Dr Tony Sainsbury

Disease outbreaks as a consequence of the translocation of free-living wild animals are a threat to biodiversity and vast numbers of these wild animal movements occur annually for reasons of trade, rehabilitation, hunting and conservation.

One driver of disease outbreaks is non-native parasite incursion and there is a need for better prediction of how and when these parasites will impact on wild animal populations.

My interest is in developing methods to assess the risks from disease with greater certainty so that translocations can be carried out more effectively.

Difficulties in doing so stem from our lack of understanding of the number, pathogenicity, identity and distribution of parasites of wild animals. We can gather data to improve translocation methods through post-release health surveillance and I am exploring how the limitations of our detection methods for diseased and dead free-living wild animals affect our understanding of the threat of disease to translocated and declining free-living populations. . Our evolving methods are tested on current translocation projects for conservation purposes in a collaboration with Natural England and several NGOs - see the DRAHS Project.

My vision for the future is healthy and abundant free-living wildlife populations resulting from conservation translocations.

You are very welcome to contact me via my email address at tony.sainsbury@ioz.ac.uk and do find out more on the work of DRAHS.