Simon Pooley
I am the Lambert Lecturer in Environment (Applied Herpetology) in the Geography Department at Birkbeck University of London, where I an Program Director of the MSc in Environment and Sustainability. Previously, following a JRF with E.J. Milner-Gulland at Imperial College London I was a lecturer in conservation science at Imperial, co-directing the MSc in conservation science. I am a member of the IUCN SSC Crocodile Specialist Group, and an IUCN Task Force on Human Wildlife Conflict chaired by Alexandra Zimmerman.
I have published my work widely in conservation science and humanities journals. My research has impacts, including my posters and guides on avoiding crocodile attacks, advice to government wildlife authorities, and through workshops.
I am applying historical analysis to conservation science and practice. On a theoretical level my aim is to enable genuinely multiple disciplinary dialogue on some major conflicts and controversies bedevilling the conservation of large, dangerous predators. These include strategies for managing human-animal conflict, and learning about coexistence with wildlife outside of protected areas.
I have an ongoing interest in understanding the challenges of, and finding ways to improve, multiple disciplinary research in conservation science. I was the researcher for an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary project reviewing the past 60 years of multi- and interdisciplinary research on problems of the environment. It was a collaborative project with Imperial College’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, and Imperial College Conservation Science. Further details are available at: http://www.iccs.org.uk/sharpen
My other research interests include the history of fire ecology and management, invasion biology, and networks of scientific expertise. These themes inform my book Burning Table Mountain: an environmental history of the Cape Peninsula (Palgrave 2014; UCT Press 2015).
I am interested in how animals are represented in scientific, popular and traditional cultures, and media.
I have published my work widely in conservation science and humanities journals. My research has impacts, including my posters and guides on avoiding crocodile attacks, advice to government wildlife authorities, and through workshops.
I am applying historical analysis to conservation science and practice. On a theoretical level my aim is to enable genuinely multiple disciplinary dialogue on some major conflicts and controversies bedevilling the conservation of large, dangerous predators. These include strategies for managing human-animal conflict, and learning about coexistence with wildlife outside of protected areas.
I have an ongoing interest in understanding the challenges of, and finding ways to improve, multiple disciplinary research in conservation science. I was the researcher for an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary project reviewing the past 60 years of multi- and interdisciplinary research on problems of the environment. It was a collaborative project with Imperial College’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, and Imperial College Conservation Science. Further details are available at: http://www.iccs.org.uk/sharpen
My other research interests include the history of fire ecology and management, invasion biology, and networks of scientific expertise. These themes inform my book Burning Table Mountain: an environmental history of the Cape Peninsula (Palgrave 2014; UCT Press 2015).
I am interested in how animals are represented in scientific, popular and traditional cultures, and media.
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Books by Simon Pooley
Mitigating harmful interactions with wildlife requires an understanding of the interactions between predators, domesticated animals and humans. Large-scale transformations of crocodilian habitats across the Latin America and Caribbean region, alongside significant use of crocodilians as a resource, and retaliatory killing of crocodilians following (or to prevent) attacks on humans and their animals, are generating significant conservation challenges. This matters because this is the world's most biodiverse region for crocodilians. Because there is little information on specific situations across this vast and complex region, in 2018 we initiated a biannual questionnaire survey to establish a reporting network. In this article, we summarize the findings of surveys conducted in 2018 and 2020. We triangulate this feedback with croc attack data, and consultation with regional experts, to produce this very preliminary overview. We identify trends in negative human-crocodilian interactions at country level, the most reported causes of these, and identify the key species and regions of concern. We surveyed attitudes to management policies and responses to negative interactions including direct action and outreach activities. We acknowledge (and clarify) knowledge gaps, and motivate for improved regional cooperation with regard to policies and management (notably monitoring and evaluation) and data collection and sharing.
-- visit the journal version for extensive supplementary material
The chapter explains why the plants which have proved invasive were introduced to the region, examines the effects of urbanisation on attitudes to introduced tree plantations, and describes the development of concern over the effects of fires and introduced plants on the indigenous fynbos vegetation.
The chapter recounts the complex history of environmental management on the Peninsula, discussing the advantages and limitations of the powerful narrative linking invasive introduced plant control with fires and water supplies, and recent controversies between invasion biologists and commercial forestry managers.
