Henrietta Hutton Research Grant: selective logging and biodiversity conservation in Borneo

^{Image courtesy of Tanith Hackney-Huck}

University of Sheffield Zoology undergraduate student Tanith Hackney-Huck is one of two students to be awarded the Henrietta Hutton Research Grant in 2018. These grants were founded in 1964 in memory of Henrietta Hutton, née Cooke, a keen ornithologist, Chairperson of the Oxford ornithologist Society and a founding member of the University of Oxford Women's Exploration Club. Up to three grants of £500 are given every year to undergraduate or postgraduate students undertaking overseas field research as an individual or part of a team. 

Tanith's grant supported her involvement in a fieldwork project investigating the impacts of selective logging on avian biodiversity in Borneo. Based at the Danum Valley Field Centre in the Malaysian state of Sabah, and working closely with Dr Suzan Benedick and research students from Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Tanith's fieldwork involves sampling the understorey bird communities in primary and logged forests using mist-netting. The data she has helped collect will form part of a four-year study on avian demographics and species resilience in response to logging, and will address questions around how much habitat quality can be maintained and restored in selectively logged areas, and whether protecting selectively logged forest is an effective conservation strategy. She returns to the UK in September. 

Find out more about funding for student fieldwork