Justin Irvine

My research has focused on understanding the mechanisms governing the population regulation in free ranging herbivores with an emphasis on the role that disease plays in the dynamics of these ecosystems. Current work focuses on the relative impacts of wild and domestic herbivores on the biodiversity and conservation of upland in the light of climate and land-use change.

I am developing an interdisciplinary approach to link the above work on grazing ecology with social and economic scientists in order to tackle the management of natural resources using hunting as a lens. This has lead to a RELU funded project entitled Collaborative frameworks in land management: A case study on integrated deer management [2] to address conflicts over land-use objectives. Further to this, I coordinate an EU FP7 project looking at the role of hunting for the conservation of biodiversity in Europe and Africa [3] and a Defra funded Darwin grant developing community based natural resource management approaches in the Ethiopian highlands [4].