The chapter includes a 2,760-word text panel on the history and status of wildfire in the Mediterranean region.
It defines and provides an overview of the study region, discussing the biophysical and historiographical dimensions of defining a ‘Mediterranean region’.
Key polemics arising in debates over how to think about bioinvasions are considered, and the editors’ positions clarified.
An overview of the book’s ten chapters follows.
The chapter concludes with recommendations for future directions for the interdisciplinary study of bioinvasions in the Mediterranean region.
For a detailed overview of the book's aims and contents see
http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/research/2018/06/26/histories-of-bioinvasions-in-the-mediterranean/
(this is a summary for a lay readership of my recent publications on the historical interrelations of humans and Nile crocodiles in Africa. Title and photo not of my choosing.)
Published in Birkbeck's Magazine 2016, 35: 28-29.
The guide includes information on the wider context of croc attacks in Africa, when and where attacks occur in the region, victim profiles, information on crocodiles involved in attacks, case studies, information on the biology and behaviour of Nile crocodiles, advice on how not to get bitten, what to do if you are bitten, how you can help prevent attacks, and an attack report form.
Printed, colour copies will be distributed free in the region, as will this pdf. Please contact me on [email protected] with any queries or requests regarding use of this guide. I have made a pdf available here but it is large - 8mb at low res. I can send it to you in 2 parts of 5mb and 4mb on request.
Please cite as: Simon Pooley, How not to get eaten by a crocodile: in South Africa or Swaziland (London: Croc.Conservation, 2015).
This guide is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This infographics in this guide were developed with funding from an ESRC / Imperial College London Impact Acceleration Grant to Dr Simon Pooley, based at ICCS, at Imperial College London. They can be viewed as interactive infographics on the CrocBITE website ( http://www.crocodile-attack.info/).
I am working with Dr Adam Britton (RIEL, Charles Darwin University) and Brandon Sideleau on a worldwide database on croc attacks.
See Review at http://envhis.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/4/766.full
Crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators and the gharial), while they predate our species by millennia, are often represented as unwelcome intruders. In a sense, they could be regarded as such in this volume, not being ‘invasive aliens’ in any technical sense. In this essay I show that the scientific sub-discipline of invasion biology provides a useful arena for unpacking some of the cultural assumptions bundled up in assertions of ecological ‘invasions’. These attempts to define invasiveness, alienness and nativeness can be utilised to counter misleading popular usages of the term ‘invasions’."
This chapter first discusses some key definitions used by invasion ecologists. Temporal and spatial dimensions are central, as is the notion of harm. The discussion of the temporal dimension includes brief histories of crocodilians, and crocodilians and humans, in Australia. The discussion of spatial dimensions also touches on the notion of place, and Australian ideas about nativeness. The discussion of harm focuses on crocodiles as predators, and human–crocodile conflict.
The imaginative (and actual) construction of landscapes and the appropriation of Nature – through image-fashioning, curating museum and zoo collections, making ‘friends’, ‘enemies’ and mythical symbols from animals – are recurring subjects. Among the volume’s thought-provoking essays are a group enmeshing nature and the visual culture of photography and film. Canonical environmental history themes, from colonialism to conservation, are re-inflected by discourses including gender studies, Romanticism, politics and technology.
The loci of the studies included here represent both the microcosmic – underwater laboratory, zoo, film studio; and broad canvases – the German forest, the Rocky Mountains, the islands of Haiti and Madagascar. Their casts too are richly varied – from Britain’s otters and Africa’s Nile crocodiles to Hollywood film-makers and South African cattle. The volume represents an excitingly diverse collection of studies of how humans, in imagination and deed, act on and are acted on by ‘wild things’.""
unsupervised in the lake, and had ignored official warnings to stay out of the water. Furthermore, this was in a protected area for wildlife, known for its crocodiles, and crocodile attacks were not uncommon in the region – so the extent of the reaction is surprising and disproportionate to the incident.
This chapter begins with an examination of how crocodiles and their relations with humans had been represented to South Africans from the late nineteenth century to 1958. It then explores the social and ecological causes – and the sequence of events – which contributed to this explosive (and unprecedented) demand for the killing of all Nile crocodiles in Zululand. These events provide an instructive case study of how human environmental interventions and activities contributed to a ‘crocodile menace’. Prejudice and ignorance about a species were exploited by a variety of interests, ranging from commercial hunters to anglers, farmers and nationalist politicians.""
