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Get serious about divestment

21 11 2014

We are a sensitive and conflict-avoiding lot, aren’t we? Most scientists I know absolutely dread reprisals of any form, whether they are from a colleague commenting on their work, a sensationalism-seeking journalist posing nasty questions, or a half-wit troll commenting on a blog feed. For all our swagger and intellectual superiority complexes, most of us would rather lock ourselves in a room and do our work without anyone bothering us.

Fortunately for the taxpayer, we should not and cannot be this way. As I’ve stated before, we have at the very least a moral obligation to divulge our results to as many people as possible because for the most part, they pay us. If you work in any applied form of science (most of us do) – such as conservation, for example – then your moral obligation to make your work public extends to the entirety of humanity and the planet. That’s a staggering responsibility, and one of the reasons I’ve embraced many other forms of communication beyond the bog-standard scientific publication outlets.

There are many great examples of impressive science advocates out there – a few that come to mind are people like inter alia Lesley Hughes, James Hansen, Michael Mann, Paul Ehrlich, Bill Laurance, Barry Brook, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Tony Barnosky, Gretchen Daily, Emma Johnston, Stuart Pimm, and Hugh Possingham. There are even others willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make an evidence-based protest against society’s more inane actions. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – evidence-based advocacy can work.

To the topic at hand – I’ve been a little disappointed – to say the least – with the near-total silence emanating from my colleagues about the fossil-fuel divestment wave sweeping the world. While gaining traction worldwide, it wasn’t until The Australian National University took the bold move to divest (at least partially) from many of its fossil-fuel financial interests that it became a reality in Australia. Let’s face it – of all the types of institutions in our world, universities should be at the forefront of good, morally grounded and socially responsible investment strategies. They are, after all, meant to be filled with the most erudite, informed and cutting-edge people in the world, most of whom should have the best information at their fingertips regarding the precarious state of our environment. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: advocacy, climate change, divest, divesting, divestment, fossil fuels, fossil-fuel industry, plutocracy
Categories : acidification, Australia, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, conservation, economics, environmental policy, investment, science, science communication

Give some flair to your scientific presentation

18 11 2014

—

As the desert spring came to the great Centre Red,

Scores of sandalled folk from tin birds descend-ed.

Alice Town had been invaded,

Bearded alike and unshorn-legged.

They sat and stared at words and the odd trend.

Billies boiled to get them through to day’s end

They swapped bush stories that made good sense,

Trying to understand Aussie environments.

One bloke‘s tales caught the punters’ attention,

So this bush poet deserves special mention.

To standard rules he would not kowtow,

So his special science verse I present to you now.

—

If none of that made any sense, then let me help you out. At the last Ecological Society of Australia meeting in Alice Springs, I witnessed a rather unique way to give a scientific presentation – via bush poetry. Dr. Dale Nimmo of Deakin University was particularly engaging, and he agreed to have his presentation poem reproduced here. Who said scientists were boring? Honourable mention too to Simon Watson for another audience-engaging, bush-poetry seminar (but I don’t have that to reproduce here). There also might be a slidecast of Dale’s presentation coming soon. For now, please enjoy the poetic delivery of science in text.

—

The Old Grey Box of Heathcote Town

Dale Nimmo

Down around old Heathcote town, just east of Bendigo,

A big old grey box tree casts an eye.

The sallee fills the understory bright as sunlights glow,

As the silvereyes and thornbills flitter by.

This landscape, bruised and battered from 200 years of change,

Holds the secrets of a time lost somehow.

One of Jaara land, where lowan dug and dingoes howled,

The latter two, here, just distant memories now.

The gold rush came like bushfire, ring barked trees fell like boughs

Of the red gums scattered on the old flood plains,

That made way for sheep and cattle, while, fighting a losing battle,

rufous bettongs were never seen again.

When a man of English gentry, Professor Bennett was his name,

Found the woodlands to his aristocratic tastes.

Many days he’d venture in, binoculars under his chin,

He never let a single bird call go to waste.

While at the old St Arnaud Inn, over a couple pints of gin,

Bennet and a bloke called Radford got to talking.

