Dr Chloë Strevens

Dr Chloë Strevens is a Departmental Lecturer in SoGE and the Course Director of the MSc and MPhil in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management. She holds a First Class BA Hons from the Zoology Department in Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and a DPhil from Oxford University. For her doctoral research she developed population models to investigate the observed metapopulation dynamics of model species inhabiting a laboratory microcosm in order to understand the implications of landscape fragmentation on the species' population dynamics and persistence.

In 2011, she left academia to work with UNEP-WCMC (United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK) on issues related to business and biodiversity. Over the following six years she worked on a wide range of projects including the assessment of the biodiversity requirements contained within standards and certification schemes used by the private sector; the development of data, tools and protocols to undertake assessments of critical and priority habitats for biodiversity; the assessment of the feasibility of policy commitments and standards' requirements such as 'No Net Loss' or 'Net Positive Gain' of biodiversity; and the interpretation of scientific research for the private sector including a Cambridge Conservation Initiative funded study on the risk of wild pollinator decline for private sector supply chains.

This role provided a unique opportunity to work with partners from across the world spanning public, private and research sectors, encountering an array of perspectives (and often scepticism) on the importance of biodiversity and the need for conservation action, and navigating different value systems and lexicons to communicate conservation messages to different stakeholder groups. It also gave her first-hand experience of the need for a robust evidence-base to inform effective policy making and the conviction that contemporary conservation must act across sectors and disciplines.

Developing a participatory framework for biodiversity conservation in Ekiti State, Nigeria

In collaboration with colleagues from Ekiti State government and local conservation experts, we are working to develop a landscape-level biodiversity conservation strategy. My role in this project focusses on the development of biodiversity monitoring approaches to provide an evidence-base for policy and decision-making; approaches under development include co-designed citizen science, automated biodiversity surveillance using acoustic surveys and camera traps, and participatory methods to record Local and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. As part of this project, I have supervised the following research projects:

• Quantifying the shade-yield optimum for cocoa agroforestry in Ekiti State, Nigeria (2023)
• Bushmeat Hunting in Ekiti State, Nigeria: Investigating the Complex Role of Traditional Beliefs and Informal Institutions (2022)
• A Baseline Biodiversity and Bushmeat Hunting Analysis of Ekiti State, Nigeria (2021)

Biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes

My research in this field is focused at the science-policy interface, investigating the impacts of different land management approaches on farm biodiversity and examining the social and policy conditions for farmers and landowners to conserve biodiversity on their land. As part of this work, I have supervised the following projects:

• Incorporating Hummingbird Ecology and Plant-Pollinator Interactions within Land Management and Pollinator Conservation Plans in the Pacific Northwest (2023)
• Investigating Biodiversity Impacts and Associated Ecosystem Services of Floristically Enhanced Field Margins (2022)
• Effects of grazing on butterflies in a multi-use protected area: a mixed-methods approach (2022)
• The social pathways guiding farmers' meanings of farm forestry (2022)
• The Regenerative Agricultural Institution: Multispecies Politics for Inclusive Farming Futures (2021)
• Navigating a shifting agri-environment policy landscape to conserve butterflies in England (2020)
• Redesigning UK agri-environment policy: Opportunities for funding nature conservation through water management in Norfolk (2020)
• Pollinators in agro-ecosytems in Europe: A systematic review (2020)

Other MSc and DPhil project supervisions

Through my role as an MSc Course Director, I have the opportunity to support a wide range of student projects defined by students' individual research interests and career aspirations. Although there is little coherence among them in terms of topic, together they provide me with a fascinating and diverse insight to the wider landscape of conservation research:

• Antarctic Continental Shelf Benthos under Changing Marine Icescapes - Structure, Function and Behaviour (2023)
• The Value of Rights for Nature to Conservation Action - an empirical study of Rights of Nature in India and New Zealand (2022)
• Reaching Community Consensus for Achieving the Standardization of Methodologies and Methods for the Seagrass Essential Ocean Variable (EOV) for Percent Cover (2022)
• Listening to the blues: A spatial and temporal analysis of the soundscapes in False Bay, South Africa (2021)
• Addressing illegal jaguar trafficking in Mexico through the application of the Political Economy Analysis Framework (2021)
• Addressing human-wildlife conflict by applying a hazard-acceptance model to inform behaviour-change interventions (2021)
• At one with nature: Exploring mindfulness, nature connection, and pro- biodiversity behaviours (2021)
• An evaluation of the efficacy of laws relevant to charcoal governance in Uganda (2020)
• Towards Insurance for Nature: Identifying opportunities and challenges for insurance sector engagement with Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction and Ecosystem-based Adaptation (2019)
• Using Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EbA) to Increase Climate Resilience of Peri-Urban Settlements in Windhoek, Namibia (2019)

Chloë is the Course Director for the Master's in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management (BCM). BCM is a challenging multidisciplinary course providing students with a critical understanding of the interplay between biodiversity science and practice; exploring the dynamic landscape of scientific, technological, socio-economic, political, cultural and institutional drivers of environment policy and conservation management decisions. Chloë teaches a range of classes on the course predominantly on conservation governance, technology and the development of professional skills for working in conservation.