Presenting on the importance of riparian buffers at the 2nd Asia Parks Congress

This summer Asst. Prof. Eleanor Slade presented recent work from a multi-stakeholder collaborative project on the importance of riparian buffers for biodiversity in tropical agricultural landscapes at the 2nd Asia Parks Congress working group session: Connectivity And Transboundary Conservation in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah entitled Connecting Science to Guidance on the Ground: How do we manage riparian buffers to effectively support biodiversity?

The talk highlighted the key findings of the project published in recent papers led by Dr Nick Deere and Dr Joseph Williamson "Riparian buffers can help mitigate biodiversity decline in oil palm agriculture" and "Riparian buffers act as microclimatic refugia in oil palm landscapes". It also gave us opportunity to showcase our new science brief and animation.

This project is a collaboration between DICE, University of Kent, ASE, Nanyang Technological University, the South East Asia Rainforest Research Programme (SEARRP), and key government agencies in Sabah including the Department for Irrigation and Drainage (DID) and the Environmental Protection Department (DID) and was funded by the British Council Newton Fund, MIGHT Malaysia, and NERC, UK.

To read more about these studies: - Riparian buffers can help mitigate biodiversity decline in oil palm agriculture

- Riparian buffers act as microclimatic refugia in oil palm landscapes".