Stealing horses was his game, but he’d give it all away,

To join Bennett in woodlands, bird walking

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: bush poetry, conference, ecology, riparian vegetation, scientific presentation
Categories : Australia, birds, conservation, decline, deforestation, drought, habitat loss, research, science, science communication

InvaCost – estimating the economic damage of invasive insects

7 11 2014

This is a blosh (rehash of someone else’s blog post) of Franck Courchamp‘s posts on an exciting new initiative of which I am excited to be a part. Incidentally, Franck’s spending the week here in Adelaide.

Don’t forgot to vote for the project to receive 50 000 € public-communication grant!

—

Climate change will make winters milder and habitats climatically more suitable year-round for cold-blooded animals like insects, but there are many questions remaining regarding whether such insects will be able to invade other regions as the climate shifts. There are many nasty bugs out there.

For example, the Asian predatory wasp is an invasive hornet in Europe that butchers pollinating insects, especially bees, thereby affecting the production of many wild and cultivated plants. I hope that we all remember what Einstein said about pollinators:

If bees were to disappear, humans will disappear within a few years.

(we all should remember that because it’s one of the few things he said that most of us understood). The highly invasive red fire ant is feared for its impacts on biodiversity, agriculture and cattle breeding, and the thousands of anaphylactic shocks inflicted to people by painful stings every year (with hundreds of deaths). Between the USA and Australia, over US$10 billion is spent yearly on the control of this insect alone. Tiger mosquitoes are vectors of pathogens that cause dengue fever, chikungunya virus and of about 30 other viruses. We could go on.

Most of these nasty creatures are now unable to colonise northern regions of Europe or America, or southern regions of Australia, for example, because they cannot survive cold temperatures. But how will this change? Where, when and which species will invade with rising temperatures? What will be the costs in terms of species loss? In terms of agricultural or forestry loss? In terms of diseases to cattle, domestic animals and humans? What will be the death toll if insects that are vectors of malaria can establish in new, highly populated areas?

We’ve proposed to study these and others from a list of 20 of the worst invasive insect species worldwide, and we got selected (i.e., financed!) by the Fondation BNP Paribas. In addition, the Fondation BNP Paribas has selected five scientific programmes on climate change and will give 50,000 € (that’s US$62,000) to the one selected by the public, for a communication project on their scientific programme. This is why we need you to vote for our project: InvaCost. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: BNP Paribas, Citizen science, climate change, Economics, Franck Courchamp, Global warming, insects, InvaCost, invasive species
Categories : agriculture, alien species, bioclimatic envelope, cattle, citizen science, climate change, climate shift, conservation, disease, ecology, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem services, environmental economics, Europe, food, health, invasive species, management, research, science, science communication

Human population size: speeding cars can’t stop quickly

28 10 2014

Here at ConservationBytes.com, I write about pretty much anything that has anything remotely to do with biodiversity’s prospects. Whether it is something to do with ancient processes, community dynamics or the wider effects of human endeavour, anything is fair game. It’s a little strange then that despite cutting my teeth in population biology, I have never before tackled human demography. Well as of today, I have.

The press embargo has just lifted on our (Barry Brook and my) new paper in PNAS where we examine various future scenarios of the human population trajectory over the coming century. Why is this important? Simple – I’ve argued before that we could essentially stop all conservation research tomorrow and still know enough to deal with most biodiversity problems. If we could only get a handle on the socio-economic components of the threats, then we might be able to make some real progress. In other words, we need to find out how to manage humans much more than we need to know about the particulars of subtle and complex ecological processes to do the most benefit for biodiversity. Ecologists tend to navel-gaze in this arena far too much.

