Virgínia Maria Marques Pimenta Castro

My main area of interest is wildlife ecology and conservation in human-dominated landscapes, particularly concerning large carnivores. I'm particularly focused in finding solutions that conciliate human interests with the conservation of these species.

Since my graduation in Biology at Lisboa University in 1998, I have worked as a technician at the Portuguese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICNF), mainly in wolf conservation and management, namely in this species monitoring, livestock damages and impact mitigation.

In 2012, continuing my previous working area, I've started a PhD research project entitled "Human-carnivore conflicts: risk assessment of wolf predation on livestock in Portugal and its management implications", which in general terms intends to assess spatial and temporal patterns of wolf livestock predation in Portugal and their determinants in order to provide risk assessment tools of damage occurrences and to make more effective use of limited financial resources available for reducing conflicts.

Particularly we want to know what factors are affecting the occurrence and amount of wolf livestock predation events throughout the Portuguese wolf distribution area at different spatial scales. This knowledge will be used to evaluate the suitability of different alternatives for managing the interface between livestock damages and large carnivore conservation in the human-dominated landscapes of southern Europe (e.g. ex post and ex ante compensation, incentives to protective measures), namely in areas where these species are highly dependent on anthropogenic food resources for survival.