Professor EJ Milner-Gulland
About
Professor Milner-Gulland is interested in understanding how social, ecological and behavioural factors interact and how they affect key issues in current conservation.
She was lead author on a 2021 paper outlining the 'Four Steps for the Earth' framework for implementing global commitments to tackling biodiversity loss - which the International Union for Conservation of Nature has voted to support and promote.
Her research group focuses on three themes: understanding resource user incentives, planning for effective and socially just conservation, and accounting for social-ecological system dynamics. They seek to understand and improve the effectiveness of different approaches to designing conservation interventions, in both land and marine ecosystems.
Professor Milner-Gulland also works on the illegal wildlife trade and is interested in designing, monitoring and evaluating conservation interventions in order to improve their effectiveness. She is particularly interested in the conservation ecology of the saiga antelope in Central Asia, and co-founded the Saiga Conservation Alliance in 2006 as well as the Conservation Optimism movement in 2016.
She is an advisor to a number of bodies including the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. As well as chairing the UK Government’s Darwin Expert Committee, Professor Milner-Gulland is a Trustee of WWF-UK.
Expertise
- Biodiversity
- Conservation science
- Saiga antelopes
- Bushmeat hunting
- Conservation in Africa and Central Asia
- Sustainable use of wildlife
- Poverty and development links to the environment
Selected publications
- The global conservation movement is divided but not diverse: reflections on 2020 (2021)
- Delivering behavioural change at scale: What conservation can learn from other fields (2021)
- Four steps for the Earth: mainstreaming the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (2021)
- Uncovering prevalence of pangolin consumption using a technique for investigating sensitive behaviour (2021)
- Prevalence and characteristics of jaguar trade in north-western Bolivia (2021)
- Beyond banning wildlife trade: COVID-19, conservation and development (2020)
Media experience
Professor Milner-Gulland has extensive experience of working with a range of media, including radio, TV, and print outlets.
Recent media work
- Four Steps for Earth: A Holistic Approach to Transform Humanity’s Relationship With Nature and Save the Planet (Sci Tech Daily)
- Britain, Canada, EU throw weight behind 2030 biodiversity protection goal (Reuters)
- How the Soviet Union's end sparked a grand rewilding (BBC Future, 2021)
- Planet Earth II: how scientists discovered what killed the saiga antelopes (Newsweek, 2021)
- Floppy-nosed antelope has baby boom, raising hope for critically (National Geographic, 2020) endangered species
- More Than Half of Entire Species of Saigas Gone in Mysterious Die-Off (New York Times)
- Mystery of what killed 200,000 antelope in one MONTH solved? Normally harmless bacteria appear to have turned on the endangered
- 134,000 saiga antelope dead in two weeks. What is the probable cause? (The Guardian, 2015)
Languages
English, French, Russian