So I called my own bluff and turned my attention to humans. Our question was simple – how quickly could the human population be reduced to a more ‘sustainable’ size (i.e., something substantially smaller than now)? The main reason we posed that simple, yet deceptively loaded question was that both of us have at various times been faced with the question by someone in the audience that we were “ignoring the elephant in the room” of human over-population.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 42 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity hotspots, disease, famine, fertility, human population, overpopulation, pandemic, survival, sustainability, war
Categories : anthropocene, Asia, conservation, demography, economics, ecosystem services, endemism, environmental policy, famine, health, human overpopulation, modelling, population dynamics, science, threatened species

How to review a scientific paper

30 09 2014

Following one of the most popular posts on ConservationBytes.com, as well as in response to several requests, I’ve decided to provide a few pointers for early-career scientists for reviewing manuscripts submitted to peer-reviewed journals.

Apart from publishing your first peer-reviewed paper – whether it’s in Nature or Corey’s Journal of Bullshit – receiving that first request to review a manuscript is one of the best indications that you’ve finally ‘made it’ as a recognised scientist. Finally, someone is acknowledging that you are an expert and that your opinions and critiques are important. You deserve to feel proud when this happens.

Of course, reviewing is the backbone of the scientific process, because it is the main component of science’s pursuit of objectivity (i.e., subjectivity reduction). No other human endeavour can claim likewise.

It is therefore essential to take the reviewing process seriously, even if you do so only from the entirely selfish perspective that if you do not, no one will seriously review your own work. It is therefore much more than an altruistic effort to advance human knowledge – it is at the very least a survival mechanism. Sooner or later if you get a reputation for providing bad reviews, or refuse to do them, your own publication track record will suffer as a result.

Just like there are probably as many different (successful) ways to write a scientific paper as there are journals, most people develop their own approaches for reviewing their colleagues’ work. But just as it’s my opinion that many journal editors do an awful job of editing, I know that many reviewers do rather a shit job at their assigned tasks. This perspective comes from many years as an author, a reviewer, an editor and a mentor.

So take my advice as you will – hopefully some of it will prove useful when you review manuscripts. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: appraisal, peer review, reviewing, science, science writing, scientific writing
Categories : bad grammar, conservation, science, science communication, scientific publishing, scientific writing, writing tips

High-altitude ecology

28 08 2014

A constant hazard in the Tibetan Plateau – yakjam

I’ve been out of the social-media loop for a few weeks, hence the abnormally long interval since my last post. As you might recall, I’ve been travelling overseas and most recently blogged from Monterey, California where I was attending a symposium on invasion genetics.

The next phase of my travels couldn’t have been more different.

The reason I couldn’t access the blog was because I was well behind the Great Firewall of China. I was, in fact, in the Tibetan region of Gansu and Sichuan Provinces in western China for most of the last 10 days. While I’ve travelled to China many times before, this was by far the most evocative, interesting and unique experience I’ve ever had in this country. Reflecting on the past 10 days while waiting in Hong Kong for my flight back to Australia, I am still reeling a little from what I saw.

Top bloke: Jiajia Liu of Fudan University

What the hell was I doing at 3500-4000 m elevation on the Tibetan Plateau? Good question. I have been most fortunate to be included in a crack team of Chinese ecologists who have designed and implemented a most impressive set of experiments in plant community ecology. The team, led by Professor Shurong Zhou and Dr. Jiajia Lui of Fudan University, has been working relentlessly to put together some of the sexiest plant ecology experiments going in China.

Having now so far published two papers from the some of the experiments (see here and here), my Chinese colleagues thought it was high time I visited the famous site. Situated at 3500 m in the Tibetan region of Gansu Province in western China, the Lanzhou University research station Azi Shi Yan Zhan is about a 20-hectare area of meadow fenced off from the grazing of the ubiquitous domestic yaks herded by the local Tibetans. If that sounds pretty exotic, let me assure you that it is. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 9 Comments »
Tags: aggregation, asynchrony, biodiversity, biomass, China, community ecology, functional groups, functional traits, phylogenetic diversity, plants, productivity, resilience, Tibet, Tibetan plateau
Categories : Asia, biodiversity, cattle, China, climate change, conservation, ecosystem function, function, genetic diversity, great firewall of China, habitat loss, livestock, recovery, research, science

We generally ignore the big issues

11 08 2014

I’ve had a good week at Stanford University with Paul Ehrlich where we’ve been putting the final touches¹ on our book. It’s been taking a while to put together, but we’re both pretty happy with the result, which should be published by The University of Chicago Press within the first quarter of 2015.

