Right time, Right place - in defense of his MSc thesis
Jonathan Bell used to work at NCC with his principle project being co-ordination of the Guttural Toad removal plan. During that time we had a lot of interactions and it was clear that Jonathan had great ideas of how to improve the efficiency of the eradication campaign. However, there was not a lot of time in his life for doing an MSc. Some years later though, Jonathan re-located to working for the Invasive Species Unit at the City of Cape Town, and there was a positive encouragement for him to do an MSc.
The idea for the first chapter of his project was to find out exactly why some people allowed access to their properties, and others did not. Using Jonathan's long list of contacts in areas invaded by the Guttural Toad and Polyphagous Shot-Hole Borer, he interviewed a series of different key informants to find out why they had or had not allowed access to their properties. The reasons were varied, but were aspects of socio-political, economic and environmental variables. Armed with their responses, Jonathan designed a questionnaire that he rolled out to 400 respondents in the City of Cape Town area. He found out that the type of Agents, Appointment Scheduling and Societal Influence were the most important categories chosen by people influencing whether or not they would allow access to their properties. Not only this, but he also found that these responses varied across an urban density gradient.
For his second chapter, Jonathan used a time to detection model (with the help of Dom Henry) to determine under what variables it would be most efficient to manage invasive Guttural Toads. This chapter too was a great success with several significant variables increasing the efficacy of contractors who were out to collect toads.
Jonathan received a great mark for his defense presentation, and together with his thesis marks will graduate in March!
Congratualtions Jonathan!
