Question: How does studying animals help with your line of work?

Murray Collins answered on 14 Mar 2011:

Hi Emily,

Well in the forest I am working in I am looking in at the numbers of different animals that there are in the forest. That helps me to see which areas of forest are best for wildlife conservation. I can then try to match this up with what type of forest is best for carbon storage. This will help me decide what areas are best to conserve both to reduce the impact of climate change and conserve animal species. Because there are so many species in the jungle I can’t measure everything! So I am going to study fish.

I also want to see what happens to these species when the forest is cut down, and whether any can survive in the streams and puddles in forests which are planted by people. There’s already a lot of scientists working on these kind of questions, but little work has been done in the place I am working in Indonesia.

So studying animals gives me a clue as to which areas of forest have the most species in them, and the effects on those species when the forest is changed by people. This helps people who decide how to manage the forests make decisions about the best places to conserve, and the best ways to manage the forest.

Hope this makes sense!

Murray