It has indeed been a pleasure and a privilege to work with one of the greatest thinkers of our age, and let me tell you that at 82, he’s still a force with which to be reckoned. While I won’t divulge much of our discussions here given they’ll appear soon-ish in the book, I did want to raise one subject that I think we all need to think about a little more.

The issue is what we, as ecologists (I’m including conservation scientists here), choose to study and contemplate in our professional life.

I’m just as guilty as most of the rest of you, but I argue that our discipline is caught in a rut of irrelevancy on the grander scale. We spend a lot of time refining the basics of what we essentially already know pretty well. While there will be an eternity of processes to understand, species to describe, and relationships to measure, can our discipline really afford to avoid the biggest issues while biodiversity (and our society included) are flushed down the drain?

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 9 Comments »
Tags: agriculture, ecological society, ecology, electricity, energy, food supply, human overpopulation, navel gazing, Population, sustainability
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conference, conservation, conservation biology, economics, ecosystem, environmental policy, extinction, food, human overpopulation, planning, population viability analysis, protected area, PVA, research, reserve, science, threatened species

Great biodiversity cartoonists

1 07 2014

Anyone who reads CB.com knows that I like to inject a bit of humour into my (often gloomy) messages. Sniggering, chortling, groaning and outright guffawing are useful ways to deal with the depressing topics conservation scientists examine every day. This is why I started the ‘Cartoon of the Week’ series, and now I have a compendium of quite a few biodiversity-related cartoons. Cartoons can also serve as wonderfully effective political tools if they manage to encapsulate the preposterousness of bad policies, navel-gazing politicians or Earth-buggering corporate tycoons. A good cartoon can be far more effective at transmitting a deep and complex message to a wide audience than most scientific articles.

Who are these gifted artists that bring together wit, humour and hard environmental truths into something that practically every scientist wants to include in conference presentations? I am inspired by some of these people, as I’m sure are many of you, so I decided to put together a little list of some of today’s better biodiversity cartoonists.

In no particular order of fame, relevance, focus on biodiversity, productivity or otherwise, I present to you my list of 10 great biodiversity cartoonists:

I suspect not many living outside of Australia would be familiar with the silly, yet extremely witty cartoons by First Dog on the Moon (also known as Andrew Marlton). I first came across this Melbournian when he was working for the newspaper Crikey, although he recently joined The Guardian Australia. He’s by no means what one would call an ‘environmental’ cartoonist, but there is a fair dose of (mainly Australian) biodiversity content in his cartoons. He is a self-entitled ‘marsupialist’, whatever that means (marsupial fetish, I think). I’ve even had the immense honour of having my own work immortalised in cartoon by this wonderful cartoonist.

— Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, cartoon, cartoonist, environment, environmental, science communication
Categories : cartoon, conservation, science, science communication

Don’t torture your readers III

23 06 2014

It has been quite some time since I did one of these kinds of posts (see Don’t torture your readers and Don’t torture your readers II). However, given how popular they seem to be, I have decided to do a follow-up post on grammar problems that I tend to see far too often in science writing.

—

COMPOUND ADJECTIVES: This is a particularly abused component of scientific writing. Although it’s fairly straightforward, I’m amazed just how many people get it wrong. Most people appear to understand that when an adjective (that’s a qualifier for a noun, just in case you are a grammarling) is composed of more than one word, there is normally a hyphen that connects them:

e.g., ’10-m fence’, ‘high-ranking journal’, ‘population-level metric’, ‘cost-effective policy’

If two or more adjectives are given in a row, but none modifies the meaning of the others, then it is simply a case of separating them with commas:

e.g., ‘a long, high fence’, ‘an old, respected journal’, ‘an effective, enduring policy’

However, if the compound adjective is composed of a leading adverb (that’s a qualifier for a verb), then there is NO hyphenation:

e.g., ‘an extremely long fence’, ‘a closely associated phenomenon’, ‘a legally mandated policy’

There are other instances when no hyphenation is required, such as when the qualifiers are proper nouns (e.g., ‘a Shark Bay jetty’), from another language such as Latin (e.g., an ‘ab initio course’) or enclosed in quotation marks (e.g., ‘a “do it yourself” guide). Note in the last example, without the quotations, it would become ‘a do-it-yourself guide’).

