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Department of Zoology

 

Claire Feniuk received the following awards at 2015 International Conference on Conservation Biology in Montpellier

  • The "European Young Nature Conservationist 2015" award - this was from the Society for Conservation Biology - European Section, and according to their website is "for upcoming young people (30-years and under) who advance the science and practice of nature conservation in Europe"
  • An "honourable mention" (runner up) prize for the Society for Conservation Biology Student Awards competition. 750 students entered the competition, and 12 finalists were invited to present at the International Congress for Conservation Biology.

Claire's research includes an interest in landscape-scale land-use strategies that minimise the impact of food production on biodiversity in Europe: in particular, whether it is better for biodiversity to produce food at a high yield in a relatively small area thus “sparing” unfarmed land for nature, or to make space for nature within the farmed landscape itself, producing food at a lower yield but over a greater area. Her field research is based in the Lubelskie region of eastern Poland, which supports some beautiful areas of natural habitat including old-growth forests, fen mires and floodplain meadows, as well as a diverse range of agricultural land use types, from low-yielding traditional mixed farmland mosaics up to relatively high-yielding arable land.

Claire's PhD is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), in partnership with BirdLife International, and is supervised by Prof. Andrew Balmford FRS, Prof. Rhys Green and Dr. Ian Burfield (BirdLife International). She also works closely with Dr. Jarek Krogulec at Ogólnopolskie Towarzystwo Ochrony Ptaków (OTOP), the BirdLife partner in Poland.