Kia Pākiki – Elissa Cameron, animal behaviour expert
Professor Elissa Cameron (Ngāi Tahu, Ōtākou) is a Ngā Ahurei a Te Apārangi Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, elected for being an international leader in wildlife biology and conservation management. Her mahi with animal populations has taken her from Kaimanawa to the Kalahari, and she recently discussed her career with the podcast Kia Pākiki Canterbury.
Kia Pākiki Canterbury – wildlife management
In this Kia Pākiki Canterbury podcast, Science Communicator Tom Goulter and co-host Associate Professor Adrian Paterson from the Department of Pest-Management and Conservation at Lincoln University interview Dr Elissa Cameron from the University of Canterbury.
Select here to view video transcript and copyright information.
Blending zoology and psychology
Elissa grew up loving animals and the environment. Her ambition was to be a vet, until “I realised that actually it was zoologists who did the work that I thought vets did.” Her undergraduate degree is in zoology and psychology, which is key to understanding animal behaviour on a population level. Because she knew she wanted to work in Africa one day, Elissa organised a master’s project on captive animal populations in Orana Wildlife Park in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
Kaimanawa horse
The Kaimanawa horses are a feral horse population living in the central North Island Waiouru Military Training Area. The herd is managed by the Department of Conversation (DOC).
Photo by Sian Moffit.
Elissa’s PhD thesis was a study of the Kaimanawa horses, a feral horse population in the central North Island. The mahi was funded by the Department of Conservation for the purpose of controlling the herd but also allowed Elissa to gather data on the horses and study maternal investment (a measure of the resources apportioned by mothers toward their offspring) and social structures in the population.
“That’s one of the beauties of science,” says Elissa. “You can be addressing a management-related question and doing fundamental science at the same time.”
Later, Elissa worked with animal populations such as quokkas on Rottnest Island, lions in Pretoria and meerkats in the Kalahari Desert. Her work focuses on population aspects such as social structures and the role of the individual within ecology, spanning disciplines from behavioural and population ecology to conservation biology.
Possum feeding
Possum eating pine leaves.
At the time of this interview, Elissa’s work was on animals closer to home, researching possum behaviour. This mahi, intended to discover what makes possums more or less trappable using the devices at our disposal, involves testing traps on lab mice before scaling up to the possums themselves.
Diversity driving scientific breakthroughs
“Everything in the environment, everything in the animals’ world, everything in terms of all our people, everything is connected,” says Elissa. "If we can lean into our different ways of knowing, then we really start to make some insights.”
An example she gives is the explosion of women practising behavioural ecology in the 1970s and 1980s. This led to a huge number of new hypotheses positing females of the species as more than just a resource to be fought over by the males. “The number of new breakthroughs we made because of that was massive,” says Elissa. “Every time we bring in people with different ways of knowing the world, that happens.”
Grand challenges demand multiple perspectives
“We need everyone’s perspective,” says Elissa. “We’ve got some grand challenges and we need all the perspectives and experiences.”
You can’t ignore climate change
Climate change action can take many forms including raising awareness, reducing carbon footprints, supporting conscious consumers and scientific research.
She gives the example of the climate emergency as a scenario in which changes are happening so fast that we’re losing the ability to predict what’s going to happen next.
Another area in which diverse perspectives are needed is in science journalism.
We’ve got information at our fingertips, but it’s increasingly difficult to discriminate information from misinformation and disinformation.
Elissa says we need to move beyond an outdated lens of the environment as constant. She says many in the 1900s focused on trying to return the environment to how it once was, but this was only a reflection of how the environment was when the first pictures were taken.
“We really have to start thinking about this dynamic environment that we live in,” she says. “Ecology is change.”
Related content
Discover more about ecology in What is ecology?, Understanding ecology and New Zealand’s unique ecology.
Find out more about the dynamics of populations in Population biology.
This podcast also features another interview by the Hub’s very own Tom, this time with the Entomological Society of New Zealand’s Morgane Merien about Bug of the Year.
Useful links
Kia Pākiki Canterbury is a monthly podcast by the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. The show broadcasts on the first Monday of every month and can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Acknowledgement
This interview was excerpted from an episode of Kia Pākiki Canterbury, a monthly podcast about science, technology and humanities presented by the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Kia Pākiki logo
Kia Pākiki Canterbury is a monthly podcast about science, technology and the humanities presented by the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
