Rotary Foundation student Isabel DeVito

Wed, Oct 30th 2024 at 12:40 pm - 2:40 pm

USA post grad Rotary Scholar in Statistical Ecology gave a wonderful presentation with lot of photos of wild life.

Rotary Foundation student Isabel DeVito -

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Guest speaker was Isabel de Vito, a student at the University of St Andrews, the recipient of a Rotary Foundation scholarship for her Masters Degree Course in Statistical Ecology. Isabel spoke of her background in the United States where she completed her undergraduate degree in Ecology for which she undertook a project on Marmots in the Rocky Mountains and a study on a species of Owl which has been adversely affected by the changing weather in Colorado and California where climate change causes increasingly frequent forest fires which have a significant impact on wildlife. She also spoke of her time spent in Tanzania where she spent time with a hunter /gatherer tribe. Here she was able to study the increasing impact between wildlife and local populations where the herding of livestock and the need for farmland development is impacting on traditional wildlife grazing grounds, resulting in tensions and conflict. Isabel described placing numerous camera traps in Colorado to record wildlife activity over a large study-area. Here her specific interest was in apex carnivores including the mountain lion, bobcat and grey fox, and their interactions with development by humans. Her studies covered wildlife population densities and spacial movement. She would like to continue this specific interest to PhD level, looking into the methodology of reducing livestock predation in areas of human/wildlife interfaces. Isabel illustrated aspects of her presentation with a number of excellent photographs from the 50,000 data-set she has accumulated from her camera traps. Wendy Bell gave the vote of thanks.