Protection & conservation

Mosquitoes transmit more than 10% of all infectious diseases. Wearing a face mask and washing your hands won’t stop them! So what might, in the future? We can’t vaccinate mosquitoes, but can we do something similar? Can we control them, with such precision as to avoid harming other species and ecosystems? Synthetic biologists can now modify mosquitoes to perform these functions, at least in the lab, and in some cases this has also proven to be successful in the field. Come and hear more – what could we do? What should we do? What would you do??

Wild meat has long been a major source of food for forest and urban dwellers across Central Africa, but unsustainable hunting is a major concern for conservation and food security. Projects providing alternative foods to wild meat are commonplace to try and curb unsustainable hunting. But there is limited evidence that these projects achieve their conservation and social objectives. This may be in part because there's little understanding of what motivates people to eat wild meat in the first place. Come and hear about Stephanie's work in rural Cameroon on this important and challenging issue.