A day in the sun at a rotting carcass surrounded by lions may not be everyone’s idea of a successful day at the office, but for Dr Andrea Webster, faeces from different species provides valuable clues about how pollutants can affect wildlife populations in protected areas. Dr Webster is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute and recent recipient of a PD scholarship from the Oppenheimer Chair for Emerging Scientists in Non-invasive Wildlife Research Programme.
Preventing extinction
2021 JWO Grant winner, Dr Gideon Idowu, is leading a new continent-wide microplastics study.
The need to mitigate anthropogenic impacts on species and natural systems has resulted in conservation science developing as a major multidisciplinary area of study.
The global pandemic has wreaked havoc to our very existence as a species and has demanded a change in the way we function in the economy and our daily survival. The world is a different place to what it was just a few months ago, and the veil of not knowing torments our society.