WildCRU get down to work

The unit, known as WildCRU — for Wildlife Conservation Research Unit — was created formally in 1986 and has become the largest of its kind in Europe.

The original research into the private life of foxes was carried out more than 20 years ago and nowadays the unit tackles important wildlife problems not only in Britain but in far-flung countries.

Among the mammals they research, some are found locally, such as mink, polecats, water voles and wood mice, whereas overseas subjects include African wild dogs, orang-utans, lions, cheetahs and Arctic foxes.

Locally, much of the work is carried out in the Upper Thames region — that is from Oxford westwards towards the source of the river — and in the University-owned Wytham Woods just outside the city.

The driving force behind the organisation is Professor David Macdonald, the founder director of WildCRU at the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, which has a college base at Lady Margaret Hall.

Ever since he was a child, David has had an affinity with animals and this carried through to his time as an undergraduate at Wadham College, Oxford, in 1969.

“I come from a long line of Glaswegian doctors and was brought up to think how science could be put to use to solve practical problems for the benefit of both nature and people, and how wonderful it would be if we could adapt some of the newest discoveries about nature to help solve conservation problems,” said David.

At that time it was not obvious that the emerging thinking about ecology was ripe for application to solve wildlife problems and David’s work has been among that which has made Oxford an international leader in this field.

Everything began to come together when he was at Wadham and began studying the lives of our native red foxes and how their behaviour affected the feasibility of rabies control.

In short, the answer was that an understanding of the fox behaviour made vaccination rather than poisoning of foxes a much more successful approach on the Continent.

After gaining a doctorate at Wadham, he went on to Balliol with a Junior Research Fellowship, where he was determined to undertake research that would bridge the gap between pure and applied science.

“There was some ill-founded snobbery at the time that looked upon applied science as somehow second rate in comparison with pure science — actually, in my experience it is at least as hard to be useful as it is to be interesting,” he said.

While at Balliol, he gathered around a group of like-minded enthusiasts and they began further studies of foxes and also of badgers and a wider variety of creatures.

Some of the work was carried out at Tubney — which later played a major role in the life of WildCRU — where David and his wife Jenny lived in a greenkeeper’s cottage on the edge of a golf course.

Eventually it was realised that if the research was to continue long term, it needed to be put on a firm footing.

In 1980, a crucial meeting was held at Lady Margaret Hall.

“Although it seems scarcely believable now, no university in Britain at that time had a job devoted explicitly to conservation research,” said David.

The vital meeting David attended was with Duncan Stuart, the then head of Lady Margaret Hall, the college’s tutor in zoology, Wilma Crowther, and Professor Sir Richard Southwood, former Linacre professor of zoology at the university and subsequently Vice-Chancellor.

The upshot was that it was agreed that Lady Margaret Hall should become the home to a research felowship in wildlife conservation.

After some six years of arduous fund-raising, with David and his supporters doing a lot of talking to donors and charitable trusts, the big milestone was reached, enabling the formal setting up of WildCRU in offices in South Parks Road, Oxford.

As the work of WildCRU progressed and expanded, it became obvious it was outgrowing its accommodation and a new home was needed.

And Tubney again came into play.

After their deaths, the executors of Miles and Briony Blackwell announced they had bequeathed their home, Tubney House, to the university with the express wish that their Strawberry Hill Gothic-designed home should be used for the benefit of WildCRU in perpetuity.

Following an extensive amount of renovation, WildCRU moved out of Oxford in October, 2004, and into Tubney House, where there is now a lecture theatre, seminar room and office space for 40 people.

In addition, Tubney House sits in 34 acres of grounds and the hope is to develop these for farmland conservation projects. “The generosity of the Tubney Trust in establishing our centre at Tubney House has been a miracle. It is a perfect working situation, close to town, yet in the country, and it has become a hub for conservation in the UK,” said David.

Another stroke of luck came about two years ago when a former Oxford student, Tom Kaplan, now a major philanthropist in New York, agreed to endow the running costs of the WildCRU centre, thus saving the unit the daunting task of having to find the money for basic housekeeping every year.

Since its inception more than 20 years ago, WildCRU has become a centre for training in wildlife conservation, and more than 60 of its fledged graduate students are now working on conservation with universities and institutions in around 30 countries worldwide. “Our research at WildCRU is divided roughly 50-50 between Britain and overseas.

“Although most people will know us for our work on mammals, we are busy at work also on creatures as diverse as dragonflies, damselflies, moths, butterflies and invertebrates, and increasingly our ecologists work alongside economists and social scientists,” said David.

The mission of WildCRU is to achieve solutions to conservation problems by undertaking original research on aspects of fundamental biology relevant to wildlife conservation and environmental management.

WildCRU brings cutting edge ideas from ecology to solve practical environmental problems — a bit like research in physiology is put to work to solve practical problems in medicine.