I direct the Conservation Ecology Research Unit CERU as a self - PDF document

1 I direct the Conservation Ecology Resear
I direct the Conservation Ecology Research Unit (CERU) as a self - sufficient research entity funded via grants from national and international organisations and private industries. These grants also support research fellows, support staff, and post - graduate bursaries. My research focuses predominantly on two lines of inquiry . My research on elephants focuses on the drivers of demographic variability and heterogeneity in spatial utilization, with emphasis on finding solutions for the causes rather than symptoms of so called 'elephant problems'. This research is conducted across gradients of environmental and management conditions in southern African protected areas in Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. CERU's development of the 'megaparks for metapopulations' concept is an innovative platform for ele phant management that emphasizes spatial structuring of populations and demographic responses to heterogeneity in environmental resources. This management option has important implications for the continuing and controversial debate on elephant management. My research on the restoration of coastal dune forest in northern KwaZulu - Natal (South Africa) started 21 years ago. Coastal dune forest is rare in South Africa and falls within the Maputaland - Pondoland - Albany biodiversity hotspot. Some 10% of this fores t is protected, but 43% has been transformed. The remaining 57% is threatened by tourism, dune mining, and clearing for subsistence living. The narrow and linear nature of the forest further contributes to its sensitivity to transformation, isolation, and fragmentation, and its restoration makes both conservation and economic sense. The project is now well established and CERU's scientific achievements here provide a recognised scientific foundation for restoration ecology in southern Africa.