A quick way to recognise whether a compound adjective should be hyphenated is to examine the terminal letters of the leading word; if the leading component ends in ‘ly’, then it is likely an adverb, and so the compound should not be hyphenated (although watch for sneaky exceptions like ‘early-career researcher’!). Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: apostrophe, capitalisation, compound adjectives, conservation, English, grammar, science, style, writing
Categories : bad grammar, science, scientific writing, words, writing tips

Be a good reviewer, but be a better editor

6 06 2014

Perhaps it’s just that I’ve been at this for a while, or maybe it’s a real trend. Regardless, many of my colleagues and I are now of the opinion that the quality of editing in scientific journals is on the downhill slide.

Yes – we (scientists) all complain about negative decisions from journals to which we’ve submitted our work. Being rejected is part of the process. Aiming high is necessary for academic success, but when a negative decision is made on the basis of (often one) appalling review, it’s a little harder to swallow.

I suppose I can accept the inevitability of declining review quality for the simple reason that there are now SO MANY papers to review that finding willing volunteers is difficult. This means that there will always be people who only glance cursorily at the paper, miss the detail and recommend rejection based on their own misunderstanding or bias. It’s far easier to skim a paper and try to find a reason to reject than actually putting in the time to appraise the work critically and fairly.

This means that the traditional model of basing the decision to accept or reject a manuscript on only two reviews is fraught because the probability of receiving poor reviews is rising. For example, a certain undisclosed journal of unquestionably high quality for which I edit does not accept anything less than six recommendations for reviewers per manuscript, and none that I’m aware of is accepted or rejected based on only two reviews. But I think this is the exception rather than the rule – there are simply too many journals now of low to medium quality to be able to get that many reviewers to agree to review.

I won’t spend too much time trying to encourage you to do the best job you can when reviewing – that should go without saying. Remember what goes around comes around. If you are a shit reviewer, you will receive shit reviews. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 13 Comments »
Tags: publishing, science, scientific publishing, scientific writing, writing
Categories : research, science, scientific publishing, scientific writing

I still fucking love biodiversity

2 06 2014

ifuckinglovebiodiversity © Bastien Laurent

One year ago, I launched the Facebook page “I fucking love biodiversity” (IFLB) with a post here on ConservationBytes. My goal was to get people talking about biodiversity in a positive and light-hearted way (absolutely no ‘doom and gloom’). Today, IFLB now has about 17500 fans/followers across three social media platforms. It has been an amazing experience.

I will start by admitting that I created IFLB under the assumption that “if you build it, they will come”. I thought a catchy name, goodwill and a few bells and whistles would land me a huge audience. I was wrong. It took some very serious work. And IFLB is still pretty small in the global social-media landscape.

Gladly, I don’t have to manage IFLB by myself. I have a crack team of admins that share the load. Kudos go to Laure Cugnière, Phoebe Maund, Lydia Tiller and Romina Henriques and our own in-house designer, Hannah Conduit, all of whom work on a totally volunteer basis. Thanks everyone – IFLB wouldn’t be possible without you.

During this last year, I estimate we have invested in IFLB the equivalent of nine working weeks to put out 2-3 posts every single day (yes, xmas and New Years included). That was the first lesson I learned: being part of an effort like this requires serious dedication. Not only because you need to find the most interesting content and the best photos to go with it, but because you also need to ensure all photos have copyright information, that what you are posting is not the result of Photoshop wizardry and of course, that your fans’ comments and messages don’t go unanswered. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: appreciation, biodiversity, IFLB, IFLS, marketing, science communication
Categories : conservation, education, science, science communication

Scientists should blog

27 05 2014

As ConservationBytes.com is about to tick over 1 million hits since its inception in mid-2008, I thought I’d share why I think more scientists should blog about their work and interests.

