractions through law enforcement. However, the designation of such areas does not guarantee compliance, as demonstrated by ongoing infractions and its conspicuous profile on global policy agendas. This includes the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that calls for urgent action to halt biodiversity loss and hunting of protected species. Solving this problematic cocktail of poverty, exclusion from resources and drivers of illegal resource use requires a new approach to understanding non-compliance. This project will draw on concepts from a range of disciplines, including development studies, criminology and psychology, to improve our understanding of why people break rules and to what extent poverty underpins their behaviour.

Supervisors: Freya St John & Julia P G Jones, School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University.

Funder: This project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 755965).

My PhD aims to investigate intertidal collection and beach gathering activities. At the moment there are at least 42 marine taxa collected from our Welsh shores, with uses from food, to fertilisers, to fuel. Surprisingly very little research has been undertaken into the social, heritage or economic value of collection activities to the UK, or the levels or impact of harvesting activity locally. Within my PhD I will be researching the non-monetary values associated with coastal activities, including wellbeing and heritage values; and teasing apart anthropogenic from natural impacts on the rocky shore.

Supervisors: Prof. Stuart Jenkins, School of Ocean Sciences & Dr Freya St John, School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University

Funder: Marine EcoSol and KESS 2.

Over-hunting is a major driver of biodiversity loss in tropical forests and threatens people’s food security and livelihoods. To address this problem and improve interventions that aim to reduce hunting, conservationists need to understand the backgrounds to this behaviour. My research takes a case study from the Gola Forest, Liberia, to explore ways to improve targeting and monitoring of hunting behaviour. Conservation tools are often developed using a one-size-fits-all approach.  A better strategy, routinely used in marketing, may be to target specific groups of people. ‘Audience segmentation’ is the technique of subdividing a population into groups that share similar profiles, such as sociodemographic or behavioural characteristics, so that campaigns can be oriented to their needs and motivations. My research shows that this can be a useful approach for conservationists and explores how it may be improved by addressing issues of data quality in hunting studies. 

First, I describe the hunting system from the perspective of hunters and traders, showing that groups differ substantially in their motivations and livelihood strategies.  I then apply audience segmentation to define target groups, demonstrating this approach can be effective in applied conservation settings. 

A crucial step to improve targeted interventions is monitoring behaviour change. However, this is challenging if activities are illegal or socially undesirable.  The ‘bean method’ is a specialised questioning technique that encourages truthful reporting by preserving respondents’ anonymity.  I apply this approach to assess behaviour change following hunting reduction interventions.  

Information about hunters’ catch is useful to define target groups and for monitoring conservation impact, but can be prone to error from several sources. Finally, I assess relative bias of two common types of harvest data, showing results differed substantially according to how data were collected.

Quantifying the links between climate, indigenous culture, and biodiversity in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, Peru.

Climate fluctuations in South America are affecting processes such as species distribution and composition, food production and water availability, which in turn affects local people. Observed climate change impacts within the Amazon include continuously dry conditions, increased forest fires, reduced humidity, intensified seasonality (flooding/droughts) and drastic changes in precipitation. These changes are likely to have a significant effect on the overall health of the ecosystem. 

The study site, Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, is located on the Amazon River in Northern Peru and is one of the largest protected areas in South America. Pacaya-Samiria Reserve is home to a myriad of threatened biodiversity and is one of the last remaining areas in South America where Cocama-Cocamilla Indians live. The reserve is co-managed by both Peruvian Government and Cocama indigenous people, yet there is a lack of focused research aiming to establish cause/effect relationships between observed outcomes and climatic drivers, including knock-on effects on local people.  

Unlike most tropical forests, Pacaya-Samiria is relatively data rich. Project partner FundAmazonia has been monitoring this reserve and has provided the project with nearly 15 years of long-term biological and roughly 50 years of water level data. These longitudinal data, collected using consistent methods, represent a unique and rare opportunity to investigate the impacts of intensified seasonality on biodiversity through robust time-series analysis. However, these data reveal little about the dynamic between a changing climate, wildlife, and the Cocama people. Such insight is crucial given the close links between indigenous people and the nature within the reserve. This data gap will be addressed by conducting robust social science research, gathered directly from Cocama communities aiming to identify and quantify how Cocama people experience a changing climate. Combining these new social science data with existing biological longitudinal data will reveal dynamic interactions between people, biodiversity and a changing environment.

Supervisors: Simon Willcock & Freya St John, School of Natural Science, Bangor University.