Mr Philip Saunders

Biography

Having had a lifelong interest in natural history, and birds in particular, I graduated from a three-year undergraduate degree in Applied Environmental Science at King’s College London in 2002. I then spent the majority of the following eight years working as an ecological consultant, specialising in ornithology and herpetology, on a wide range of development projects across the UK. Having worked in the corporate environmental sector for so long, and experiencing all of the benefits and disadvantages that went with it, I decided to enrol on a full-time Conservation Science MSc program at Imperial College London in the autumn of 2010. The course reignited my interests in conservation research and I subsequently decided to undertake a bird conservation-orientated PhD. I’ve been fascinated by the spectacle of bird migration since an early age, and also have a particular interest in the declining avifauna of the Mediterranean pseudo-steppe. I was therefore delighted when I was offered the chance to work on a project concerning the conservation of the European Roller (Coracias garrulus) in Portugal and Cyprus.

Research Interest

My main research interests include the study of bird migration, assessing the impacts of habitat and climate change upon migratory bird species, and the use of such research in the development of evidence-based conservation interventions.