As many of you know, I regularly give talks and short courses on the value of social and other media for scientists; in fact, my next planned ‘workshop’ (Make Your Science Matter) on this and related subjects will be held at the Ecological Society of Australia‘s Annual Conference in Alice Springs later this year.

I’ve written before about the importance of having a vibrant, attractive and up-to-date online profile (along with plenty of other tips), but I don’t think I’ve ever put down my thoughts on blogging in particular. So here goes.

The main reasons scientists should consider blogging is the hard, cold fact that not nearly enough people read scientific papers. Most scientists are lucky if a few of their papers ever top 100 citations, and I’d wager that most are read by only a handful of specialists (there are exceptions, of course, but these are rare). If you’re a scientist, I don’t have to tell you the disappointment of realising that the blood, sweat and tears shed over each and every paper is largely for nought considering just how few people will ever read our hard-won results. It’s simply too depressing to contemplate, especially considering that the sum of human knowledge is so vast and expanding that this trend will only ever get worse. For those reasons alone, blogging about your own work widens the readership by orders of magnitude. More people read my blog every day than will probably ever read the majority of my papers. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 21 Comments »
Tags: articles, blog, blogging, citations, papers, science, science blogging, science communication, science writing
Categories : bad grammar, blog, conservation, science, science communication, scientific publishing, scientific writing

School finishers and undergraduates ill-prepared for research careers

22 05 2014

Having been for years now at the pointy end of the educational pathway training the next generation of scientists, I’d like to share some of my observations regarding how well we’re doing. At least in Australia, my realistic assessment of science education is: not well at all.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, but only now decided to put my thoughts into words as the train wreck of our current government lurches toward a future guaranteeing an even stupider society. Charging postgraduate students to do PhDs for the first time, encouraging a US-style system of wealth-based educational privilege, slashing education budgets and de-investing in science while promoting the belief in invisible spaghetti monsters from space, are all the latest in the Fiberal future nightmare that will change our motto to “Australia – the stupid country”.

As you can appreciate, I’m not filled with a lot of hope that the worrying trends I’ve observed over the past 10 years or so are going to get any better any time soon. To be fair though, the problems go beyond the latest stupidities of the Fiberal government.

My realisation that there was a problem has crystallised only recently as I began to notice that most of my lab members were not Australian. In fact, the percentage of Australian PhD students and post-doctoral fellows in the lab usually hovers around 20%. Another sign of a problem was that even when we advertised for several well-paid postdoctoral positions, not a single Australian made the interview list (in fact, few Australians applied at all). I’ve also talked to many of my colleagues around Australia in the field of quantitative ecology, and many lament the same general trend.

Is it just poor mathematical training? Yes and no. Australian universities have generally lowered their entry-level requirements for basic maths, thereby perpetuating the already poor skill base of school leavers. Why? Bums (that pay) on seats. This means that people like me struggle to find Australian candidates that can do the quantitative research we need done. We are therefore forced to look overseas. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: Australia, grammar, mathematics, maths, school, skills, training, university
Categories : Australia, bad grammar, conservation, education, environmental science, mathematics, modelling, research, science, science communication, scientific writing

Ecological processes depend on …

14 05 2014

I have been known to say (ok – I say it all the time) that ecologists should never equivocate when speaking to the public. Whether it’s in a media release, blog post, television presentation or newspaper article, just stick to ‘yes’ or ‘no’. In other words, don’t qualify your answer with some horrid statistical statement (i.e., in 95% of cases …) or say something like “… but it really depends on …”. People don’t understand uncertainty – to most people, ‘uncertainty’ means “I don’t know” or worse, “I made it all up”.

But that’s only in the movies.

In real ‘ecological’ life, things are vastly different. It’s never as straightforward as ‘yes’ or ‘no’, because ecology is complex. There are times that I forget this important aspect when testing a new hypothesis with what seem like unequivocal data, but then reality always hits.

