Written primarily for 16-19 year old students, this primer aims to extend students' knowledge and inspire them to take their school-level learning further. It explores topics that are familiar from the curriculum and also introduces new ideas, giving students a first taste of the study of biology beyond school-level and demonstrating how concepts frequently encountered at school are relevant to and applied in current research. This is the ideal text to supportstudents who are considering making the transition from studying biology at school to university. It is a concise, stimulating introduction to modern conservation biology, and the issues that constrain us from achieving sustainability.

• 1: Conservation, ecology and science


• 2: Populations, patchiness, and movement


• 3: Rarity and extinction


• 4: Interactions among species


• 5: What processes create ecological communities?


• 6: Ecosystem services and human well-being


• 7: Indigenous people and conservation


• 8: Conservation strategies

Professor Francis Gilbert did his BA and PhD at St John's College, Cambridge, and then became a Junior Fellow at Gonville & Caius College and a Harkness Fellow in the USA before becoming a lecturer at Nottingham in 1984, where he has been ever since. He is an ecologist with two main interests: the conservation of South Sinai, where he has worked since 1986; and the biology of hoverflies. He has published almost 200 papers and 20 books, including books on the natural world for children of a variety of age bands, a popular account of the Bedouin gardens of South Sinai, a primer of hoverfly biology, and a guide to teaching quantitative biology. In 2004-7 he lived in Cairo and South Sinai in order to run a large project aimed at improving conservation across the Protected Areas of Egypt via research, monitoring, and public awareness. He is currently working on a monograph on the biology of hoverflies, a village history, and a guide to South Sinai.
Dr Hilary Gilbert did her BA in Modern & Medieval Languages at Girton College Cambridge. She ran a Volunteer Bureau and Nottingham Community Health Council before becoming an NHS manager, leaving that to join the King's Fund in London. She then developed and ran Derbyshire Community Foundation for almost ten years before resigning to join Francis in Cairo, where she founded the Community Foundation for South Sinai while doing her PhD on the relationship between the Park and the South Sinai Bedouin living within its boundary. She now researches the health and well-being of the Bedouin, especially the women, while running the CFSS and its UK partner, the South Sinai Foundation. She has written about her work throughout her career, from research reports to having had a regular newspaper column in the Nottingham Evening Post. She has a number of published papers and is currently writing a book on her work in South Sinai.