Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology - DICE

The Space Race Here On Earth 🌍

On 8th October, DICE will be hosting a Nature, Farming and Planning Conference, bringing together stakeholders to discuss recent changes in legislation and policy approach in England, and implementation challenges and solutions in Kent.

While the conference itself is invite-only, we are inviting the public to a FREE open lecture in the evening, presented by Tom Heap (Countryfile, BBC Radio 4).

8th October, 6pm, Gulbenkian Theatre 🗓️

Tom has toured the British countryside meeting farmers, scientists, conservationists and even warehouse managers who are finding solutions to this geographical crunch. His talk, 'The Space Race Here On Earth' looks at how we can use land to give both people and nature the space to thrive.

Get your free ticket on the Gulbenkian website: https://thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/the-space-race-here-on-earth/

How can we better support ranger mental health? 💡

Research Fellow, Dr Mahmood Soofi, shares more about his recent publication in this featured blog post. Read an excerpt below and view the full post on DICE Writes: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/dice/2026/09/04/how-can-we-better-support-ranger-mental-health/

"Rangers can face risks ranging from difficult verbal encounters to physical violence. In areas affected by armed conflict, these risks may be higher. Rangers may be injured or killed when conservation work intersects with wider insecurity.

"Such experiences can affect rangers, communities and conservation work itself. Rangers work within these difficult circumstances... [and] may be expected to manage these tensions even though they did not create the underlying conditions. Ranger wellbeing therefore deserves more attention in conservation policy and practice."

Today, on National Pine Marten Day, we are excited to share that a new study supported by DICE, "Is Britain still great for pine marten? A Habitat Suitability Assessment," has been published in Landscape Ecology.

The research maps areas of land across Britain suitable as habitat for pine martens — a once widespread native species now Critically Endangered in England and Wales. For the first time, it draws on pine marten records from across the whole of Europe and found that areas with extensive woodland cover offer the best conditions, including South East England, and parts of South West England, Gloucestershire, East Yorkshire, East Anglia, South West Scotland, and sections of Britain's western coast.

This work forms a key part of our South East Pine Marten Restoration Project, led by Kent Wildlife Trust and Wildwood Kent with Sussex Wildlife Trust, The Conservators of Ashdown Forest and Forestry England - supported by the Durrell Institute of Conservation Ecology.

Congratulations to Dave Seaman (DICE), and thank you to everyone involved, including Ella Lewis, Kirsty Swinnerton and Lawrence Ball at Kent Wildlife Trust; Rachel Gardener, Neal Armour-Chelu and Amy Fitzmaurice at Forestry England; Suzanne Kynaston of Wildwood Trust - and to People's Trust for Endangered Species and Forestry England, who funded this work.

Read the full paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-026-02389-w

DICE Talks: Autumn 2026 🗣️💡

Join us once a month in the Templeman Lecture Theatre, Templeman Library at the University of Kent for the autumn season of DICE Talks.

The DICE Talks are a monthly set of free and public events that showcase the work of DICE members, students and alumni. They take place between 18:00 and 19:00 on a Thursday each month and everyone is welcome to attend. This autumn, listen to talks on subjects from human-wildlife conflict, to disease ecology, to OECMs.

No booking required. Full details of dates and speakers can be found on our website: https://www.kent.ac.uk/durrell-institute-conservation-ecology/news-and-events

Undergraduate student, Jonathan Berry, joins us from the University of Oxford, on a marine conservation placement with Dr Rachel Seary. In this month's Spotlight blog post, Jonathan talks about the project he has been working on, and what his biggest takeaways are from his time at DICE. Read an excerpt below:

"It seemed like DICE had a really modern approach to conservation; this placement was very relevant to the future of conservation, in terms of its focus on the role of media in influencing how likely individuals and corporations are to take sustainable action, but also helping to understand science and policy."

"At the start of the placement, it was great to talk with Rachel about how this project fits into DICE’s work as a whole and the wider implications for California – thinking about how there’s this broader network I’m contributing to."

Read the full Spotlight, on DICE Writes: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/dice/2026/08/28/in-the-spotlight-jonathan-berry/

[Speaker change for tomorrow's DICE Talk, please see updated speakers below 👇]

Tomorrow (Thursday, 20th August), join us in Grimond Lecture Theatre 2 for August's DICE Talk, presented by three of our postgraduate students.

💡 Nadia Hejab, 'Modelling behavioural responses of translocated Indian leopards to thermal stress in shared landscapes'

💡 Debra Nachinga, 'Bottlenecks to the operationalisation of Other Effective Area Based Conservation Measures (OECMs): A Case Study of Community Conservancies in Kenya'

💡 Kili Walsh: 'Retaliation and Raiding: Modelling Conflict Dynamics with Long-tailed Macaques in Borneo'

After the talks, please join us in K-bar Keynes College for a social gathering and catch up with the DICE community!

Should non‑native species ever be used to restore lost ecosystem functions? 🌱

A new paper published in Ecological Solutions and Evidence draws on a scoping review and practitioner interviews to aim to answer this question.

The study, co‑authored by Alex Collins (University of Oxford), Professor Nathalie Pettorelli (ZSL) and Dr Mohammad S. Farhadinia (DICE, University of Kent), found that ecological replacement has often delivered meaningful ecological benefits, including improved nutrient cycling, seed dispersal, and invasive species control.

However, the authors also highlight concerns around invasiveness, animal welfare, reversibility, and social acceptance, among practitioners, emphasising that perceptions of risk and reward vary widely depending on how people define rewilding, how strongly they value nativeness, and their tolerance for ecological uncertainty.

Read the full study ➡️ https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2688-8319.70307

New research from DICE, 'A framework for identifying paper parks', has been published in Biological Conservation.

The paper provides a "new definition" of paper parks, "designed for researchers, practitioners and policy makers to distinguish between paper parks and poorly performing PAs, as the current lack of precision hampers efforts to describe and understand the related issues".

This research was led by Jessica Stewart, with Professor Bob Smith and coauthors from DICE and other institutions. Read the full paper and author credits ➡️ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320726003502