I am a fourth year MBiol student completing my Masters project with the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme in WildCRU. My research will look at the risks of roads and traffic on the survival and behaviour of Ethiopian Wolves in Bale Mountain National Park, Ethiopia. This is an important and understudied field of research given the recent expansion of linear infrastructure through the fragile Afroalpine habitat, primarily for tourism. The study will employ a machine learning approach to detect and classify road traffic using seismic sensors, as well as using GPS data to understand more about road-induced behavioural changes. This is the first time that seismology has been applied to roads for wildlife conservation, opening up an exciting new area of conservation biology.

The main goal of my research is to inform changes in road policies in the Afroalpine region, such as speed limits or driving bans at certain times of day, in order to help protect this endangered and charismatic wolf from extinction.

Having grown up on an organic livestock and horticultural farm in Dorset, I have been involved with many conservation projects and have always enjoyed working with animals. Completing my undergraduate in Biology at Oxford and undertaking numerous fieldwork projects, both terrestrial and marine, has strengthened my motivation to work in wildlife conservation.