Evaluating protected area location in Borneo

27/08/2024

Protected Areas are crucial for wildlife conservation - but their location is often influenced more by human expediency rather than biodiversity benefit. A new paper led by Ewan Macdonald demonstrates this reality in the context of Sunda clouded leopard conservation in Borneo. Through comparing seven protected area scenarios against modelled forest loss, the authors show ... Read full story

WildCRU 2023 Impact Report now available

08/07/2024

“Science and conservation action are deeply entwined within WildCRU's DNA, with each informing the other to understand and tackle some of the most challenging issues facing biodiversity today”, says Professor Amy Dickman, Director of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU). The breadth of these challenges, and the diversity of WildCRU’s work ... Read full story

Identifying and assessing survey methods for estimating lion population abundance

10/06/2024

Understanding the population status of a species is vital for their conservation. Over the last two decades, multiple methods for surveying lion (Panthera leo) populations have been designed and tested. A new study led by Samantha Nicholson, with WildCRU’s Hans Bauer and other authors conducted a PRISMA systematic review to identify and assess ... Read full story

Wildlife trade insights from patent analysis

07/08/2024

A new paper by WildCRU’s Amy Hinsley analyses 50 years of commercial wildlife-related patents related to rhinos, pangolins, horseshoe crabs, sturgeons, bears and caterpillar fungus filed from 1970 to 2020. Using a novel machine learning approach, the authors found over 27,000 patents related to the study species ranging from medicinal and food uses ... Read full story

Moving from Tubney House to the new Life and Mind Building in October 2025

15/06/2024

Nestled in the Oxfordshire countryside, Tubney House has been the headquarters of WildCRU for 20 years since 2004, representing more than half of our history. When our founder Professor David Macdonald established the WildCRU in 1986, he could scarcely have dreamt how the move to Tubney House would facilitate our growth, impact ... Read full story

Camera trap survey training in Tanzania

16/04/2024

WildCRU-affiliated project Lion Landscapes recently delivered a training workshop for Tanzanian wildlife researchers on carrying out camera trap surveys to estimate large carnivore population density. The training took place at the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) HQ in Arusha and was attended by 18 early-career TAWIRI researchers, a third of whom were ... Read full story