Prof. Marcus Rowcliffe

Professor Marcus Rowcliffe is a broad-based conservation scientist with an academic background in ecology. 

Marcus' research roots are in the use of ecological thinking to inform the conservation and management of waterfowl, including issues of conflict around crop damage, and the sustainable management of hunting. Marcus has also spend two decades working on sustainable use of other wild species, in particular the impacts and drivers of wild meat use and trade in West and Central Africa. This research has been highly interdisciplinary, with collaborations across anthropology, economics, and the human development sector.

Marcus' current research is focused primarily on biodiversity monitoring, in particular the use of technology to monitor elusive species. This includes terrestrial camera trapping, underwater cameras, drone surveys and acoustic monitoring. His most important contribution in this area is the development of statistical methods and tools to estimate animal abundance from camera trap data, and the software and standards needed to create efficient data pipelines to apply these methods. Marcus is involved in applying these methods to issues from urban wildlife conservation and badger vaccination in the UK, to wildlife monitoring in rewilding landscapes in Europe, and the conservation of critically endangered species such as the wild camel in Mongolia.

Marcus is also involved with the London HogWatch project, machine learning for wildlife conservation and badger vaccination against bovine TB.