Papers by Simon Pooley
But humans have lived alongside millions of other species throughout our evolution, so there must be longstanding ways of dealing with such conflicts. Answers may be found in a remote part of India, where people have learned to live alongside one of nature’s largest predators, the crocodile.
Mitigating harmful interactions with wildlife requires an understanding of the interactions between predators, domesticated animals and humans. Large-scale transformations of crocodilian habitats across the Latin America and Caribbean region, alongside significant use of crocodilians as a resource, and retaliatory killing of crocodilians following (or to prevent) attacks on humans and their animals, are generating significant conservation challenges. This matters because this is the world's most biodiverse region for crocodilians. Because there is little information on specific situations across this vast and complex region, in 2018 we initiated a biannual questionnaire survey to establish a reporting network. In this article, we summarize the findings of surveys conducted in 2018 and 2020. We triangulate this feedback with croc attack data, and consultation with regional experts, to produce this very preliminary overview. We identify trends in negative human-crocodilian interactions at country level, the most reported causes of these, and identify the key species and regions of concern. We surveyed attitudes to management policies and responses to negative interactions including direct action and outreach activities. We acknowledge (and clarify) knowledge gaps, and motivate for improved regional cooperation with regard to policies and management (notably monitoring and evaluation) and data collection and sharing.
-- visit the journal version for extensive supplementary material
The chapter explains why the plants which have proved invasive were introduced to the region, examines the effects of urbanisation on attitudes to introduced tree plantations, and describes the development of concern over the effects of fires and introduced plants on the indigenous fynbos vegetation.
The chapter recounts the complex history of environmental management on the Peninsula, discussing the advantages and limitations of the powerful narrative linking invasive introduced plant control with fires and water supplies, and recent controversies between invasion biologists and commercial forestry managers.
The chapter includes a 2,760-word text panel on the history and status of wildfire in the Mediterranean region.
It defines and provides an overview of the study region, discussing the biophysical and historiographical dimensions of defining a ‘Mediterranean region’.
Key polemics arising in debates over how to think about bioinvasions are considered, and the editors’ positions clarified.
An overview of the book’s ten chapters follows.
The chapter concludes with recommendations for future directions for the interdisciplinary study of bioinvasions in the Mediterranean region.
For a detailed overview of the book's aims and contents see
http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/research/2018/06/26/histories-of-bioinvasions-in-the-mediterranean/
(this is a summary for a lay readership of my recent publications on the historical interrelations of humans and Nile crocodiles in Africa. Title and photo not of my choosing.)
Published in Birkbeck's Magazine 2016, 35: 28-29.
The guide includes information on the wider context of croc attacks in Africa, when and where attacks occur in the region, victim profiles, information on crocodiles involved in attacks, case studies, information on the biology and behaviour of Nile crocodiles, advice on how not to get bitten, what to do if you are bitten, how you can help prevent attacks, and an attack report form.
Printed, colour copies will be distributed free in the region, as will this pdf. Please contact me on [email protected] with any queries or requests regarding use of this guide. I have made a pdf available here but it is large - 8mb at low res. I can send it to you in 2 parts of 5mb and 4mb on request.
Please cite as: Simon Pooley, How not to get eaten by a crocodile: in South Africa or Swaziland (London: Croc.Conservation, 2015).
This guide is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This infographics in this guide were developed with funding from an ESRC / Imperial College London Impact Acceleration Grant to Dr Simon Pooley, based at ICCS, at Imperial College London. They can be viewed as interactive infographics on the CrocBITE website ( http://www.crocodile-attack.info/).
I am working with Dr Adam Britton (RIEL, Charles Darwin University) and Brandon Sideleau on a worldwide database on croc attacks.
See Review at http://envhis.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/4/766.full
Crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators and the gharial), while they predate our species by millennia, are often represented as unwelcome intruders. In a sense, they could be regarded as such in this volume, not being ‘invasive aliens’ in any technical sense. In this essay I show that the scientific sub-discipline of invasion biology provides a useful arena for unpacking some of the cultural assumptions bundled up in assertions of ecological ‘invasions’. These attempts to define invasiveness, alienness and nativeness can be utilised to counter misleading popular usages of the term ‘invasions’."