Our latest paper is the epitome of this emergent complexity from what started out as a fairly simple question using some amazing data. What makes birds change their range¹? We looked at this question from a slightly different angle than had been done before because we had access to climate data, life-history data and most importantly, actual range change data. It’s that latter titbit that is typically missing from studies aiming to understand what drives species toward a particular fate; whether it’s a species distribution model predicting the future habitat suitability of some species as a function of climate change, or the past dynamics of some species related to its life history pace, most often the combined dynamics are missing. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: area of occupancy, bird, birds, Britain, ecology, environment, range dynamics, United Kingdom
Categories : biodiversity, biogeography, citizen science, conservation, decline, deforestation, demography, ecology, Europe, extinction, fragmentation, habitat loss, island biogeography, management, modelling, population dynamics, science

Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers and Thinkers

11 03 2014

If you’ve been following this blog or my Twitter feed over the last few weeks, you’ve surely noticed a few references to A.L.E.R.T. – the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers and Thinkers. You might also have asked yourself, what exactly is ALERT, and is it something I should pay attention to?

Today’s post attempts to explain this new organisation, and hopefully convince you that the answer to the second question is ‘yes’.

Several months ago, a slightly cryptic e-mail from eminent conservation biologist, Bill Laurance, arrived in my inbox. It asked – what do you think of this logo (see associated image)? A few e-mails later and a couple of minor tweaks, and we ended up with what I thought was a pretty cool logo for this new ‘ALERT’ thing. It wasn’t until quite some time later that I finally understood what Bill was attempting to create.

Is ALERT a news aggregator, a blog, an advocacy group, a science-communication resource or a science-policy interface? Why, yes it is!

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: advocacy, advocacy group, ALERT, Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers, Bill Laurance, conservation, Ecological Society of Australia, environmental policy, evidence-based policy, policy, politics, scientific consensus, scientific evidence
Categories : Australia, Central America, climate change, conservation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, environmental science, fire, habitat loss, livestock, protected area, research, science, science communication

Work-life ‘balance’ – can academics achieve it?

16 12 2013

A little over a week ago I was asked by the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus) to sit on a panel with Professor Tanya Munro to speak about achieving that elusive ‘life-work balance’. The event was part of the ECRchat network.

The evening was well-attended, and even more so online; now the video is available and I reproduce it here for your viewing pleasure.

I hope you have some interesting insights that we didn’t have – essentially the conclusion is that there really isn’t one; you’ve got to find your own system that works, and nothing works perfectly. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: academia, balance, career, family, science
Categories : conservation, science, science communication, scientific writing

Biowealth: all creatures great and small

4 12 2013

“So consider the crocodiles, sharks and snakes, the small and the squirmy, the smelly, slimy and scaly. Consider the fanged and the hairy, the ugly and the cute alike. The more we degrade this astonishing diversity of evolved life and all its interactions on our only home, the more we expose ourselves to the ravages of a universe that is inherently hostile to life.”

excerpt from ‘Biowealth: all creatures great and small’ The Curious Country (C.J.A. Bradshaw 2013).

—

I’ve spent the last few days on the east coast with my science partner-in-crime, Barry Brook, and one of our newest research associates (Marta Rodrigues-Rey Gomez). We first flew into Sydney at sparrow’s on Monday, then drove a hire car down to The ‘Gong to follow up on some Australian megafauna databasing & writing with Bert Roberts & Zenobia Jacobs. On Tuesday morning we then flitted over to Canberra where we had the opportunity to attend the official launch of a new book that Barry and I had co-authored.

The book, The Curious Country, is an interesting experiment in science communication and teaching dreamed up by Australia’s Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb. Realising that the average Aussie has quite a few questions about ‘how stuff works’, but has little idea how to answer those questions, Ian engaged former Quantum star and science editor, Leigh Dayton, to put together a short, punchy, topical and easily understood book about why science is good for the country.

Yes, intuitive for most of you out there reading this, but science appreciation isn’t always as high as it should be amongst the so-called ‘general public’. Ian thought this might be one way to get more people engaged.

