News

WildCRU celebrates two Diploma alumni at the SILVIS lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison

At WildCRU, we pride ourselves on the connections we foster between people. The news that two former WildCRU post-graduate diploma students are now working together at the SILVIS lab, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a good demonstration of how far our network stretches.

Afag Rizayeva joined our diploma course in 2016, and subsequently returned to Azerbaijan to work on Caucasian leopards, European bison, and other local wildlife. Since 2018 she has been working at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studying land-use change in the Caucasus. Using satellite data, Afag is exploring long-term land use changes and their effect on habitat across the region.

Our second, new WildCRU addition to the SILVIS lab is Yury Petrunenko, who took part in the 2013 diploma course. Yury previously worked on Amur tigers, focusing on prey use and habitat selection. His post-doctoral research, with the SILVIS lab, will explore how the collapse of the Soviet Union affected wildlife, and how climate change is currently causing distribution changes to species across the same region.

Now, both former WildCRU students work at the SILVIS lab, which focusses on land use change, using satellite data and other large geographic data-sets to understand how to the world is changing for wildlife. Good luck to both Afag and Yury in their research.