Biodiversity and Conservation

Course description

This MSc course prepares you for a career protecting biodiversity in a range of natural, agricultural and urban ecosystems around the world. Throughout your course, you'll be learning about conservation issues in major ecosystems, from tropical forests to cities, and coral reefs to the deep sea, and the constraints posed by budgets, policy and legislation.

Fieldwork will form a large part of your learning. In our Field Biology module you'll gain hands-on experience of designing and conducting a project in the field, helping you to understand the challenges faced in real-world conservation projects. Our current MSc students will be completing their field course on the North Norfolk coast, one of Europe’s premier wildlife sites and a region with significant conservation challenges and varied management efforts.

You'll receive training in the principles of experimental design and data collection in an area of outstanding conservation and biodiversity interest, equipping you with the key skills to plan, manage and generate data from your own research.

Throughout your course, we’ll show you how environmental change can impact biodiversity and how the effective management of ecosystems can positively impact both biodiversity and the ecosystem itself.

You’ll also conduct an independent research project, spending three months researching an area of biodiversity or conservation that matches your interests and equips you for your future career. You could be field-based, lab-based or complete a computational data-driven project, tackling topics such as urbanisation, ecosystem services, tropical deforestation, and marine conservation.

Example previous research projects include:

• Is land sparing or land sharing farming best for conservation of biodiversity and carbon in upland UK?
• Bigger, better, more, joined: habitat fragmentation and the conservation of rare birds in the Peak District
• Traits in space and time: mobilising biodiversity data for conservation, macroecology, and macroevolution
• Investigating the abiotic and biotic factors influencing territory distribution of an avian riverine specialist
• Biodiversity change under climate and environmental variation
• Using eDNA data for biodiversity monitoring
  

If you have any questions about entry requirements, please contact the school/department.

Your career

With first-hand experience of global conservation issues across animal and plant biodiversity, you'll be ready to pursue a range of career opportunities in policy making, research and academia implementing positive change in this area.

Previous graduates of this course are now working in roles including:

• Peatland Discovery Officer, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust
• Ecologist, SLR Consulting
• Associate Programme Officer, United Nations EP-WCMC
• Field Biologist, Atlantic Marine Conservation Society
• Higher Scientific Officer, Animal and Plant Health Agency
• Seasonal Assistant Ecologist, MAB Environment and Ecology Ltd
• Consultant, Natural Capital Solutions

If you choose to continue your research training, you'll be well equipped to pursue a PhD in topics such as ecology, evolution and conservation and beyond. Alumni are currently studying for PhDs and researching topics including Agroecology, the Impacts of Pesticides on Aquatic Plants, Biodiversity of the Marine Benthos, and the Environmental Impact of non-native species.