When honoured with the request to write an interesting chapter on biodiversity for the book, I naturally accepted. It turns out Barry was asked to do one on energy provision at the same time (but we didn’t know we had both been asked at the time). Our former lab head, Professor David Bowman, was also asked to write a chapter about fire risk, so it was like a mini-reunion yesterday for the three of us.

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Tags: Australia, Barry Brook, biodiversity, biowealth, Bob Baldwin, Brendan Nelson, David Bowman, ecosystem services, Ian Chubb, natural capital, science communication
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, extinction debt, fish, fisheries, food, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, health, marine protected area, research, science, science communication, scientific writing, threatened species

King for a day – what conservation policies would you make?

29 11 2013

I have been thinking a lot lately about poor governance and bad choices when it comes to biodiversity conservation policy. Perhaps its all that latent anger arising from blinkered, backward policies recently implemented by conservative state and national governments in Australia and elsewhere that leads me to contemplate: What would I do if I had the power to change policy?

While I am certain I have neither the experience or complete knowledge to balance national budgets, ensure prosperity and maintain the health of an entire country, I do have some ideas about what we’re doing wrong conservation-wise, and how we could potentially fix things. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list – it is more a discussion point where people can suggest their own ideas.

So here are 16 things I’d change or implement (mainly in Australia) if I were king for a day:

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Tags: Australia, biodiversity, Carbon pricing, climate change, conservation, environment, governance, national park
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conservation, corruption, decline, deforestation, ecological literacy, ecology, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, fisheries, fragmentation, governance, habitat loss, harvest, human overpopulation, invasive species, livestock, management, marine protected area, Murray River, Murray-Darling, protected area, recovery, reforestation, research, reserve, restoration, science, threatened species, water, water neutrality

Making the scientific workshop work

28 10 2013

I don’t mean this

I’ve been a little delayed in blogging this month, but for a very good reason – I’ve just experienced one of the best workshops of my career. I’d like to share a little of that perfect science recipe with you now.

I’ve said it before, but it can stand being repeated: done right, workshops can be some of the most efficient structures for doing big science.

First, let me define ‘workshop’ for those of you who might have only a vague notion of what it entails. To me, a workshop is a small group of like-minded scientists – all of whom possess different skills and specialities – who are brought together to achieve one goal. That goal is writing the superlative manuscript for publication.

So I don’t mean just a bog-standard chin-wag infected with motherhoods and diatribes. Workshops are not mini-conferences; neither are they soap boxes. It is my personal view that nothing can waste a scientist’s precious time more than an ill-planned and aimless workshop.

But with a little planning and some key ingredients that I’ll list shortly, you can turn a moderately good idea into something that can potentially shake the foundations of an entire discipline. So what are these secret ingredients? Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: management, publication, science, science writing, Time, Workshop
Categories : conference, conservation, research, science, scientific publishing, scientific writing

Making science matter

14 10 2013

I’ve been home from my last overseas trip now for nearly two weeks, but despite not feeling caught up, it’s high time I report what I was up to.

Some of you who follow my Twitter feed or who saw a CB post about cartoonist Seppo Leinonen know that I was visiting the University of Helsinki to participate in a three-day short course for PhD students entitled ‘Making Science Matter‘. I was so impressed with how well Mar Cabeza and Tomas Roslin put together the course, that I thought I’d share the format with CB readers (just in case any of you out there can be convinced to design a similar course at your university).

I think it’s important first to discuss the philosophy of the course and what it hoped to provide those early-career researchers.

Most science PhD students will tell you once they’ve completed their degree that they feel completely unprepared to launch themselves into the extra-curricular world of communicating their science beyond the ‘traditional’ (peer-reviewed journals) outlets. Swamped with learning how to write concisely and clearly, getting up to speed with the entire body of theory on which their projects are based, mastering advanced modelling and statistical approaches and learning how to apply efficient computer code, it’s no wonder that many students find precious little time for anything else (including families, good food and proper hygiene).

Once they do land that precious post-doctoral fellowship though, they are immediately expected to interact professionally with the media, embrace social media and give fantastic public lectures to engage the uninformed. Right. Read the rest of this entry »