MrsNell Pates

I am a PhD researcher in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, and part of the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Partnership (SSCP DTP). I am based at Silwood Park, Imperial's dedicated centre for ecology, evolution, and conservation.

My research is focused on rewilding - allowing natural processes to recover in damaged habitats. I have combined fieldwork, statistical, and molecular techniques to investigate how landscapes change when they are rewilded and develop methods and metrics to allow us to study this subject more quantitatively. I want to answer questions like: how can we measure changes in biodiversity under rewilding? How does rewilding impact different taxonomic groups? Can we say if rewilding?

During my PhD, I have been fortunate to conduct fieldwork around the UK, at the Knepp Estate in Sussex, two new rewilding project sites overseen by Nattergal (Boothby and High Fen), a selection of UK National Trust sites in the south of England, and RSPB Haweswater in the Lake District.