Dr Philip Riordan

Postdoctoral Researcher

For my PhD I studied spatial and resource partitioning within mammalian carnivore assemblages in Africa. I began working for WildCRU in 1999 as a post-doc examining the consequences of culling badgers for the epidemiology of bovine tuberculosis and the effects of social perturbation. Since 2003 I have been coordinating and managing research within the Upper Thames Project (UTP), which aims to assess the impacts on biodiversity of targeting agri-environment schemes across rural landscapes. In 2007 I initiated a comparative project in China, situated in West Jilin province, in collaboration with Dr Shi Kun, at Beijing Forestry University.  

In 2008 Shi Kun and I were asked by the Chinese government to develop a programme for research and conservation of the snow leopard in China.This project is on-going, with successful surveys and training having been carried out in Xinjiang and Sichuan provinces.

Recently I have developed and succeeded in obtaining funding from the UK Government Darwin Initiative for a large-scale project to building capacity for wild cat conservation across China and to establish robust monitoring within protected areas. This work is being carried out in collaboration with Shi Kun at BFU and the Chinese State Forestry Administration.

In 2009 I was made a Senior Research Fellow at Beijing Forestry University.

Human-wildlife interfaces; wildlife diseases; community ecology; spatial ecology