Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology - DICE

[Speaker change for tomorrow's DICE Talk, please see updated speakers below 👇]

Tomorrow (Thursday, 20th August), join us in Grimond Lecture Theatre 2 for August's DICE Talk, presented by three of our postgraduate students.

💡 Nadia Hejab, 'Modelling behavioural responses of translocated Indian leopards to thermal stress in shared landscapes'

💡 Debra Nachinga, 'Bottlenecks to the operationalisation of Other Effective Area Based Conservation Measures (OECMs): A Case Study of Community Conservancies in Kenya'

💡 Kili Walsh: 'Retaliation and Raiding: Modelling Conflict Dynamics with Long-tailed Macaques in Borneo'

After the talks, please join us in K-bar Keynes College for a social gathering and catch up with the DICE community!

Should non‑native species ever be used to restore lost ecosystem functions? 🌱

A new paper published in Ecological Solutions and Evidence draws on a scoping review and practitioner interviews to aim to answer this question.

The study, co‑authored by Alex Collins (University of Oxford), Professor Nathalie Pettorelli (ZSL) and Dr Mohammad S. Farhadinia (DICE, University of Kent), found that ecological replacement has often delivered meaningful ecological benefits, including improved nutrient cycling, seed dispersal, and invasive species control.

However, the authors also highlight concerns around invasiveness, animal welfare, reversibility, and social acceptance, among practitioners, emphasising that perceptions of risk and reward vary widely depending on how people define rewilding, how strongly they value nativeness, and their tolerance for ecological uncertainty.

Read the full study ➡️ https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2688-8319.70307

New research from DICE, 'A framework for identifying paper parks', has been published in Biological Conservation.

The paper provides a "new definition" of paper parks, "designed for researchers, practitioners and policy makers to distinguish between paper parks and poorly performing PAs, as the current lack of precision hampers efforts to describe and understand the related issues".

This research was led by Jessica Stewart, with Professor Bob Smith and coauthors from DICE and other institutions. Read the full paper and author credits ➡️ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320726003502

New research from DICE shows that community-managed tropical forests can be just as effective as nearby protected forests at supporting wildlife, especially when forest areas are well connected across the landscape.💡

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, analysed camera-trap data from community forest landscapes in Sumatra. Using advanced statistical models, researchers examined how forest connectivity, habitat quality and human activity affected where mammal species were found. The strongest predictor of mammal presence was how well forest patches were linked to each other.

The findings suggest that the conservation benefits of community-managed forests depend not only on local management practices but also on the wider landscape around them. This has important implications for including community forestry in future conservation planning and policy in Indonesia and other forested countries.

Read the full paper ➡️ https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.70518

Recently, Kent Wildlife Trust announced an ambitious wildlife recovery project across Kent. Three-year funding from Natural England will support projects to strengthen beaver populations, protect rare woodland invertebrates and recover threatened species.

DICE's work on this project will contribute to the protection of rare invertebrates in the Blean and strengthen the genetic diversity and long-term resilience of the beaver population in the River Stour.

Read more about the project: https://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/news/kent-wildlife-trust-lead-ambitious-wildlife-recovery-across-kent

📸 Sam Maddison

Don't miss this month's DICE Talk! 🗣️

Hear from the next generation of conservation leaders as our MSc Conservation Science students share their research. Join us for a series of short talks on topics from community-led conservation in Kenya to wildlife conflict in Borneo.

Thursday 20th August, 6-7pm 🗓️
Grimond Lecture Theatre 2, University of Kent, CT2 7NG 📍

As always, after the talk, join us at K-bar in Keynes College to catch up with the DICE community!

For full talk details, visit our website: https://www.kent.ac.uk/whats-on/event/82980/short-talks-from-msc-conservation-science-students

Applications closing soon ⚠️

Join DICE as a Research Associate, to work on the OECM component of our E3 Sharing Space for Nature initiative.

Deadline: 23:59 BST, Sunday 9th August 2025

More details including job description and how to apply on our website: https://jobs.kent.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=SNS-089-26