This chapter first discusses some key definitions used by invasion ecologists. Temporal and spatial dimensions are central, as is the notion of harm. The discussion of the temporal dimension includes brief histories of crocodilians, and crocodilians and humans, in Australia. The discussion of spatial dimensions also touches on the notion of place, and Australian ideas about nativeness. The discussion of harm focuses on crocodiles as predators, and human–crocodile conflict.
The imaginative (and actual) construction of landscapes and the appropriation of Nature – through image-fashioning, curating museum and zoo collections, making ‘friends’, ‘enemies’ and mythical symbols from animals – are recurring subjects. Among the volume’s thought-provoking essays are a group enmeshing nature and the visual culture of photography and film. Canonical environmental history themes, from colonialism to conservation, are re-inflected by discourses including gender studies, Romanticism, politics and technology.
The loci of the studies included here represent both the microcosmic – underwater laboratory, zoo, film studio; and broad canvases – the German forest, the Rocky Mountains, the islands of Haiti and Madagascar. Their casts too are richly varied – from Britain’s otters and Africa’s Nile crocodiles to Hollywood film-makers and South African cattle. The volume represents an excitingly diverse collection of studies of how humans, in imagination and deed, act on and are acted on by ‘wild things’.""
unsupervised in the lake, and had ignored official warnings to stay out of the water. Furthermore, this was in a protected area for wildlife, known for its crocodiles, and crocodile attacks were not uncommon in the region – so the extent of the reaction is surprising and disproportionate to the incident.
This chapter begins with an examination of how crocodiles and their relations with humans had been represented to South Africans from the late nineteenth century to 1958. It then explores the social and ecological causes – and the sequence of events – which contributed to this explosive (and unprecedented) demand for the killing of all Nile crocodiles in Zululand. These events provide an instructive case study of how human environmental interventions and activities contributed to a ‘crocodile menace’. Prejudice and ignorance about a species were exploited by a variety of interests, ranging from commercial hunters to anglers, farmers and nationalist politicians.""
But humans have lived alongside millions of other species throughout our evolution, so there must be longstanding ways of dealing with such conflicts. Answers may be found in a remote part of India, where people have learned to live alongside one of nature’s largest predators, the crocodile.
The review begins as follows:
'In this 512-page monograph, Professor Carruthers sets out
to explain in scientific and political context the changing
philosophies and shifts in focus of the research agendas
shaping scientific research in South Africa’s national parks.'
The review concludes:
'Carruthers has collated an enormously valuable resource
for future historians and conservation scientists' and 'overturns oversimplified accounts of the country’s conservation history, provides rich resources for local and overseas scholars interested in the history of conservation science in the country, and encourages South African researchers and practitioners to see their history and efforts in international and historical context.'
[Attached file is accepted, unformatted version. Formatted, final version is available as Early View on the Conservation Letters website - see link below]
I will use a case study, the alleged invasion of parts of Lake St Lucia in South Africa by crocodiles in the 1950s, to reflect on the kinds of questions we should ask when confronted by an apparent 'invasion'. We are told that defining a biological invasion should not be left to natural scientists, but in practice it seldom is. Statements about dispersal and concentration of invasive species are often matters of perception, or rhetoric, at least in the framing of 'the problem'. The underlying causes of the 'crocodile furore' in this case were complex, including prejudice and ignorance about crocodiles, disputes over land use, landscape engineering, high-profile incidents (attacks), local environmental conditions, crocodile hunters, and the agency of individual crocodiles.
Our conference theme today is nature and the social imagination, and I want to show how deep-seated negative imaginings, or discourses, about Nile crocodiles directly impacted on the survival of an entire species. These prejudices contributed to ignorance about and misrepresentations of crocodile behaviour. They engendered a failure to properly investigate crocodile behaviour even among scientists and wildlife conservationists. This allowed politicians, commercial hunters, traders in traditional medicines, land-hungry farmers, and others to manipulate public ignorance and revulsion about crocodiles to further their own ends.
I will ground-truth these general statements in a case study, reconstructing the conjunction of social and environmental factors which contributed to the unprecedented outcry about the so-called crocodile menace that erupted in Natal, South Africa, in late 1957.